If you’ve been out to Sea Cider this spring, you may have noticed our honey bee hives in the center of our orchard. We work with the good folks over at Country Bee and wanted to ask them a bit about why we’ve been seeing so many ‘swarms’ of bees. Apparently, we have some very healthy,…
It’s pollination season! April has the bees returning to the Sea Cider farm and the orchard is literally buzzing with life. This month, when you visit us and order a flight of cider, mention “Pollination” and receive a complimentary sample of our spring seasonal, Birds and the Bees. Stop by and we would…
This year was an exceptional year for Vancouver Island apple growers! We are overwhelmed with the amount of support we saw come through from our community this year. We either bought or traded over 50,000 lbs of back yard apples, which in turn, doubles the amount of apples we have seen brought in to us…
Five new chicks are settling into life on the Sea Cider farm! We are all very excited to introduce our newest additions to the farm; five 13-week old chicks. They are still quite young, and not quite fully grown, but are settling into their new home and we anticipate that they will start laying eggs in about…
And, just like that, the 2017 harvest is complete! With the apples off the trees and cold weather setting in our orchard is going through ch-ch-changes (brrrr). As the days become shorter, hormones tell the trees to stop growing and the orchard goes into its dormant state. While the trees are resting, sadly we won’t…
Where Has the Summer Gone! I guess it’s time to get this old beast ready for the harvest! We don’t use it too much during the rest of the year, but this trusty old piece of machinery is instrumental for hauling around bins of apples come harvest time. Can you believe that it’s already August?…
It’s another blissful day in organic paradise! There’s baby cider apples everywhere! These little beauties are Dabinetts, a cultivar that dates back to the early 1900’s in Somerset, England. The story goes that a wise man named William Dabinett discovered this varietal growing wild and couldn’t help but notice how delightfully tannic and aromatic the…
Our nursery is just loving this summer weather! And, the little sprinkling of rain we’re having certainly doesn’t hurt. Our acting cidermaker and orchard manager, Stephen, is often found out here tending to his ‘babies’ and making sure they are growing up right. These little trees are actually called ‘whips’ – a newly grafted tree…
So long summer – it’s apple season! Picking apples at Sea Cider is an all-hands-on-deck kind of affair. This year, our little orchard is just loaded with apples. Almost everything you’ll see here are heirloom varietals of French and English bittersharps and bittersweets. They may not be the biggest and best looking apples, but to…
We have apples! It seems that fall is on the way! Where did the summer go? It’s always an exciting occasion when we start pressing our first apples of the season. It means that we can start filling up the tanks with fresh juice to begin the fermentation process again. British Columbia has been blessed (if you’re not a firefighter…
As part of our commitment to raising awareness around invasive species with our Canadian Invasion Series of ciders, we are proud to support The Nature Conservancy of Canada in their conservation efforts on Vancouver Island and beyond! On Wednesday, the Sea Cider House team was lucky to join them on volunteer excursion to their James…
Don’t you just love spring? We do! Especially when we’ve got Tramlett’s Bitter coming into bloom and we know that the rest of the orchard is sure to follow. This popular 19th century English bittersweet is praised for its high astringency and sugar levels. It’s one of the more common English bittersweets and one that defines…