In the far distance, a tiny speck of sea describes the end of the land and the beginning of the English Channel. Between, miles and miles of green, Kentish acreage. From my elevation on the top of the orchard’s slope, only I exist—I, and the constant hum of passenger jets flying in and out of Gatwick Airport. My boots are scuffed with dried mud and my shoulders ache from the weight of thousands of apples, from sleeping on the floor in a van, from the year I’ve had.

Nightingale Cider was an escape I had planned. Since 2019 I had run a bar with my husband Tom in our adopted hometown of Clitheroe, but a week before this trip, we closed it down forever. The incredible load of running a business that was our lives and souls was hard to carry, even before the odds became unbearably stacked against us. We put everything into it—an extension of ourselves, and perhaps that was unwise—the pain of closing a business is surely bad enough without adding personal grief to the process.

When we knew the date of our closure, I made sure the orchard and cideries owner, Sam Nightingale, was ready for us. We were going to pick apples and help make cider in the Kentish countryside, a wholesome activity that would move our bodies and fill our lungs with fresh, country air. A convalescence. We needed that time, I thought. As it turned out, we would be visiting just after attending the funeral of a friend a few hours away from the orchard in Colchester. 2023, I can tell you, was a cruel joke.

I have lived through the closing, and the funeral, and the wake. Now I am standing among rows of Jonagold apples listening to the rumble of an old tractor in a nearby field, my skin is tanning, and I’m just out of sight of our van. I know that Tom is sitting in a fold-up camping chair making some brews on a camping stove outside, and he comes into view as I round the corner. I wave. He waves. The sun shines.

***

Sam Nightingale has run Gibbet Oak Farm near Tenterden, in Kent, since he moved back home in 2015, swapping a career in sound recording for a life filled with apples. Once a fruit farm run by his father and grandfather before him, Sam put all his efforts into shaping and cultivating his orchards, turning Gibbet Oak into a cidery.

His home is an historic cottage in the town centre, where uneven floors and wooden beams contrast heavily with state of the art audiophile equipment. Here he cooks us pasta, and his beloved dog Pippin (named after the apple variety Cox’s Orange Pippin—she’s a fox red lab) shows us all her toys, still full of beans after a day spent racing in-between the trees.

Picking apples in the Nightingale Cider orchards is a delicate affair. Instead of shaking the trees then gathering fruit from the ground, as I’d assumed all apples were harvested, each apple we pick is gently held in the soft curve of our hand, and twisted free from its branch with a taut snap.

Our harvest bags, like backwards backpacks, get heavy quickly—the trees are leaning under the weight of apples and it’s been wet overnight. They’re shiny, fat, beautiful things that gleam like polished brasses. We tip them carefully into the waiting wooden boxes where they will mellow, while awaiting pressing.

The access lanes between the trees are lush and green, dotted with the occasional mouse hole that sets Pippin off sniffing and sneezing into the soil. Inside the canopy between each two rows, the ground is brown with fallen fruit, and buzzing with life. Wasps love apples, they get drunk on them. Pheasants dart out when they hear us coming. Luminously green shieldbugs keep jumping out at me like tiny arrows. There are more ladybirds here than I have ever seen before in my life.

““Wasps love apples, they get drunk on them. Pheasants dart out when they hear us coming... There are more ladybirds here than I have ever seen before in my life.””

Ladybirds are meant to be a sign of good luck and rebirth. After the first day I start finding them on everything I touch—they are crawling out of my apple bag, they are in my hair. They congregate en masse on the inner branches of the trees, and they turn up on my shoulder while I’m sitting on Sam’s sofa. I am being bombarded.

In the cidery I find one in my pocket while Sam is explaining his latest creation to us, surrounded by tanks of juice and fermented cider ready to bottle. As I let it crawl along my fingers, he explains how it’s the brainchild of Max Fulgoni, Nightingale Cider’s cellar manager, and it’s a pink sparkling cider that’s crisp and fruity, fun, easygoing, and as bright as the rosy apples that make it—the sparkling rosé of the cider world. We taste it ahead of time, and I’m besotted. Later in the week, the cider is launched to the public while we’re there. It’s called Love Bird, and it’s perfect.

***

For three years Tom and I had worked late hours, until suddenly, we didn’t. On the Nightingale farm, we had free reign of our surrounding patch of woodland, and yet every night we were in bed by 8pm. There is nothing on earth like the exhaustion of stress. We were drunk on it, stumbling around, squinting in the daylight.

Waking up in the middle of an orchard is bliss. There’s no other word for it. In the very early hours, tawny owls make their final calls before their nocturnal bedtime, and as the night is diluted into dawn the countryside begins to wake. I scan through my messages even though it’s 5am, and check in with how I feel. I am sad, it feels heavy in my limbs, but I’m looking forward to the day ahead. Something I’ve not felt in a long time.

Lying awake in the van with the side door open to the dewy morning is luxurious. The smell of fresh, growing things is everywhere, soaking into my bones. The sky is already lavender, cloudless, and I have time to think. The long receipts my body and mind has been keeping over the past year are unfurling themselves, and I’m allowing myself to feel my way through, item by item. And then, it’s time to work.

What I didn’t consider when I signed up to do orchard work was how much time I would have alone with my thoughts. Perhaps it was too early. I could have used a month or so of decompression time before I tried to deal with stress and grief head-on. But how long are you supposed to sit in it for? When does it feel easier to tackle? Harvesting in vineyards has been some of my happiest times. Being useful. Being outside. Working. I hoped it would be the same here.

The repetitive action of picking apples sends me deep into myself. For hours at a time I’m silent, although I don’t realise it—the noise inside my head is a deafening cacophony of musical earworms, repetitive thoughts, and intrusive imaginary scenarios. I see faces. I hear voices.

I try to bring myself back to the moment as best I can. I look through the branches up to the sky. These things I’m feeling won’t be this intense forever. I realise underneath all this, I feel guilty—my friend would love to feel things intensely, instead of being dead. I remind myself that this is not a useful way to think. How do I know what he’d rather do? I pick another apple. Tom catches my eye between the trees and asks me if I’m okay. We fist bump with thumbs-up, our secret handshake. I am. I will be.

***

In Tenterden there is a folk festival on the village green. It feels like the locals are celebrating our visit. Morris dancers are drinking pints of cider, and musicians on a beer tent stage are playing traditional songs interspersed with Fleetwood Mac and Steely Dan. Nightingale Cider has a stall here, and we chat to festival goers about the ciders made just a couple of miles down the road. People are fiercely proud of their county—we hear time and time again that Kent is the most beautiful and bountiful place in the world. The cider, we all agree, is also world-class.

As the festival slows to a natural end and the Morris troupe drink us dry, we make our way to the pub. The Old Dairy Tap Room, a former brewery built in a WWII Nissen hut, is now a beautifully spacious place for live music, great beer, and excellent cider—of course.

““We danced and drank fresh cider in the barn, Sam showing us each blend, hopping and giggling with excitement as he did so.””

We drink cold, cloudy pints of Deya’s Steady Rolling Man (even a cidermaker likes a beer every now and again) and sit out as the evening cools off. Nearby, a steam train sets off across the Kent and East Sussex Railway from Tenterden Station, heading towards somewhere I’ve never been, and might never go. It is soothing to be so far from home, to be lost, but for everything to be working just as it should be. For nobody here to know who I am, and for it not to matter. Existing. It feels good.

***

By the end of our week at Nightingale, the season had changed quite suddenly from a late, languorous summer to a proper September autumn. A chill in the air and a rising wind made picking apples more urgent, to save them from the terrible fate of being windfallen and forgotten. A bruised apple rots quickly, and Sam is fastidious in the quality of his fruit.

On our last night we had a party in the farmyard under a white gazebo. We danced and drank fresh cider in the barn, Sam showing us each blend, hopping and giggling with excitement as he did so. We shouted loudly about our lives the way we all do after a drink, and laughed, surrounded by tanks of juice slowly changing into cider, using only time. We were high on huge slices of pizza, fresh air, booze, and each other’s company. It began to rain, softly at first, then in big drops blowing in from the west. I felt exhumed, reanimated. I will remember that night forever.

The day after, we left. Sam loaded us up with bottles and cans, and we said goodbye to Pippin who stopped her important task of chasing the tractor to come and watch us pack up the van. On the road, I noticed how at home I felt in this place, and how strange it felt to be heading away.

You’d think a story like this ended with some sort of certainty. Instead, I’m still finding ladybirds, looking for the meaning in everything. Sometimes, things just happen. Some parts of life are just there to be travelled through, to be accepted for what they are—not lessons, just happenings. I am still here. I’m drinking cider. Sheltering, living.