Why we still grow damsons on the bank

Behind the shop there’s a steep limestone bank with forty old damson trees on it. They were here before Grandad Jim bought the farm in 1952, and some of them are probably older than the farmhouse. Every few years someone asks why we don’t grub them out and plant something easier. This is why.

Three hundred years in the valley

Damsons have grown in the Lyth Valley since at least the 1700s. The limestone soil, the mild air off Morecambe Bay and the shelter of the fells suit them perfectly. In the 1930s the valley sent damsons by the ton to the dye works and jam factories of Lancashire; a train called the Damson Special ran from Kendal.

A fruit you don’t eat from the tree

Most people bite one once and never again: a ripe damson is sharp, tannic and mostly stone. But cook it with sugar and it turns into the deepest, most fragrant jam you’ll ever taste. That’s where Mum’s jam came from, and later the damson gin, the damson cheese and the tart.

Why we keep them

The trees ask very little of us: a light prune in winter, a scythe through the grass in spring. In return they feed the bees in April, shelter the hens all summer and give us a crop that nobody else in the shop can sell. If you’d like one of them to be yours for a year, ask about adopting a tree.