At Elton's Haylings Farm, Capt. Bill Swinley RN is manning the trestle table laden with plums for sale. Over the bank holiday weekend, customers were standing in queues, served not only by Bill but by half a dozen volunteers.
The orchards supplying the fruit cover 17 acres, planted with more than 30 varieties of plum and dozens of apples and pears. The orchards, as marked on the Ordnance Survey map, are almost the only survivor of those once plentiful until the postwar years.
"Dozens of pickers used to camp here in pre-war years," Bill recalls. "The fruit was sent to the jam factories, but now they use mostly imported fruit in pulp form."
The Haylings farm is part of the former Flaxley Abbey estate which Bill's Crawley-Boevey forebears owned from 1647 till 1960. Bill continued the family's navy tradition, particularly in submarines.
Sub-lieutenant Thomas Crawley-Boevey went down with the submarine Tigris in the Mediterranean in 1943. Bill's father was Captain Casper Silas Swinley DSO, DSC, still remembered in Navy circles – and as a venturous Mini driver around the Flaxley lanes in the years following his retirement.
After a career during which he commanded submarines and frigates, Bill was seconded to the Bahamas Defence Force combatting drugs smugglers. With his fleet of patrol boats, he was engaged in several skirmishes which badly injured his back.
Retiring in the 1980s, and awarded the OBE for his efforts, he walks with the aid of two sticks – which diminishes not at all his energy and renowned good humour.
"When myself and late wife Jenny were home on leave, we lived in a caravan here – just as our son Ben is doing now," he reminisces. "The orchards were very overgrown and of no commercial value, but we decided to keep them and open them up for pick-your-own.
"This meant picking them up from the ground rather than climbing trees. Because of the long grass the fruit doesn't get damaged when it falls."
When the couple moved into Broughtons on their permanent return to England, Bill decided to keep the orchards.
"At that time the Min of Ag, as it then was, gave grants for rooting out old trees and replanting with new more commercial varieties, but I thought it was a pity to lose all those wonderful traditional species – some of which were over a hundred years old."
In 1991, MAFF changed tack and started the Countryside Stewardship Scheme which provided grants for preserving and improving the beauty and diversity of the countryside. Bill signed a ten-year management agreement in 1993, whereby what is now DEFRA (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) sends in a team to prune the trees each year so as to extend their life.
"When I say prune, I mean serious chain-saw work," says Bill, pointing to some of the tallest trees. "They also re-plant with appropriate varieties where a tree has been blown over.
"They don't necessarily remove the fallen trunks, because they provide a useful wildlife habitat. And one of the apples, for instance, has kept on growing while on its side."
The trees aren't sprayed with pesticides or fungicides, as they would be on a commercial orchard. This allows for a bounteous insect life in the bark and leaves, which attracts swarms of tits in the spring.
Bill reels off the half-dozen and more tit species, adding that "they make a tremendous din. We also have woodpeckers nesting in the dead wood which the team leaves standing."
A flock of sheep roams the orchard, keeping the grass down and providing natural manure. "They were all culled last year," Bill shudders, "but the farmer next door is now re-stocking.
"The small rent for the pasturage contributes to the kitty, part of the mixed economy which applies here. The pick-your-own adds a bit more, and we take orders as well – delivering to regular customers."
Son Ben returned from gathering greengages for one such customer.
"Actually they aren't greengages but a Cambridge gage," he says, allowing me to taste one plucked from the bucket.
"I prefer the greengage because it's juicier and sweeter," he comments. Personally, I thought the Cambridge variety was marvellous, firm and not too sweet.
Ben is in the process of taking over the running of the orchards from his father. Although an Information Technology consultant working from Southampton, Ben says he always hankered after opening a garden nursery somewhere in the Forest. He now plans a very unusual nursery in fields next to the orchards – which we will be reporting on in due course.
Bill himself is moving on. This week he moves to his second wife's Guernsey home, leaving elder son Casper Philip and his family in Broughtons.
Bill's sister Marjorie Swinley OBE continues at Broughtons Lodge. Her twin sister, equally renowned for her community involvement hereabouts, occupies Peglars Farm.
Meanwhile, what DEFRA describes as "possibly the most interesting orchards in the West of England" produce luscious fruit which, Bill chuckles, can be eaten as it's picked. "One for the mouth, one for the bucket!"
Early varieties come on stream at the beginning of August, the main crop in the middle of the month, and late varieties to mid-September. The apples and pears also continue into September.
At the end of the season, residents of Newnham's Camphill community harvest the remaining apples. The management plan bars ladders for fear of breaking old boughs, so the Camphill-ites use long hooks to shake down the fruit, which they turn into apple juice. In winter they also gather mistletoe to sell for Christmas festivities.
Ben's longer term plans are for a nursery growing pre-historic trees and other plants. What he has registered as "Jurassic Bark" will offer such things as the ginkgo, or maidenhair tree – which we have more information about since we described the Newnham specimen last year.
"Another, the Wallimi pine, was recently discovered in a gulley in New South Wales," he adds. "The grove of 40 trees is now protected night and day."