a little water for half an hour, so that the bacon fat browns the potatoes at the bottom of the pan. On churning day the dish would be served with buttermilk (Tato rhost a llaeth enwyn). The meal is cooked without the need for much supervision and was usually made in a ffwrn fach over an open fire. Apples were an important food source for local people and this can be seen in the many farms in the county that include the word perllan (orchard) or afallen (apple tree) in the name of the farm. In the book Hen Dy Fferm (The Old Farmhouse) (1961) the author, D J Williams, mentions three varieties of apple grown locally at that time: Afal Vicar, Afal Bwen Bach and Marged Niclas, with only Marged Niclas having been rediscovered. At Maesquarre, John Lewis Williams (1853-1919) grew two varieties which have since been lost: an oblong apple known as Twil Dyn Gwydd (Gander's Backside) and Afal Melys Bach (Small Sweet Apple). Another lost variety is Pren Miles which is referred to in a notebook from Llandeilo from the twentieth century. Large estates would buy seed from catalogues produced by English nurseries and would therefore plant standard English varieties but the smaller land holders would plant varieties of traditional Welsh apples. When an imported variety failed, usually due to the wetter Welsh climate, a local variety would be substituted instead. Paul Davies, of Dolauhirion nursery near Llandeilo, who helped rescue Welsh apple varieties refers to a large orchard of 100 trees near Llanwrda planted in the 1920s from English types, but where a more hardy local variety, known as Marged Niclas, had been substituted in place of failed imported varieties. He notes that the benefit of Welsh apple varieties is that they can be planted directly into the ground without the need for grafting (known as burrknot). Morgan Nicholas was a popular apple variety that could be stored and eaten until May when the gooseberry crop was available for pie making. Other apple varieties from Carmarthenshire include Glansevin, Talgarth, Gelli Aur and Tinyrwydd. The National Botanic Garden of Wales has established an orchard of native apple trees and on 21 November 2017 was awarded National Plant Collection status for its orchard of Welsh varieties. Graves notes that John Speed's map of Carmarthen shows the town walls filled with orchards while a 1905 map of the Tywi