It certainly struck me as strange they were paying rent for an uninhabitable, rodent-infested house. RW describes signing a contract, too and worrying about paying two rents for several months because they sign in October but don’t move in til spring.
It’s not clear to me whether the cider-making was happening immediately before the Walkers took on the farm— the orchard is obviously old, and ‘Sam’ says it’s an old ‘sheep and beef farm that makes cider’ when he first describes it to them, but RW notes that the trees are in poor shape, and covered in ripe but unpicked fruit when they first see them. They later say the cider press hadn’t been used in a year, but their attitude to the cider-making side of things is weirdly casual even when the farm is their responsibility. For a start, by her account they disappear to Iceland to walk at apple-picking time, then come home but mysteriously don’t seem to have made any arrangements to harvest the apple crop. There’s a storm, the apples are all on the ground, bruised, and Moth says ‘What a waste’ and that they’ll never be able to pick up more than a tiny number. Only volunteers from Polruan mean that they get the fruit into the barn.
It all sounds more than a bit slapdash..?
Clearly they were still involved when Rick Stein filmed there in 2022/3, but maybe they’re just not people who get on with things in a professional way?