Winter Farm Tour 2010
On Saturday a group of over sixty subscribers and staff set off up the coast for the Food Connect Winter Farm Tour. The first stop was Maleny Cheese, a small cheese and yoghurt producer in Maleny run by the Bucher family. We saw a video presentation on how the cheeses and yoghurts are made and then we got to the good part – the tasting! My favourites were the Tuscan Cheddar and the Triple Cream Brie – delicious!
With happy tummies, we journeyed on to Woombye to visit Ray and Merilyn Clark’s farm. Ray and Merilyn had gone to the Yandina markets, so we were shown around by their sons Trevor and Darren who live and work on the farm too. The farm once grew mainly pineapples, but since the local cannery closed they have had to diversify into other crops. Trevor runs the mushroom operation with the help of a small team of workers, and he showed us the mushroom sheds and explained how he grows the Swiss Brown mushrooms for the Food Connect. The Swiss Browns are one of the few varieties of mushrooms that can be grown chemical free.
Then Darren showed us the rest of the farm, where he and his dad Ray grow a small number of pineapples (for Food Connect subscribers only), limes, eggplants, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, silverbeet, kale and avocados. He demonstrated their new seed planting machine, showed us the seedling houses and of course the paddocks. The Clarks use a plastic sheeting over the ground to control weeds, but will soon be taking delivery of sheets made from corn starch, which will be able to be ploughed back into the ground after the crops have been harvested. The corn starch costs about twice as much to buy compared to plastic, but will mean less labour and waste as it doesn’t have to be ripped up and disposed of. The Clarks are some of the most innovative farmers we know at Food Connect, they are always keen to try growing any crop, and like to experiment with new technology as it comes along. It was great to see this in action!
After a delicious picnic lunch at Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve, we travelled onto Marion & Bede MacKenzie’s avocado farm at Bellthorpe. Bede told us all about the farming history of the local area and how the avocado growing cycle works. An amazing pollination fact: some avocado trees have female flowers which open in the morning and male flowers which open at night. This means that the same bee who visited a male flower one afternoon must then go and visit a female flower the next morning to leave the pollen there so that the fruit can form. It made me think how lucky we are to get avocados at all!
The funniest moment of the day for me came from young Luke. At the beginning of the day Luke was full of excitement and told me how he wanted to be a farmer when he grew up. Towards the middle of the day, standing in a hot pineapple paddock, a bit hungry and after hearing about how Darren Clark gets up at 1:30am three times a week, I enquired whether he would be growing pineapples on his farm when he became a farmer. He thought about it for a second, looked at me, looked at his dad and stomped off. We heard, “Don’t wanna be a farmer any more”. Luke was right, farming is hard work and most of us city kids couldn’t handle it! Luke is now re-considering his future career options.
I’d like to say a big thank you to the farmers and Maleny Cheese for letting us visit their farms and dairy, the subscribers for joining us, and the Food Connect team who helped out. We’re looking forward to the next tour in September / October already!
