Nobody has a more anxious eye on the sky in the lead-up to Christmas than the cherry grower - too much rain and the ripe cherries will split and what was choice fruit is good only for the jam pot.
Cliff Bray, who grows cherries at Ranelagh, is hoping the rain will hold off this year - last year half his crop was ruined, and in the brief cherry season there are no second chances.
Around Christmas, Cliff supplies us with big, dark, beautiful-looking Sunburst cherries that average 28mm across (that’s over an inch), and white-heart Ranier, crisp, really sweet cherries with a lighter skin and flesh. Then, in January, Lapins and Black Douglas will arrive.
Cliff has been farming for only four years. Before that he had a career teaching chemistry and most recently was teaching English in Japan, but he had always wanted to farm. He and his wife Hitomi thought they’d have a go at growing mangoes, but when his brother convinced them to move to Tasmania, cherries seemed the better option.
They bought an existing orchard in a valley surrounded by bush, and planted 1200 more trees to bring the total up to 3,500 of 21 different varieties. In many orchards, the 8 hectares the Brays have would carry as many as 15,000 closely planted trees. Cliff did not choose the spacing but says it allows in lots of light and air, and helps him maintain organic growing practices, which he has done since the start and now is officially in the first year of conversion to organic certification with Tasmanian Organic-dynamic Producers.
Birds partial to a peck of cherry are kept at bay by “a fence of noise†– speakers pointing out from the cherry trees. Cliff has seen flocks of starlings flying up towards the fruit just turn away when they hear the noise. Now, if he could just find something to turn away rain . . .
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
