Number 4 Map 1A Hawkesbury Harvest Farm Gate Trail Maps
Rain. And more rain. There has been a lot of it in the Blue Mountains and around Bilpin. Today however the sky is a bright blue and I am visiting Cedric Leathbridge at his Bilpin Springs Orchard.
I am greeted by Cedric and then by his dog Lucky - a firm favourite with visiting children. Cedric tells me as we sit in a shady spot that he and his wife Jenny moved here from Sydney 22 years ago. Both teachers, they realised after looking at many properties that they needed to buy a working property which was already established, otherwise their infrastructure costs would be very expensive.
Fortunately they found Bilpin Springs Orchard, an operating orchard sending its fruit to Flemington markets. They were guided by its owners for a year after the purchase of the orchard which proved to be a wonderful help.
The property totals 25 acres of which 12 acres are arable. At the time of purchasing the property Bilpin was regarded as an early fruit area and known in particular for its apples. Bilpin would go to market as soon as it could and could generally count on having two weeks to itself before other apple growing regions sent their fruit to market. However the nature of the market changed as transport improved and with the development of better cool rooms, fruit began to come in from Queensland and Western Australia, weakening Bilpin's dominance of the early fruit period.
It was against this backdrop of changing markets that Cedric and Jenny began working their property. They had inherited some good customers which they were grateful for. However yet another difficulty they faced was the vagaries of the weather. In the first three years the hail was so bad that of each ten bins of fruit only one might be good enough for Flemington markets.
"It was not an easy baptism!" says Cedric.
The Lincoln Trellis (the basket weavers special according to Cedric) supports these pears
In around the second year of operation, some people wanted to come and pick their own fruit. By about year four many more people were picking their own. Cedric did his sums and realised that although 90% of their fruit was being sold to Flemington, 90% of their profit was coming from the remaining 10% of the fruit being sold through "pick your own" and other niche markets. After around 6 years of operation, the Leathbridges took note of the varieties of fruit, particularly apples, that people were interested in. Thus Gravensteins and Granny Smiths have been joined by such varieties as Braeburns and Lady Williams.
The orchard has been replanted several times in order to specialise in the "pick your own" market. The season commences in Late January with Gravensteins, then throughout the following six months (from Australia Day to the Queen's Birthday weekend roughly) fruit such as peaches, lemons, pears, plums and several varieties of apple are available for picking.
The grounds are lovely and the orchard is a popular place with schools who bring their pupils along to sit under the huge oak tree and celebrate perhaps a harvest festival.
Cedric's dream is to invite half a dozen high school students at a time to spend a day at the orchard. He would love to bring subjects such as mathematics and science to life in a beautiful setting which would provide real life examples of things learnt in the classroom.
I ask Cedric whether he has noticed any dramatic differences in climate since living here. The incredibly heavy rain and the hail storms this summer are not new to him as it turns out. What is new is that they are having to increasingly protect the fruit from sunburn, where its own natural defences are not proving enough. Although the orchard is not organic, the couple use Integrated Pest Management systems to control pests in the orchard, introducing natural predators to combat coddling moth for example.
We walk around the orchard and I see first hand the damage that can be inflicted on the fruit by things such as hail, rain and birds.
On my return home I realise I have not asked Cedric why he and Jenny still run the orchard, despite the knowledge that their farm is regularly subject to this kind of damage. I sent him an email asking him to comment on this.
The following is Cedric's eloquent response
" Why persist with the orchard despite all the elements can do to the crop in the months it's exposed on the trees? Well apart from any farmer's eternal optimism that next year will be better, there's a great pleasure in growing food that people need and our customers enjoy - the tangible value of the health/food/shelter thing. I enjoy the challenge of trying to make a living out of it because it demands skills from pruning to installing irrigation, from keeping your customers happy to putting in hours of hard physical labour, from marketing to trying ideas from field days; you have to get the whole jigsaw together to end up with a piece of fruit you can be proud of. It's outdoors in a beautiful spot, the work is always changing with the seasons and we see many great people who have been visiting for years. We don't pretend to be anything more than an 'on-tree fruit shop' but increasingly our motivation to continue is in expanding programs where we use the orchard to meet some needs in the community."
Cedric's comments reflect the attitude of so many producers I think.
That night the heavens opened and the rain came down again.
Bilpin Springs Orchard
2550 Bells Line of Road
Bilpin
ph. 02 4567 1294
www.bilpinspringsorchard.com.au
Please visit the Hawkesbury Harvest website
