Easternstar ORCHARD

We moved to our property in May 1999. Paul had had a banking back ground before he went into business as a milkman which he ran as a sole owner operator for 20 years going into partnership with Pauline for the last couple of years.  At this time Pauline leaving her nursing career, and as part of their partnership, purchased a milk run which she ran and serviced. Later Pauline went back to nursing for a few years while the orchard was in the developmental stages and Paul took a job in a pack house for a couple years until the Orchard became productive. 

The property was 15 acres 6.2Ha of bare land being used for cropping, there was a house and some sheds on the property and the grounds were quite a mess.  We continued to crop the land with broccoli and squash through Leader Brand for a season and then seeded it and sold a crop of Hay off it. The whole way of country living and using the land to make an income was very new to us. 

In 2000, after consulting with rural advisers on what would be best to do with the land we had purchased, we planted half the orchard with 3000 Kwano mandarin trees,.  The trees were purchased as bare rooted grafted trees from Puawa Nurseries.  We hired a contractor to provide a gang and planted the trees over a few days.  Every tree was staked with a fibreglass rod and tied.  We needed to water the trees in and did not have irrigation but, thank God He provided the rain each night after the planting and the trees were watered in for us. 

In 2001 we planted the other half of the orchard with 3600 Miho mandarin trees.  Once again we used a contractor to provide a gang of workers to plant the trees, all the trees were staked and tied as previously done with the Kwano side,  and God watered the trees in each night.

Over the next two years we concentrated on growing healthy mandarin trees.  We removed all the fruit and had to rub down the trunks to break off the root stock on which the trees have been grafted.  Paul sprayed liquid fertilizer on the trees and also sprinkled CAN a dry fertilizer on the ground around the trees.  On occasions Paul would fill the little 750 litre sprayer with water and go and water the trees.  It generally started raining once he started doing this. 

In 2003 we harvested our first crop of mandarins from the Kwano block.  This was very exciting and great to see the crop in the fruit bins.  We harvested 5.7 tons of mandarins.  This was just the beginning.  In 2004 we started harvesting our Miho too.  See the graph below.