Core blimey, crunch time has arrived!

IF you have been hanging out for the taste of freshly picked Tasmanian apples, the wait is over.

Orchardist Justin Miller with some of this season's new apples.

IF you have been hanging out for the taste of freshly picked Tasmanian apples, the wait is over.

The state’s apple season has started, with picking at many orchards about to get into full swing.

For third-generation orchardist Justin Miller and his brother Brendan, who run Millers Orchard at Hillwood in the Tamar Valley, it is the beginning of a very busy time.

Originally established by their grandfather Geoffrey Charles Miller in 1945, the business is still very much a family enterprise.

The family has about 30ha of orchard, which includes seven different apple varieties and a small area of pear trees.

They also have 4.5ha of cherries and this year produced a bumper 75-tonne crop.

Some of the Bosc pears in their orchard are more than 108 years old, but excellent management has seen them produce some of their biggest ever crops over the past three years.

“Pears are actually a pretty hardy tree,” Justin said.

“They can withstand a lot of different conditions from really wet through to dry and even heavy frosts don’t really worry them.”

The family supplies apples and pears to Woolworths stores across the country.

Improvements in the management of the trees means the Millers have been able to boost production in recent years by 25 per cent, despite a drop in orchard area of about one third.

“You have to treat them trees more like athletes, because you’re are pushing them so hard,” Mr Miller said.

“We are leaving more fruit on the trees now, so we have to feed them more and water them more so they can take that crop right through.”

Because of the dry season, this year has presented some extra challenges for apple growers.

Mr Miler said they had been forced to start irrigating earlier than normal and had used more water than usual.

Some of their early season varieties including gravensteins are now being picked, but harvesting of the bulk of the crop will start in about two weeks.

The family employ about 15 people year round and can have an extra 35 pickers, mainly backpackers, during peak periods.

The apple harvest will go for about 10 weeks.

Mr Miller said while cherries were particularly popular, there were also people who could not wait for their first new-season apple each year.

Read more rural stories in today’s edition of Tasmanian Country