‘This is my first good crop in 50 years’: cockatoos the key to Beverley’s success

The Easter weekend has coincided with the start of nut and apple season as growers reap the rewards of a mostly kind harvest after crops went unpunished by the harsh El Nino conditions feared by farmers.

It’s been a bumper season for the Nutwood Farm on Mt Irvine near Katoomba, where half a century ago Beverley Carruthers planted chestnut and walnut trees in the rich basalt soil.

Chestnut farmer Beverley Carruthers, 83, with her ripe crop of nuts at Nutwood Farm in Mount Irvine.Credit: Wolter Peeters

“It’s been very good for walnuts this year,” Carruthers said. “I planted and grafted them 50 years ago and this is the first really good crop I’ve ever had. It’s not a short-term occupation.”

The marauding gang-gang cockatoos that usually help themselves to a swag of walnuts and “fly away laughing their heads off” hadn’t materialised this year, leaving more for eager Easter weekend guests to harvest.

The tradition of roasting chestnuts, typically a pastime more suited to the northern hemisphere, has been a part of Mount Irvine’s community celebrations for decades, Carruthers said. She remembers bags of the roast nuts raffled off at Easter barbecues 40 years ago.

Families descended on Nutwood’s 220 trees this weekend armed with tongs to collect walnuts and pick spiky chestnut seed bulbs destined for the farm’s large roasting wok.

Chestnuts ready for roasting.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Fruit and nut production broadly is on the rise as farmers recover from 2023’s dramatic storms and record-breaking floods and growers benefit from more stable weather and cheap irrigation, according to the Rural Bank.

The value of horticultural production will hit a record of $17.8 billion in 2024–25, up 3 per cent year-on-year, the Department of Agriculture forecasts.

Andrew Lee runs the Bilpin Botanic Orchard in the Hawkesbury. He’s expecting 400 people per day over the Easter weekend to come and pick red delicious, Aztec Fuji and pink lady apples, which are just coming into season.

“The end of March into April is a big harvest,” he said. “The Easter holiday is matching that season and every year April is the biggest month. For city people, it’s a holiday. For me, a big working day.”

Blue Mountains apple growers Andrew and Angela Lee of Bilpin Botanic Orchard.Credit: Wolter Peeters

The orchard’s speciality is a hard-to-find variety of Fuji called the honey core apple.

“It’s the sweetest of Fujis in Australia. My clients, after they taste this apple, want to come back because it’s sweet, and it’s crunchy, and it’s juicy,” he said.

Lee is adding to his 2500 trees, which have grown quickly recently, although fruit flies breeding over a hot summer and autumn affected 10 to 15 per cent of his apples. He said populations were increasing across the region.

Earlier this year, South Australia released its billionth sterile fruit fly to combat the issue in the state’s fruit-growing Riverina region. When the wild-born flies mate with the sterile flies, bred at a specialised facility in Port Augusta, the offspring are infertile and populations decrease.

Lee is also installing protective netting after bouts of hail gouged some of his crop over the season as well.

The chance of hail has increased 40 per cent over the last 40 years along the NSW coast and around Sydney, according to analysis last year by researchers who said the increase could be due to climate change’s destabilisation of the atmosphere.

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