Wellwood Farm walnut harvest a success despite wet season
These walnut growers are making the best of harvest, despite Victoria being affected by a wetter-than-average spring.
AFTER six years of farming, Phillip Farnell feels he has cracked the walnut industry.
The 61-year-old runs Wellwood farm at Wallace near Ballarat and said despite a wetter than usual spring and being disrupted by coronavirus lockdowns, he was taking plenty of positives out of this year’s harvest. “Because of all the rain we saved on irrigation costs,” he said. “But the downside was we had a lot of (the plant disease) blight that destroyed about 8-10 per cent (of the crop).
“There’s always positives coming out of the negative.”
Despite other walnut growers in Victoria experiencing a tough harvest because of the rain, the Australian Walnut Industry Association said other parts of the country were reporting a strong production year, similar to 2017’s record harvest.
Mr Farnell, who farms alongside his wife Patty and two daughters in their uni breaks, said coronavirus also had a minor impact on their sales in the past 12 months.
“We open up one of the orchards to the public to self-pick, so that affected our cash sales,” he said.
They will spend the next few months pruning and getting ready for the trees to come back to life in spring, when the Farnells will hopefully be trialling a new technology in watering their trees.
“The technology that we’re about to trial includes nano bubbles in the water that aerates the soil,” he said.
“I’ve seen it done for fish farms and hydroponics but no one seems to be doing it for watering the trees.”
Mr Farnell said the plan was to keep farming for as long as he could, after a long career as a civil engineer.
“This is supposedly my retirement. It’s a beautiful business and I still enjoy the opportunity and the challenges it brings,” he said.
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