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...May newsletter 2006... |
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The celebrations continue with Christine’s father Keith turning 80 this month. The weekend of his birthday, 13 May, saw a low over the country and heavy rain and high winds. Keith and Colleen drove down from Auckland to Taranaki in this atrocious weather for a family dinner. You guessed it, macadamia nuts featured! Roasted macadamia slices were scattered over the blob of sour cream on the cauliflower and kumera soup and macadamia spread and natural slices were combined to encrust the rack of lamb while other nut slices from our ‘simply NUTS ’ range were used on the desert. See www.slicednuts.com.
The weather cleared on the Monday and grandson Paul took Keith up the mountain while Christine and Colleen went out for lunch. Mt Taranaki is majestic, the dominant feature of the landscape and has a great influence of course on our weather. When you approach Taranaki from the north, the mountain is visible from just past the Awakino settlement floating in the distance, often amongst pink infused clouds silver and mysterious as if in some child’s fairy story book. From the south, from Patea onwards it beckons you home. Once up it, the views are spectacular. Look inland to Mt Ruapehu, Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe or along the sweep of west coastline or nearer at the green patch work quilt of farmland puncture with diamond like jewels of water troughs and waterways. It gets into your psyche and you miss it terribly when away.
In the orchard the first of the new season’s macadamia nuts are falling. We are busy raking the leaf litter from underneath the mature fruiting trees. If the litter is left there, the nuts fall and get buried in it and our harvester gets clogged up, the finger wheels unable to rotate and pick up the nuts. Days of raking tests out muscles not used for awhile but the fresh air, sunshine and abundant bird life are not only good for the body but the soul. Once the rows are raked we go around with the mulching mower and chop up these leaves. If the piles are very deep we use the blade on the tractor and pull this litter out to the headlands. The first bins of macadamias are coming into the factory to be de-husked. We are away!
The next three months June, July and August are very intensive as the majority of the crop comes down. We are both working hard in the orchard and in the factory making sure the macadamias are harvested promptly, brought in de-husked, dried, cracked, on processed until gas flushed with food grade nitrogen and packed in foil bags and in the chiller.
Add to this tour groups, we are a Qualmark tourist attraction, opening every Sunday afternoon and other days by arrangement to groups booked in or to people who ring up to visit and planning for the New Zealand Chefs Association lunch here on July 8 and we are always on the go.
Still blessed with son Paul’s help in between his trips to Auckland for his engineering commitments and daughter Janet’s visits also from Auckland and her help and advice, looking forward to youngest daughter Claire flying in from Melbourne for a mid 3 week semester break next month. Loving the sunny days, hating the grey wet ones. Winter, what more can you expect? Stay warm and safe out there.
Archive If you would like to read previous newsletters, please click on one of the following links:
[ introduction ][ history ][ macadamias ][ factory ][ products ][ favours ][ orders ][ tours ][ contact ]
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May
enews 2006