This afternoon my camera and I went to Nunkarrie Cherry Farm
outside of Mt.Pleasant South Australia. Normally at this time of
the year business is booming. This year we have had huge rains
just as the first cherries were ready to pick. Cherries are two weeks
late this year due to unseasonably low temperatures throughout
our spring as well as heavy rains. So much for global warming.
Some of the cherries almost ready for picking. Sam, the best
farmer I know and not just for cherries, has the whole orchard
netted and grows exhibition standard, perfumed roses by the
hundred in the netted eves of the orchard.
Normally these cherries would be ripe for the Christmas market.
People expect cherries for Christmas and sales thereafter tend
to drop off. The loss this year will be doubled with a reduced crop
and no market when it finally is ripe.
In a normal year I have seen the trees with props under the
branches to hold the weight with all the branches ringed with
fruit and hardly a leaf showing.
Ever the indomitable, smiling Sam, doing the work of six men
and making a go of whatever he does. You may remember my
trip to the Flinders Ranges where Sam and Janet flew up to
Hawker with their three dogs to make up beds for the four of
us as well as cooking us dinner.
Cherry preserves and other produce set out like a feast with
the wafting scent of roses pervading all.
Janet the gentle, holding the fort in the cherry shed, painter
and friend extrordinaire, carries everything off with a smile.
Even outside the cherry orchard there are roses as there are
in many parts of the farm.
I hope you can hear me munching cherries as I type he, he. he . . .
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