For many years we have used an orchard floor management system where we mow the inter-row grass and throw it sideways under the trees for mulch and to suppress the weeds. We had been thinking of reducing our carbon footprint by reducing the mowing and using sheep to keep the grass down, as well as […]
Sheep in the Orchard Read More »
We recently installed a pair of electrostatic moisture monitoring probes in the orchard. These will allow us to capture the data on our iPhones and download it to our computers so we can better understand our water usage and plan our irrigation consumption more efficiently. Josh from Serve-Ag installed the equipment and is getting it
New Moisture Monitoring Equipment Installed Read More »
We’ve always been happy to have native animals able to access the orchard, as long as they don’t cause too much damage. We have bandicoots, potoroos and pademelons in the orchard most nights and brushtail possums during the harvest season (they don’t take many nuts). Jane saw a platypus down at the river a few
Wildlife in the Orchard Read More »
We had our last market at Farm Gate Market yesterday and sold out of everything, except pickled walnuts! We have no more nut-in-shell and no more kernel till next harvest in May 2016. Thank you to everyone who has visited us at Farm Gate Market and thank you for your wonderful feedback. As humble walnut
End of Season – No more walnuts left! Read More »
We were very please to receive a silver medal at the Hobart Fine food Awards last month and then a bronze medal at the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show earlier this month. These are now added to our two gold medals from Hobart in 2012 and 2014. We have our pickled walnuts being distributed in
More Medals for Coaldale Pickled Walnuts Read More »
Come along to our farm open weekend and collect your own walnuts straight from our orchard. Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 May 2015, 10am to 4pm. Coaldale Walnuts, 321 Prossers Rd, Richmond, Tasmania. Bring your own bucket, walnuts $5 per kilo.
Pick your own walnuts at the Coaldale open weekend – 16 & 17 May Read More »
We doubled production again this year and this required two two-week cycles of picking, brining and cooking. We also used a new commercial kitchen located about five minutes from the orchard and this made a huge difference. We purchased three new drying cabinets each capable of drying about 3000 nuts and this greatly improved our
New Season Pickled Walnuts Read More »
We had a warm, moist early spring which is generally bad news for our number one enemy, walnut blight. Blight is a bacterial infection which enters the flower and pollen during rain events and develops through the season to cause unsightly black marks on the green husk and eventually on the shell
The trees lose their leaves in late May and things go quiet for us for a while and then the next round of work starts. First, in August, we prune for new growth in the Spring. This is done with a large tractor wielding a boom saw which prunes every second pair of rows.
Winter in the Orchard Read More »
Our pickled walnuts triumphed once again by being awarded a GOLD Medal at the Hobart Fine Food Awards last month in the Savoury Preserves category. This follows the gold medal we were awarded in 2012. There was no suitable category to enter our raw kernel , so we have never been able to benchmark this
Another Gold Medal! Read More »
