Organic feijoa growers reaping rewards
LAST year was a busy, successful and milestone year for Queensland certified organic feijoa farmers Peter Heineger and Sally Hookey of Hinterland Feijoas at Belli Park on the Sunshine Coast.
After their first two years of commercial production the couple doubled their tonnage to two tonnes of fresh organic feijoas. A milestone celebrated on the couple’s website and Facebook site and congratulated by their almost 2,000 viewers.
Plus the little-known feijoa fruit became an overnight star in Australia thanks to the New Zealand cooking team in the Channel 7 reality show
serving up a topscoring dessert featuring feijoa and apple crumble with vanilla ice-cream and maple syrup.
This coverage saw a massive increase in orders and interest for Peter and Sally’s produce and, of course, the recipe is available on their Facebook page.
And to top it off, Hinterland Feijoas won the Small Business of the Year award at the 2012 Sunshine Coast Excellence in Business Awards - one of the biggest business awards program in Australia - sponsored by Sunshine Coast Regional Council.
This prestigious award followed their success the previous year as finalists in the Business Awards and the Annual Sunshine Coast Environmental Council Awards, the Froggies - both awards recognising their work in creating an environmentally sustainable farm business.
Feijoas are not well-known in Australia, but very popular in New Zealand - akin to the ubiquitous Australian mango.
The fruit originated in South America and is prized for its refreshing tropical flavor and health properties which include fibre, antioxidants and a high Vitamin C content.
Peter and Sally’s orchard boasts about 700 feijoa trees with six varieties planted to achieve the longest possible picking season with early, mid and late fruiting varieties. “We were so thrilled to reach two tonnes of production, now we’re aiming for three tonnes,” Sally said.
“We are also excited because we are now officially certified organic, and are in the two-year in-conversion period.
“We have farmed organically right from the beginning. Our fruit is chemical-free and as healthy as it possibly can be. We know our fruit retains luxury levels of antioxidants and minerals, just as nature intended.
“You can pick it and eat it straight off the tree without any worry - and that’s what a lot of people on our farm tours do. We often get people come to farm to buy some fruit, but they barely make it out of the driveway and they are back for more.”
Hinterland Feijoas is a certified organic orchard with Organic Growers of Australia (OGA Small Growers Program), a member of the Biological farmers of Australia (BFA) group.
Peter and Sally have one of the few commercial feijoa farms in Australia - and the first and only certified organic feijoa orchard in Australia.
They established their orchard in 2008 with the express wish of working the land sustainably and organically.
Five years of hard work transforming a dairy farm into an orchard, intense study and much trial and error have seen Hinterland Feijoas emerge as a true Australian farming and marketing success story.
The couple sell their produce and value-added lines directly from the farm and to almost 30 cafes, restaurants, stores and fruit markets throughout south-east Queensland including Food Connect Brisbane.
“We are so grateful for the support of these businesses and stallholders, it’s been a period of education as to the taste and versatility of the feijoa but now our customers just can’t get enough. They love them,” Sally said.
Feijoas are an extremely versatile fruit with very little wastage, being scooped out and eaten as fresh fruit and in fruit salads, used in juices, smoothies and ice-creams, wines and vodkas, jams and chutneys, salads, in savoury dishes, salsas and especially in baking.
They are also easily frozen for future use, and are even used in perfumes and skin care ranges. They go well with anything where you might normally use common fruits like apple or banana.
“Their distinctive complex flavour has been likened to a mix of strawberries, pineapple and guavas, with undertones of quince, lemon and mint. In Australia they are sometimes known as pineapple guavas.
“The unique complexity and fragrance of the feijoa is the reason they are so versatile and addictive, with uses ranging from just munching them by the dozen to making beautiful perfumes,” Sally said.
Peter and Sally, who both hold down full-time jobs in the printing industry, spend their farm-time fine-tuning their biological farming processes, increasing their range of value-added products and building the marketing arm of their business by increasing their number of stockists and improving their social network marketing skills.
Their website and Facebook page are visually attractive packed with photographs of the farm and produce; full of information about the fruit and recipe ideas; their biological farming process and trial-and-error methods are detailed; and the sites are muchused interactive platforms for customers.
The couple produce a range of value-added feijoa products using secondary feijoa fruit and in 2011 began a collaboration with highlyregarded local chef, Peter Wolfe of Cedar Creek Farm, to launch a handmade jam and chutney line, with unique recipes created by Mr Wolfe.
Classic Feijoa Jam, delicious Feijoa and Boysenberry Jelly, spicy cured Feijoa Chutney, Tangy Feijoa and Ginger Jam, and a world-first Feijoa and Rosella Jam were the opening lines. All the jams are preservative
and gluten free, and are made with 50 per cent fruit or more. The couple planted a large area of organic rosellas in their rotation field in anticipation of the new feijoa and rosella jam line.
“And we have also launched a world-first range of Feijoa Balsamic Glazes, again working with local chefs,” Sally said.
“Based on age-old fig balsamic glaze recipes, we are working on ranges in delicate white and aged dark balsamic vinegar, both reduced and sweetened with our pure organic feijoas, to an intense smooth syrup with a complex tangy undertone.
“You can use these glazes to drizzle over desserts, fruits or cheeses, add to oils as a salad dressing, or glaze meat and seafood dishes. You can use them just as you would a fig balsamic glaze in current recipes, but with the unique flavour of feijoas.’’
Peter and Sally recognise the advantage of working with food professionals to develop new ranges rather than experimenting with recipes and mixes themselves. “If you use professionals, the products meet AustralianNZ food-safety standards and offer retailers and customers quality assurance, while still being hand-made and unique.
“We love feijoa smoothies and are working on a pure fruit frozen feijoa pulp line with individual smoothie portions and bulk pulp packs. You can use the bulk pack for baking or making ice-cream all year round, and to keep things simple the smoothie tubs will be one-portion size. Just pop them into the blender with some apple juice or yoghurt and there’s a smoothie.”
The couple spend the majority of their time in the orchard doing regular soil and leaf tests to monitor the plants’ nutrient needs and the health of the soil. They use agronomists’ advice on the best organic inputs and use a mix of foliar and soil applications every year, depending on the plants’ needs.
Last year they netted three and a half lines of prime eating fruit to prevent fruit flies from spoiling the crop.
“The nets worked well, but they are a slow investment to cover the whole orchard,” Peter said. “It’s hard work keeping the fruit flies out, but the benefits outweigh the negatives.”
The couple have experimented with non-chemical fruit fly traps and bagging the fruit. They use products from a number of organic distributors including Nutri-Tech Solutions (tailored fertiliser and microbe programs), McLeods (fertilisers), Nat- ramin (fertilisers), Organica Australia (insect treatments), Bug for Bugs (insect treatments) and Natralure (insect treatments). “Apart from the fruit flies we are also kept busy managing the grasses, and our weed control mat is proving very effective at this stage.
“We are always learning with the different years and the different seasons,” Sally said. “One interesting phenomena that agronomists have seen across the region is that sodium, normally a problem on the high side, is now extremely low.
“This is probably a reflection of the last two summers’ floods leaching the soils, so we need to add some sodium carefully through kelp applications. Other elements to address are iron, nitrogen, manganese and calcium, which are quite good, but could be better. During the fruit-ripening period we finished our foliar applications of these elements to give the fruit and us the best possible end result.
“Recently we have also had unseasonally high rainfall, and so have been helping the trees recover with regular kelp applications.
“Our summer tasks include twice weekly sprays of the 300 fruit fly traps in our Natralure baiting program made from recycled milk bottles, and an endless battle with grass that seems to grow as we cut.
“Farming without synthetic chemicals is harder in some ways than using readily available pesticides and herbicides, as organic farming often requires plain old manual labour to get the job done.
“But we have had a lot of help from people, particularly our New Zealand feijoa grower friends, Graham and Carole Jones from Nelson, who we visit each year to check out their farm, and the staff from Nutri-Tech Solutions at Yandina, Queensland, have helped us immensely in both growing and marketing advice.
“Nutri-Tech is right around the corner from where Pete and I work, so we are always popping in there during our lunch-hours for soil testings and products.
“Yes it is hard work and we can’t give up our day jobs just yet, but Peter did take a month off last year to do the harvesting. But we love what we are doing and that it’s working well for us,” Sally said.
Peter and Sally have meticulously documented their development of the farm and their trial and error usage of organic farming methods.