Beloved cherries off menu
Cherry Park’s worst year ever as hail, birds, rain do damage
THE Summit cherries won’t be landing on Christmas tables this year after Cherry Park experienced its worst year in the farm’s history.
The Granite Belt crop was battered by recent weather events, leaving owner Graham Minifie with a conundrum – sell second-rate produce and risk reputation or take it on the chin and start planning for next year.
“Basically the shop is closed. We’re having to give people the news the shop’s not opening (this year),” he said.
Hailstones sliced up the nets, birds got in – and that was just the start of the rotten luck.
“The subsequent rain event just did it anyway,” Mr Minifie said.
And it came at some cost to the business.
“We’ll make enough to cover the costs to get the fruit off, in fact probably not quite that even,” he said.
“If you consider your costs in the year, it’ll be a huge loss.”
Usually the shop would sell cherries from November 1 until December 20.
If you can’t go without cherries this year, Mr Minifie said what you’ll likely find on supermarket shelves is from 10 hours’ drive to the south at Young, New South Wales, or from Victoria.
He’s been at Cherry Park since the 7000 trees were planted, clocking up nearly three decades, but this was the worst he’d been affected.
“This is the first time we’ve ever not opened the shop. Other years we’ve had some
pretty bad ones, but no excuses – cherries are what they are, a very sensitive crop to weather,” he said.
“The rain has come right at the time the fruit was ready to go. Perfectly good fruit one day, 5mm of rain overnight,
not much wind to dry it. Get up in the morning and they’ve got big splits in all of them from top to bottom.”
Mr Minifie said almost all the fruit from this year’s harvest would be used to make wines and liqueurs.
❝If you consider your costs in the year, it’ll be a huge loss.
— Graham Minifie