The Orchard Keepers

29/07/2026

We were pretty happy with our quince harvest this year! This tree is huge, ancient and somewhat left to its own devices - once established well, they are pretty hardy and reliable trees! These ones will be poached for our pantry, roasted to enjoy after dinner and sold to our community at our local farmers' market. We love to hear all of the lovely things people make with our quinces!

29/07/2026

That’s all folks! Thanks to all of you who have supported us over the season – we had an experiment with dropping the large whole sale markets this year, and we have to say – the Castlemaine market shoppers are really wonderful, thank you for supporting local produce, grown using organic methods. We love seeing you all each week and chit chatting about fruit with you. Our customers are often quite knowledgeable about the farm and our varieties, asking when we will get the greengages in, or how the season was for the beurre bosc. So, whether you bought from us once, or were a market regular, we appreciate your support, and look forward to seeing you when we come back in the summer, when we'll return with the first of the cherries!

It’s also been another lovely season with our Fruit Crew, they have now graduated with a heap more tree care skills and a few more jars in pantries. Fruit Crew days are highlights for us on the farm, it is a pleasure to spend time with people who love to chat about fruit trees nearly as much as we do. We’ll be opening up applications for next seasons fruit crew in September, so let us know if you’d like us to add you to the mailing list.

It was a long season this year, with the early arrival of the cherries, and the late arrival of everything else, but we thank you for being with us! See you in the summer!

20/07/2026

14/07/2026

22/06/2026

On the farm we’ve been doing some chipping. It helps prevent having the prunings accumulate, and wood chips made from fruit trees are a great mulch for fruit trees - it encourages fungal growth in the soil, creating just the environment the trees like.

Speaking of getting the most out of our trees - we have also recently held a juicing day where the thirds fruit that were a bit below the standard we like to bring to market can be transformed into our lovely fruit juice. We cut all the spots off, then cold press the juice in a large manual press. It is such a delicious way to make the most of the less pretty apples and pears.

It's heading towards the end of the year so we are doing our last mixed specials box. We have Pink Lady apples and Packham's Triumph, as a 5kg box or a 3kg box that comes with a bottle of our own apple and Pear Juice. We also have a few options for 5kg boxes, for those of you who want just the fruit.