This week is all about fruit… which seasonally speaking is what the tail end of summer is all about – plants taking a last stand to make sure their genes get a foothold before the cold of winter comes knocking.
We’re very pleased to have found a supplier of autumn raspberries – Raspberries Tasmanian in Old Beach, whose main crop is early season cherries, the same cherries you’ve enjoyed in your Christmas boxes and in January! This week will probably be the last week of blueberries from Tru Blu – although we’re considering keeping some stock of their frozen seconds for sale through the winter – but up the road in Cygnet DM Jennings & Sons should have strawberries available for another month or two. David & Diane Cane’s sublime peaches and nectarines are sadly all but finished, but this week we’ve included some of their delicious Rupert plums and Nashi pears. $20 boxes get half a kilo of what we think are Satsuma plums from our eldest box subscriber – 98 year-old Kathleen – picked with daughter Miriam from a tree that Kathleen has kept vital with expert pruning since she moved to her current house in her 80s.
Of course, fruit isn’t all sweet. This week we’ve got a bonanza of zucchini from Richmond Farm, and some rather spectacular rainbow cherry tomatoes from Swallow Ridge Farm in Kellevie. We also welcome back Brandsema – the fruit fly problem has hit them hard, so now that they’ve been able to sort protocols out with biosecurity for getting produce to the south of the state we’re pleased to have been able to support them by ordering a full pallet of 95kg capsicums, 130 cucumbers and almost 50kg of cherry tomatoes (once again… all fruit!) And still in the fruit department, the avocados keep coming from the Bidwells in North Motton – a quarter tonne a week and we’re still struggling to keep up with demand!
