Solomon sojourn

Digby has now been in the Solomon Islands for three weeks as part of an Ausaid project to improve the availability and quality of fruit in the local markets. He will be running workshops throughout the country in fruit tree propagation and introducing new species and varieties of appropriate fruit trees. This note gives an idea of current events. "I'm sitting at the bar in Gizo hotel looking out into the bay. Thunder rolling on Kolombangara island, rain just setting in for the evening. Been two weeks now getting set for the training with visits to farmers and research stations and tomorrow it should all come together in the first workshop. Agriculture people, staff and farmers appearing around the town with lots of chatter between wantoks (one talks, people from same language groups). English, pidgin and home language all mixing freely.My personal tension rising, but solbrew is light enough to calm". Digby

Bud Grafting a Seedling

I have exotic tastes!

 

Digby models our new t-shirt, with our fruit logo in full colour, and which is now available for you to buy from our NEW ONLINE SHOP, which was set up today, after 6 months of research and development. Now you can buy jams, t-shirt, poster, recipe book and Rare Fruit Australia magazines. Isn't technology amazing!

Jakfruit Season nearly here

 

First jakfruit has been picked - just a small one! It will probably take at least a week to ripen. A wonderful taste of banana flavoured bubblegum! And if you love the 'I have exotic tastes' t-shirt, we now have them for sale.

Honey from our bee hives

As the weather warms up, it is possible to take some of the honey from the hives, as the bees do not need it all to survive. We had not robbed the hives for more than 12 months and yesterday, Digby looked inside the hives and found the frames packed with honey. The slideshow below shows how we get the honey from the frames.

Fruit starts to ripen in September

I love September - it is the month when the seasons change from the cold crisp nights to warm balmy weather and sunny blue skies. The orchard comes to life as many trees start to flower, and fruit ripens overnight. We have started picking Malay Roseapple and Star Apple - two fruit with wonderful flavour. The smell of roses is an amazing thing to find on a fruit, and the fruit tasters are delighted - it tastes crisp and delicous just like an apple. The birds and the bats love them too.

Recipe for Pommelo Salad

We had dinner with friends recently and Dieter made this salad from
- pommelo
- prawns (shelled)
- avocado
- coriander (chopped)
- lettuce
- olive oil



He called it the 'Bill Grainger' Pommelo Salad, as this salad was made by Bill Grainger at their farm, filming on location for an Australian series.

It tasted really good. We recommend it!

Great news - we are now ECO Certified

After several months of very hard work, we have now been given ECO Certification for both our Bed and Breakfast Cottages and also our Exotic Fruit Tasting and Farm Walk.



This certification is for Ecotourism - 'tourism in a natural area that offers interesting ways to learn about the environment with an operator that uses resources wisely, contributes to the conservation of the environment and helps local communities.

We are now a CERTIFIED ORGANIC farm

After 2 farm audits conducted over the last 9 months, we now can call ourselves CERTIFIED ORGANIC. Any one can use the word 'organic' but a farm which has been certified organic has met strict standards and these have been judged by an outside auditor.

Our farm practices have always been organic, but we have never bothered to become certified while our mangosteens were young and not producing. We are now hoping for harvests of several tonnes, and it was time to go and get our farm practices made official.

There wasn't much we actually had to change. The main thing we have had to do is stop using cardboard for mulch around the fruit trees. In the past we always collected the cardboard boxes from the resorts and used them for weed control - very effective too. But the coloured ink on the boxes can be a contaminant - with high mercury in the inks, so we have had to change over to a special black weed mat called 'weed gunnel'. This seems to be working well and lasts longer than cardboard.

This means we are now in a position to be able to sell our mangosteens as certified organic throughout Australia and overseas. Big step forward.

My first dugong sighting

On Sunday Digby and I paddled our sea kayaks north to Emmagen Creek. On the return journey, the pointy bit of my boat nearly collided with a dugong. It was crossing in front of the kayak, diving out of the water and then plunging. It was so close I felt I could almost touch it. In twenty years of living here, I have never seen a dugong and to see one so close - WOW! what a privilege.

The tail flashed before me - it was like a miniature whale - and the mermaid like tail gives rise to the legends about 'mermaids'.

Learn more about dugongs

New Video - Tasting Jakfruit

New video - What's on the tasting today?

Stripey Possum visits the cottage

Next to the B&B cottage is an Ice Cream Bean – a huge legume tree with wonderful boughs, and long thick beans with seeds inside them – loved by the local children and enjoyed by fruit tasters as something different.

This seedling is now 6 metres high and it shouldn’t be there – it blocks the view from the balcony to the mountain –in the avenue to the cottage.

Our guests sitting on the balcony late one evening hear a scratching in the boughs of the ice-cream bean, shine the torch to the sound and there looking down on them is a tiny Stripey Possum.

These possums are relatively rare – in the twenty years I have lived here I have only seen 3 – one in a tree only 3 metres away from this location. It is an animal that the guides search for on night walks and rarely find.

The irony is wonderful. Our guests are driving twenty minutes south to do a nightwalk with a guide, who is looking for stripey possums to show them. They don’t see one on the nightwalk, and then return home around 10.30 pm and there is the stripey.

It is there for the next four nights – arriving at about 7.30 and loitering for a couple of hours to feed on the beans.

I want it all

I have just found this hilarious story from two travellers who did the fruit tasting on our farm, and thought others might enjoy it too. Here is an extract:

The first thing I noticed about the land cruiser that came to take us to the farm was that it had a snorkel. Cars should not have snorkels. Cars are not boats.

Walking the Bibbulman Track from end to end

Over 2 months - February and March, we walked the Bibbulman Track from Albany to Perth in Western australia, taking 52 days, and travelling nearly 1000 km on foot. There are campsites located approximately every 20 kms. Here is our story as a slideshow. We are thrilled to be home, and already planning our next walk! - either the Larapinta Trail or the Appalachian Trail

Cottage used as backdrop and Mia is a star

A close friend - Val Schier is running for mayor of the Cairns Regional Council so I helped the campaign by creating some videos for her on youtube to help get her messages across. She is very passionate about suitable tropical design for housing, and our B&B cottages were used as the backdrop.



Mia got to be the 'doggie interest' in the video on animal management. She wasnt too impressed at the beginning but soon got involved!