Temperatures plummet

Last night the thermometer dropped to 12 degrees celsius. A fantastic cold snap to remind me of why I left Melbourne 20 years ago, and I snuggled under the feather doona that has been pressed into service after being packed away for the last 20 years.

Now brilliant blue skies for the whole day - the first day in weeks without a rain shower. We are hoping that this cold snap will force the flowering on the Mangosteens - here's hoping for a November harvest.

New season fruit - soursop

Here is the latest collection of fruit in season for the fruit tasting. We have lots of soursops to be harvested at the moment. You can see the soursop in the bowl - the green one at the bottom with the bumps all over it. We are picking about 6 cartons a week. It's great to have soursop on the fruit tasting again - everyone's favourite on the menu.

The messy bit is the processing of the fruit to get the juice. You have to push the pulp through a moule or a sieve to remove the cotton wool fibre and the seeds. What is left is the most fantastic juice - perfect for a daiquiri - and also for sauces, cheesecakes and jams. Once again soursop jam is available for sale to fruit tasters after the tasting.

Live calendar makes booking simple

Well we have moved into the 21st century, with people interested in coming to the farm able to book directly online without having to ring us first to find out if there is space.

This is now working for both the B&B and the Fruit Tasting.

Having the actual available dates online is amazing to us. It means I won't have to freak out when the advance booking book goes missing any more! There is no advance booking book. Our full manifest is now online. Don't worry - for those of you who still like to talk to a real person first we are still answering the phone.

Mating Snakes in my Wardrobe

The title says it all! I was trying to go to sleep around 11pm last night, and I could a sound in the wardrobe. When I went to investigate, it was coming from the top cupboard.

I opened it and two brown tree snakes intertwined, and writhing fell out of the cupboard above my head. Oh my god! Absolutely beautiful copper and white markings and really big and fat - they looked at least a metre long.

Digby came to the rescue with a broom, though he did take a while to wake up and get his act together. And the dogs? Kimmy and Mia kept their distance out on the verandah watching Digby do the snake removal. You could see it on the faces - snakes are not part of my job description.

Getting 'certified'

After nearly 20 years of growing our trees organically, we have decided to become officially certifed as an organic farm, with the BFA. The reason for the formality is that we are now have the potential to produce a large crop of mangosteens. We posted the application yesterday - it took us about 3 months to assemble all the information that they required, and then a JP had to witness the 20 page application.

What happens next? We wait for the inspector to arrive and check us out, in the next 4-6 weeks.

Will being certified make a difference to selling our crop? Probably not as the mangosteen customer is not likely to care too much if they are grown with chemicals and sprays or not.

Hopefully there will be a niche organic market which will clamour for our fruit and will appreciate the efforts we have taken. But don't hold your breath.

http://www.bfa.com.au/

A Mangosteen Milestone

Twenty years ago we had a dream to start a mangosteen orchard at Cape Tribulation. We knew very little about Mangosteens at the time, but we thought this is the 'project' for us. It has taken 20 years, but this week was a big milestone for us. On Sunday we picked and packed our first trays of our own Mangosteens and sent them to Sydney. Our eleven trays departed on Sunday night from Mareeba by truck, and are wedged into a small space crowded out by huge palettes of lychees, pawpaw, and longans.

Who knows how much the market will pay us for them - watch this space. We are hoping for $15 a kg. Then we have to take out the freight, packaging and wholesaling costs - our guess is $3 kg. So we might receive a return of $12 a kg. Keep your finger crossed for us. Time to start picking again for the next truck departing on Thursday.

Last year we did have a crop of about 500 kg, but we were overseas and arranged for a picking and packing company to do it for us. This is the first time we have actually got our hands dirty.

Counting mangosteens, and forever slashing

It's official - we have 353 mangosteens! I have just spent the afternoon walking around the 'commercial' part of our farm, counting our trees. Every year we plant new mangosteens in the gaps where other trees have died. So we are never quite sure how many mangosteens we actually have.

The planting season - April/May is about to start. We have another 100 mangosteens ready to go in. I am walking around the orchard looking for spaces to squeeze in some more - every nook will have another mangosteen if it will fit. Some of the wild rocky areas which we have never cleared in 20 years are now on the agenda.