224 – Adelaide Hills Cherries

Ashton Valley Fresh sparkling fruit juice … tasting notes.

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In Anton Chekov’s Cherry Orchard, family members gather to discuss their need to sell their estate to pay debts, ultimately sacrificing their famous cherry orchard. It is a sombre play and one that captures the heartache, luck, and hard work that goes into living off the land. The Ceravolo family, the people behind Ashton Valley Fresh and Adelaide Hills cherries, has endured many seasons of changing weather, bushfires, and various strains of pest and market changes, to bring South Australia and the world, a delicious selection of stone fruits, apples, pears, ciders, and wine. Tonight, we sip some of their bounty as we reflect on what it takes to be the ones who grow the food we all enjoy, but take for granted.

All our episodes tend to link with one another. In episode 200, we had Madge Violi (mother of hairdresser and Adelaide Show regular, Don Violi from Khrome Hair Studio) teach us how to make salami. But, as it happens, her father knew the Ceravolo family. Mr Mussalino was from the same village as Mr Ceravolo, and came to Adelaide and set up as a market gardener at Norton Summit. Does it take Italian DNA to make market gardens work? What would the Hills look like if only English Australians had settled the area?

The closest many of us get to understanding the impact of nature on food production is when cherries are late, or apples have dents, and we just grizzle a bit under our breaths as we grab something else for our trolley. What is it like watching consumer pick over produce in a supermarket?

Questions from Kelly from Forage and Feast:

We are in the midst of cherry picking at the moment but the weather has gone from 40 degrees to barely 20 with rain. Take us through the emotional journey and the technical challenges this must bring?

What is the perfect pear? Growing up, I thought it was soft and juicy, but lately I have learned to love dry and crispy?

You’re in the Adelaide Hills which is the epicentre of millipedes and European wasps. How do they affect your work?

I saw a herd of a dozen kangaroos bounding through the hills while in the Bay To Birdwood. Do they coexist with fruit trees or do they plunder?

Some farmers have a few moments in the season when things are slower but you have such diverse holdings, do you ever get down time?

Lina Violi would like to know how many varieties of cherry do you grow and how much of your crop do you export?

Tell us about Ceravolo Orchards?

Ashton Valley Fresh?

Ceravolo Wines?

We hear their is a new cellar door project underway. What prompts you to do this?

Nigel Dobson-Keeffe challenges the panel to pick the fake story from three stories from South Australia’s past.

The Register-News Pictorial July 1930
Good Prospects , For Olive Pickling Industry In S.A.
BERRIES PRODUCED HERE RIVAL WORLDS BEST
Prospects for the growth of commercial olive pickling in South Australia, a field which has been neglected, although this State is noted for the quality of its olives, are considered by experts to- be encouraging. THANKS to the Importation by the Department of Agriculture of the Queen Olive, from Spain, this variety Is available to those who desire to grow the world's best type of pickling olive.. Fruits, which have been obtained from grafts, and trees propagated from the Imported stock, show clearly that In this State, particularly along the Murray Valley under irrigation, olives of equal, If not superior, size may be produced. I am satisfied, said the Chief Horticultural Instructor (Mr. Quinn) yesterday, that of the many varieties of olives grown at the Berri Experimental Orchard, these larger berry types are 50 per cent, better than those in the coastal districts where no irrigation is available

Adelaide Observer December 1865
THE GARDENERS LOSS THE FARMERS GAIN.
TO THE EDITOR.
Sir—The wattle-birds attacking the cherries this season may be fully accounted for by the absence of their usual food—honey. There has been no mildew or honeydew this year, consequently no red rust in wheat; therefore bees, wattle-birds, parrots, and other birds that feed on honey suffer considerably. With regard to the small fly in wheat named by your Port Elliot correspondent, they have been equally numerous for several seasons, and I have long beets of opinion the larva of those flies has been the cause of the destruction in our grain crops in the hills. They destroy the root and the flies feed on the grain in its soft state quite up to the time of maturity.

Observer October 1927
ERADICATING BRAMBLES.
Experiments in Tasmania.
The blackberry has become a perfect pest in Tasmania, and in places in the Adelaide hills it is the undesirable occupant of fertile soils. In eradicating this evil, The  Tasmanian Farmer states that feeding down with a colony of rabbits has been tried successfully. Near Launceston, Mr. J. F, Lever is successfully clearing up his property, with the aid of a large colony of rabbits, and where these animals have been allowed to run on the property, the weed has almost entirely disappeared. In the first instance, the denser patches of blackberry are burnt off and when the young shoots begin to show above the ground the rabbits are turned on to the area which they nibble closely, thus preventing the plant from gaining control. The constant nibbling at the weed causes it to lose its otherwise vigorous vitality and it eventually dies.