Good morning,

I hope yesterday you had an enjoyable day feasting, with plenty of cherries!

Morello sour cherries are open for pick-your-own on the mornings of 

Sunday 28 and Monday 29^th December.  

7:30am – 12pm

Additional days will be added if needed until they are picked out. 

Bookings are not needed, but if you do plan to pick more than 10kg please let me know so we can plan. 

Pricing is the same as for sweet cherries - $6/adult and $12/kg

If you would like to collect a picked box from the orchard please let mw know so we can arrange picking.

Delivery to Sydney is not available this year sorry.

Sour cherries, also known as tart cherries, are a very different fruit to the sweet cherry varieties, Not simply unripe sweet cherries. These small fruits pack a lot of flavour along with an array of health benefits. Prized for both sweet and savoury cooking, preserving, juices and liqueurs.  They make for very good jam, cherry pie or savoury dishes like Persian sour cherry chicken rice.

Sweet cherries

Our sweet cherry season has closed, a three-day heatwave and huge flocks of lorikeets finished off the last of the cherries. We were pleasantly surprised that they had hung on there until the end even though fruit size was down.   

Thank-you to all who visited the farm or our cherry express during the seasons. We hope you enjoyed the cherries and the experience.

I hope you did enjoy them even though the fruit size wasn't as big as previous years (very dry conditions, heatwaves, cold nights, a lot of wind and huge flocked of birds which seemed to prefer the biggest fruit). In years when we've had the big size 30+ cherries we've not passed on the premium price, our idea being that we do all we can to grow good cherries and together we ride this wave of seasonality - with a relatively stable pricing (barely increasing enough for the labour cost rises) where you get the natural mix of what the trees produce in the conditions they are given.

Cherry trees

We are often asked whether we sell trees.  Generally no as picking time is not the ideal time to plant cherries (best in winter when dormant).

This autumn / winter we will start removing a large number of trees.  The bird pressure and high winds this season have shown we need to concentrate on protecting the trees – and this will need to mean removing some trees to make that feasible. I will also start removing some of the Rons - whilst I am asked for this variety more then any other the reality is there are now more superior genetics and many people arrive asking for Rons and then pick other varieties instead. The Rons have rarely paid their way. I will keep some as they are popular but will start to remove and replace with other varieties for that ripening window. If you are interested in transplanting advanced trees this winter please get in touch by mid February so I can save them.  There will be Simone, Samba, Rons and Vans available.  You will need to arrange earthmoving equipment for transplanting.

We look forward to seeing some of you for Morello picking.

Thank-you for your support this season.

Ingrid Roth