What’s Happening at Blue Sky Produce?

Hello Everyone!  Yes – we are all still alive and kicking up here on the farm!  We have had a nasty flu lay us low for the past couple of weeks but there are only a few more coughs and snuffles to get rid of and then we are all in the clear – hooray!  So, as usual, there is lots of catching up to do on the blog and I thought I’d better start with an update of all the goings on here at Blue Sky as things have been busy, busy, busy!

Where to start?  Well, once we arrived back from our Lawn Hill trip it was straight in to pruning time!  We had two Italian backpackers, Nicolo and Julien arrive to live here for the next few months and get stuck in to the pruning of the mango trees and they have been doing a great job.  As they prune, Matt mulches all the piles of branches in.

Pruning prior to mulching

Pruning after mulching – Matt loves the mulcher!

Along with the pruning, we have had some cooler, slightly drizzly, weather which has meant we could get some much needed burning off of some big piles of dead wood, cleared last year, done.  We had about 13 or 14 big piles to burn – it made for some good bonfire nights here!

We also had a team of researchers visit for a few weeks from the University of New England.  They set video cameras, weather stations and all sorts of other monitoring equipment up in the mango orchard to try to determine what insects are doing the bulk of the work in pollinating our mango flowers.  We will look forward to reading the results of their study!

Sue from UNE

Research equipment in the mango orchard

Of course, in order to attract the flies and bees and other insects to come and do their job in our orchard, there are a few ‘top secret attractionators’ (is that even a word??) that we use!!

Glynis does a great job collecting some poor unfortunate kangaroo road kill!

Leftover prawn bits and pieces from last year’s Christmas lunch!

While the orchard is not so nice smelling at the moment, our ‘attractionators’ do seem to be doing their job and we have bees and flies everywhere!

Of course to have so many pollinators means we have flowers all over the farm too!  The mango trees are flowering, the avocado trees are flowering, the lime trees are flowering and my favourite flower of all is the passionfruit flower!  We are crossing our fingers and all of our toes as well, hoping that this means we will have lots and lots of beautiful fruit soon!

Mango trees in full flower!

Beautiful passionfruit flower!

As well as pruning at this time of year, we also have to step up our pesticide and herbicide spraying to make sure the naughty insects and troublesome weeds don’t interfere with the trees doing their important jobs!

The Spray tractor

Spraying is a good opportunity for the kids to go with Dad in the tractor and start learning the ropes!

On top of all of this, we have also had ‘The Boss’ – Ross – here clearing and preparing some of the farm’s vacant land in preparation for the planting of just a ‘few’ 1,000 new avocado trees.

In the last week the trees arrived, the irrigation system has been laid, the measuring out and sprinkler punching has been done, the trees have had their stalks painted and just a few days ago, the first block of trees was planted.

New avocado trees have arrived!

Planting spacing has been marked out and sprinklers are in

Painting the avocoado tree stems – this acts as sunscreen for the trees

The new ‘generation’ of avocado trees for Blue Sky

And that is about it on the work side of things!  We have had a few little ‘celebrations’ too, with the first being a chocolate cake after work last week to celebrate Nicolo’s 21st birthday!

Happy 21st Nicolo!

Finally, last Friday night Matt and I had the pleasure of being invited to go along to the Mareeba District Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association Annual Gala Dinner.  It was a great night with a very hotly contested charity fruit auction happening which raised over $12.000 for the local hospital (Blue Sky was very much outbid – we will have to start saving some $$’s now to put in the budget for bidding at next year’s auction!).

It was also inspiring to see and hear the stories of the nominees for the annual ‘Charlie Nastasi Horticulturalist of the Year’ award – something for us to aspire to winning one day!  Oh, and I nearly forgot the award for the district’s biggest pumpkin – it weighed in at a whooping 18.2kgs – huge!!  We had lots of fun and will definitely look forward to going again next year now!  You can check out all the photos from the night here if you are interested.

We have been here at Blue Sky Produce for over twelve months now – it is so hard to believe – time has flown!  We are still loving farm life and still have so much to learn!  Stay tuned for Matt’s post about the ‘twelve lessons learned in the first 12 months as a farmer!’.  Oh and if you want more regular updates straight from the farm paddock – check out the Blue Sky Produce Instagram and Twitter accounts, and Facebook too!

Mango season is well on its way, so get your freezers and fridges ready everyone!!!