A few weeks back now, we had a visit from the high profile Melbourne food blogger ‘I Eat Melbourne’. We gave them the backstage pass tour of the Blue Sky Produce orchards and chatted about all sorts of things food and social media related! Continue reading
Every Family Needs A Farmer
Tastes of the Tablelands
In the Media – Blue Sky Produce
We’ve been lucky enough over the past month to be featured on a couple of different platforms in the media. It has been an exciting time, but also very nerve-wracking and a definite learning experience into the ‘behind the scenes’ of how things operate in the media world.
Categories: About Us, Blue Sky Produce, Every Family Needs A Farmer
Tags: Blue Sky Produce, fealyfamily, tree change
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International Day of Rural Women
My eyes are hanging out of my head, we have one super tired baby, our house is a bomb site with dishes that need to be done, washing everywhere and housework tasks so far behind that I can’t even bear to think about it, but I have to tell you about the great day I had yesterday in celebration of International Day of Rural Women! October 15 has been designated by the UN as the International Day of Rural Women to recognize “the critical role and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty.”
The inaugaral ‘Resourcing Women of the North – International Day of Rural Women’ Conference hosted by the local Northern Gulf Resource Management Group was held here in Mareeba yesterday and I got to go along. Continue reading
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! Continue reading
An Interview with Food Tank
We have really fallen behind with the blogging recently and as such it has been quite a while since we have shared much on the blog about life here on the farm at Blue Sky. So, I thought you might be interested to read a little interview that we were approached to do last week by an organisation called Food Tank.
We first came across Food Tank when we were researching how to get involved with the International Year of Family Farming, which we wrote about here. Food Tank’s mission is to “build a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. They spotlight environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty and create networks of people, organizations, and content to push for food system change.” The great thing about Food Tank is that they also aim to “highlight hope and success in agriculture. They feature innovative ideas that are already working on the ground, in cities, in kitchens, in fields and in laboratories.” Check out the Food Tank website, sign up for their newsletter and you will hear stories from all over the globe about all sorts of food system issues and emerging developments in sustainable agriculture.
Food Tank are huge advocates for family farming and we are only just beginning to think about ways ourselves to be more sustainable farmers to ensure Blue Sky Produce is profitable and still here for many future generations of farmers in the family to come. We were quite excited to be approached by Food Tank to feature in an upcoming article relating to the International Year of Family Farming.
Below is a transcript of our interview – we have no idea if it will ever make it into print, so wanted to record it here for our own records. If nothing else, hopefully it gives you a bit of an insight into what we do here at Blue Sky. Continue reading
Mango Madness 2013/2014
Just after lunch last Sunday saw Matt wrapping and wheeling the final pallet of mangoes off the shed floor and into the cold room which signalled the end of our first ever Blue Sky ProduceMango season – wahoooooo!! This also brought our second quarter of farm life to a close (you can read about our first quarter here). It is so hard to believe we have been living in Far North Queensland for over six months now! Only another twenty odd years to go and we might be able to consider ourselves locals!!
These last few months really have been mango madness!! We have to admit that this quarter saw some of the ‘gloss’ and novelty of our change to farm life wear off! It has been hard work and a huge learning curve! The days were very long (Matt turning the lights on in the shed at 5am and often not turning them off before 9pm!), it became stinking hot, it was stressful trying to logistically manage a new packing shed, something we had never done before – remembering to order boxes, stickers, plastic, chemicals, parts – the list is huge! Matt also had to manage a team of twenty – thirty workers of which at least 17 were living here onsite, so it was like running a campground too – making sure toilet paper supplies were up to date, bonds were collected, rents were collected, cooking/washing facilities were all working, check-ins were happening – you get the picture.
Matt was tired and stressed, I was hot, fat, definitely pregnant, tired and grumpy, all of which was not helped by the fact that everybody else in the world was in Christmas holiday mode, ready to relax and get festive, oh, and we did of course have all the kids home too on school holidays and the incident of Jack’s broken arm on Christmas eve!! I think we also got a big dose of back to reality (work, school, bills, responsibility!) and the post-trip comedown/blues at this point too, everything finally sinking in that our adventure so long in the making was all over in three short months. But, we survived, we’re still here, with only a few minor meltdowns and snapping at each other and we didn’t jump back in the camper and take off for the road again (we got pretty close a few times though)!!!!
The side of our fridge became Matt’ scheduling station as he worked out each night what workers were needed where.
It wasn’t all bad. The start of the season was actually quite exciting! It’s what I’d imagine a shearing season might be like, perhaps what it might be like here in a few years time – where you look forward to your worker’s arriving for the year and hearing what they have been up to, perhaps seeing some familiar faces back again from the previous season? Our crew all started moving on site in mid-November, the day after our worker’s dorms were actually finished!
Camp Kitchen – Worker’s Dorm
Dorm Room set up & ready for the workers
Dorm Room set up & ready for the workers
Packing shed sparkling clean and waiting for the season to commence!
Seeing the first few loads of mangos arriving on the trucks, watching them be unloaded with the forklift, hearing the packing shed turn on for the first time (the noise of the shed in action is a low hum – took me straight back to my childhood spent in the dairy!) and seeing the shed in full fledged work mode was quite a site to behold!
Matt welcoming the first crew to the Blue Sky Produce shed
De-sapping crew – these guys were actually pretty good singers too!
De-sapping is one of the hardest and most important jobs in the shed!
The grading girls – another important and tough job!
All systems go!
The packing and sorting bench
Captain is not a fan of mango season – it means he’s not allowed in the shed and there are no days spent running after the four wheeler through the orchard
There were some other perks of the mango season ……………………………………………
Mangos for breakfast!
Mangos for lunch and dinner and in between too!
We could put the kids to work – very cheap labour!
And there were some beautiful Blue Sky sunsets
We did also squeeze in a bit of time for a couple of things like ……………………………………
A lightening strike which started a fire behind our avocado orchard!
A swanky new sign installed out the front!
A laugh at the manager learning to drive the forklift!
And even a Christmas BBQ and a trip for Matt to follow our fruit to the markets in Brisbane.
A Blue Sky Christmas BBQ
A Blue Sky Christmas BBQ
And Matt squeezed in a trip to Brisbane to follow our fruit to the markets
Blue Sky Mangos at the Brisbane Markets
And we got a huge kick out of having photos of our fruit emailed to us from all over the place. You might remember Malte who worked here before the season started, well he sent this great photo in when he spotted our mangos on his travels in New South Wales!!
Malte – an ex-worker with the Blue Sky mangos he spotted in NSW
All in all, it was a pretty good first season. We learnt a lot, didn’t blow anything up or kill each other, were still welcome at the Family Christmas table, and we are hopeful that the growers who packed with us this year will be back again next year, hopefully bringing some other farms!! So a big congratulations and thank you to all of the Blue Sky workers this year – we did it – wahoooooooo!!
The workers at the start of the season
A slightly different crew at the end of the season!
Take Five Photo Safari
Tonight’s post is the overdue (eek!) assignment for Week 3 of my Blog With Pip course. It seems nothing has changed since my uni days, I’m still an over thinking, procrastinator who always does the last minute/all-nighter cramming sessions or consistently has to grovel for extensions on assignments! Anywho, I do always get there in the end, albeit late – story of my life!
So, our task was to take at least five photos over the weekend and write a post about them. Hmmmm, well our weekend was made up of working in the packing shed, netball, working in the packing shed, a playdate for Jack, working in the packing shed, the hockey sign on, working in the packing shed, Sunday lunch at Grandma’s (the highlight!) for the kids and I but not Matt, because, yep, you guessed it, he was working in the packing shed.
As you can see, there was not a lot of material in there for exciting photo opportunities. So, my dear blog readers, you are going to be taken on a photo safari of ……………………………… wait for it ………………………………. it’s an adventure …………………………. Saturday Mango Packing – Blue Sky Produce shed style! Wahooooooo – don’t get too excited now!
Seriously though, come and check it out. Although not as adventurous as my classmate Julie’s weekend at Phillip Island or as giggle-worthy as this post by ‘Gloves Off” , you might find it a little interesting and learn something all the same! Here we go!
Morning commences at 6.30am with 30 pallets of Keitts mangoes ready and waiting for packing!
Murphy’s Law – of course all four trucks that are due to arrive on Saturday at Blue Sky, manage to all turn up on the driveway at the same time, right on shed start up time!
De-sapping work crew of five boys gets started dipping, snapping mango stems off and loading mangoes on to the de-sapper.
Mangoes having a wash with citrus soap which breaks down the sap.
Bath Time! View of mangoes from the top of the de-sapper
Mangoes getting a polish with the brushes.
The Blue Sky Produce shed hard at work!
Mangoes getting weighed and sorted by size on the grading line.
The quiet that is a break for lunch.
6pm Knock Off time – hooray! Blue Sky Produce Mangoes ready for market!
Ooopsy, a little over the five photo limit, but I am always too wordy! So what did you think? Ready to come and be mango farmers/packing shed workers yet?
Categories: Blue Sky Produce, Every Family Needs A Farmer
Tags: Blue Sky Produce, Keitts Mangoes, Mango Packing Shed
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The International Year of Family Farming
I’m a bit behind the eight ball this year, only finalising my New Year’s Resolutions in mid February and this week finally embracing the fact that 2014 is well and truly here!! Which means, in case you didn’t already know, welcome to the ‘International Year of Family Farming’ (IYFF) as designated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. ALRIGHT! 2014 sounds like our kind of year!!
I grew up on a family dairy farm, Matt’s family own a few family farms, and our little ‘Fealy Family’ now works and relies on a family owned farm to sustain us, so you get the picture that ‘Family Farming’ is a big part of our lives. We believe Family Farm’s should be celebrated and we’d like to do our small bit to raise awareness about the importance of supporting family farming.
So, a few statistics for you first (c’mon – I am an accountant!!). According to the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF), “99 percent of Australian farms are family owned and operated. Australia’s 157,000 farmers not only produce 93 percent of Australia’s daily domestic food supply – the clean, healthy, fresh food that Australian families enjoy – they also contribute $38 billion in export income to the economy and manage some 59 percent of Australia’s land”. That’s a pretty substantial contribution to Australian society I say!!
The United Nation’s says the “2014 International Year of Family Farming (IYFF) aims to raise the profile of family farming and smallholder farming, not just in Australia, but by focusing world attention on its significant role in eradicating hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development, in particular in rural areas.” If you’d like to know more you can go to this website or watch the video below which has been produced by the United Nations.
I’m not sure how best to celebrate and support the 2014 International Year of Family Farming just yet, more to come on this topic – stay tuned! In the meantime, here are a few ways you might like to get involved;
1. The IYFF-2014 photo competition is calling for photos that represent the motto: Family Farming: Feeding the world, caring for the earth. You can enter here.
2. Check out these great 2014 Food Resolutions – maybe you can make your own list?
3. Buy Australian Grown
I’d love to hear how others are celebrating 2014, International Year of Family Farming! Don’t be shy, let us know!!!
Fealy Family Farmer’s First Quarter
I have so many blog posts I want to write at the moment that I really don’t know which one to start with!! Now that we have all three kids at school (holy moly – how did that happen!?!?!)
Fealy kids first day of school 2014. Lexi in Prep, Toby Grade 1, Jack Grade 3, with ‘Patches’ the farm dog – the newest member of the family
and I have a full school term until Fealy Bub No 4 arrives – I am really hoping to dedicate some time to blogging (and I guess I really should get our nursery and some things ready for Bub No 4!). I’m even thinking about signing up for an online blogging course – I need to make a decision on that today, but decided to do an actual blog post first before I spent any money on a course!!
So, I’m starting with a bit of a summary of what life has been like as farmers for the last few months. It is soooooo hard to believe that we have been here at Blue Sky Produce for five months now. We are currently three quarters of the way through our first mango season, the Kensington Pride and R2E2 varieties have all been picked and packed and we are now just waiting for the Keitts and Brooks mangoes to ripen (who knew there were so many varieties of mangoes!). We are not far off from commencing our first avocado season and we have 17 workers living on site. These last few months have been the most enormous learning curve ever for us all, but especially Matt! He has gone from googling You Tube videos on ‘how to drive a tractor’ on the way here from our trip, to driving tractors, forklifts, operating mulching, spraying and fertilising machines, fixing all sorts of things from pumps to chainsaws and learning about all kinds of orchard insects, diseases and soils!!!
View from the tractor!
Matt fixing the foot valve on the pump in the dam – kids were on snake watch as legend has it a massive water python lives in the dam – kayak still comes in handy!
Getting to know the place!
Plenty of beautiful sunsets!
And sunrises!
The first quarter on the farm was spent trying to do half a year’s worth of ‘off season’ orchard work in three months! With the help of our full time farm hand Charlie (and his dog Captain!), 4 German Backpackers – Sarah, Malte, Sebastian and Julian, we pruned avocado trees, mulched avocado trees, commenced a spraying and fertigation program for the whole orchard, as well as a whole lot of slashing, weed and pest control work!
Mulching – very dusty work!
Bale buster with Zetor tractor behind with spear on it to lift hay bale onto bale buster
Loading hay
Rolling hay bales out
Malte hard at work pulling the string off the bales
Julian spreading hay
Sarah clearing room around the trees for irrigation to come out
Sarah & Malte after a hard day of mulching – not the most fun job!
The kids have taken to farm life like ducks to water!
The ducklings have grown!
They love going out on the four wheeler with Matt before school to turn the irrigation on, or after school on the tractor if Matt is not too busy. It is amazing how much they have learnt about orchard farming already just from the bits and pieces Matt has told them or they overhear us talking about! All three are pro’s at fixing sprinklers and spotting the different varieties of trees around the orchard.
Jack out late one afternoon helping Matt – one of my favourite photos!
Toby out on a morning water run – there are always hot air balloons out in the mornings!
This girl probably loves it the most!
Jerry racing the four wheeler – he loves the farm life!
Hard not to love it some days!
It hasn’t just been all hard work. We did have a few afternoons of quiet family walks around the farm and even squeezed in a lunch with all the workers for the Melbourne Cup in November – we were most disgusted that the electrician who was here working that day cleaned out our inaugural Blue Sky Melbourne Cup sweep!
Afternoon walk around the orchard with the dogs.
Melbourne Cup Lunch
German Backpapers tasting the first ever Blue Sky Produce passion fruit wine!
Matt even found time to build us a chook pen – love getting our fresh eggs!
Oh and nearly forgot! We also planted 210 new lime trees during this time and did some pretty rigorous disease control on the avocado trees! Matt is particularly proud of how straight our lime tree lines are – a little obsessive compulsive for a farmer I say!
Getting the ground ready for the new lime trees.
Matt surveying their handiwork
Injecting the avocado trees to kill disease
Farmer boy after a hard day!
So that was our first 3-ish months of farm life. Not too bad at all. I have been enjoying just being a stay at home mum, making breakfasts, lunches and dinners, baking and doing a bit of office work. Matt does take me out with him from time to time to learn a little about the pump and how all the taps in the orchard work, but with a big pregnant belly growing I am not terribly useful for much more than that at present! The next post on farm life will be all about Mango Madness 2013/2014 with lots of details of what our first mango season was like – it has been full on that is for sure!!
Categories: About Us, Blue Sky Produce, Every Family Needs A Farmer
Tags: Blue Sky Produce, Farm Life, Mango, Orchard Work
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Buy A Bale of Hay
I am sure most of you are aware of the plight facing many of our farmers with two thirds of Queensland now drought declared. We drove through many of the places currently experiencing drought on our trip and we thought things were really bad then, that was months ago.
Some of the drought country we saw around WInton, QLD in June.
Boulia, Qld – drought affected country we saw on our trip.
Those of you who have been following our blog for a while now know that we are passionate about rural Australia and the need to support our Australian Farmers (you can read some of our other posts on this topic here and here). Now that we are part of the farming community ourselves, we understand even better the challenges which are presently facing all Australian Farmers in relation to the profitability and future viability of our agricultural industry. So, today I am sharing a letter ‘from the Bush’ which I think explains really well why this drought is so bad and what is happening in the Australian agricultural arena at present. I know not all of you will read the letter but at least please check out the ‘Buy A Bale’ website or their Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/BuyaBaleofHay which is doing great things to help drought affected farmers. You can buy a bale of hay for just $20 or donate a small amount to be used towards buying a few litres of diesel, groceries and other necessities for our struggling farmers.
Australian Farmers need our support, please spread the word!
“A Letter from the Bush
This drought is different.
It’s not different because virtually all of inland Queensland missed the 2013 wet season; that has happened in the past on numerous occasions. In a bad year, conversations tend to drift to other bad years and for the first time ever I have heard 1926 mentioned. Usually a comparison can be drawn with ’82 or ‘69 but this time they are going back 87 years to find a season that makes them feel lucky to be around now. Nevertheless, seasons have been missed before, that is not why this one is different.
It’s not different because of other factors such as fire or overstocking that have exacerbated the effects of the drought in some areas. The risks associated with a lack of grass are well understood in the industry because everyone has had to deal with it on some level in the past. Producers who went into this season with no grass were extremely aware of the importance of rain to their immediate prospects and that rain failed to materialise. The suffering, among both people and animals that resulted, does not make this drought different to those of the past.
This drought is not different because of the lack of options available to distressed stock. In a widespread drought, grass and water quickly become scarce. Tens of thousands of head of stock needed to be moved onto decent pasture but very little existed and as a result producers were forced to market cattle in preference to letting them die in the paddock. Markets thrive on distress and the cattle market this year has provided the perfect example. Distressed vendors are not unique to this year, however and markets have collapsed in the past. This drought is different but not for any of the reasons above.
This drought is different because people don’t see a way back. Droughts come and go and the seasons will come back but even with a succession of good years, people will not recover from the beating that they have taken in the last twelve months. There is no ‘fat’ left in the agricultural system to plan for bad years, nor to recover from them.
The process of rebuilding a breeding herd involves retaining heifers for several years and waiting for them to mature. During that time, revenue is severely impacted through reduced sales while costs increase with the growing herd numbers. It will be extremely difficult for producers to invest in rebuilding herd numbers from a low base whilst servicing all of the fixed costs associated with their business. They face very difficult and distorted markets both domestically and internationally and a high cost structure.
Profitability was eroded, many years ago and the industry has limped along on the back of cash reserves, cost cutting and equity ever since. That process is very nearly at an end. The capacity to endure further losses does not exist. The profitability crisis in agriculture can be linked to virtually every one of the issues that regional Australia is currently facing from skill shortages, to the malaise of small towns, to the perilous state of agricultural infrastructure and to the fact that these businesses are no longer in a position to properly manage in the natural environment that they are built on.
The markets for Australian agricultural product are damaged. Internationally Australian produce competes with protected industries in all of our developed world competitors. They are protected because they are not in a position to compete with the low costs of production in the developing world. Australian businesses are not able to compete either but they are expected to and they have to because the domestic market cannot absorb the entirety of our agricultural product.
Domestically, the market is dominated by a limited number of buyers and the resulting lack of competition has transferred wealth from the agricultural community to retailers and consumers.
The marketing of agricultural product has not been helped, at least in some industries, by a lack of sophistication among vendors. Prices offered have been accepted without regard to normal business practices. There has been no demand to maintain profit margins. There has been no demand to maintain excess cash flows to fund infrastructure or development. It is difficult to determine the cost of production in agriculture and many vendors have no idea what price they need to achieve to recover their costs.
Whatever the reasons for the profitability crisis, it has crippled the industry and robbed the cash reserves required for issues like drought and investment.
This drought is different because it isn’t really about the drought. The drought is just one more straw on the back of a very rickety camel.
Ben Callcott
Glenmore Station
Einasleigh 4871Australia, we need to share this, tweet, reblog, share on Facebook and forward to all we can. Thank You”
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