Blueberry Country was expecting to to harvest more than 200 tonnes of fruit from the 220ha of its Otautau farm, compared with 186 tonnes in the 2024 season.
Blueberry Country orchard manager Henry Geerling said more than 800 cars had visited the farm in the past two weeks and at the weekend staff had served up about 500 fresh-fruit ice creams to customers.
‘‘It was a crazy weekend,’’ he said.
The farm’s two-day pick-your-own weekend income surpassed it’s North Island parent company’s weekly takings after yielding nearly 700kg of berries in one day.
‘‘So far, the pick-your-own, since the start of the season which is only just three weeks, have picked nearly 5tonnes — so they’re doing pretty good.’’
Its harvesting season started on January 13 and the orchard had been open to pick-your-own customers for the past six days.
Despite the 370,000 plants on the farm, the Southland picking season only lasted between six and eight weeks, compared with the North Island’s five months.
But what it lacked in time, it made up for in bulk.
Southland’s mega-wet September increased the berry weight.
‘‘The wet has been good for it because it’s given us good swelling in the early fruit.
‘‘I’ve heard from up north that actually their fruit’s shrivelling because it’s too dry.
‘‘So we’re actually quite lucky. We’ve got forecast rain for tonight so that’s going to help actually give us a heavier yield on the berries as well.’’
Finding enough seasonal workers had been a challenge this year.
‘‘Last year, we got to the point where we stopped counting after 500 applicants; this year was a bit of a struggle, especially [hiring] experienced staff with supervising.
‘‘But we’re OK now, so we got there just in time.’’
Students from the region who initially started the picking season had now gone back to university, but the Central Otago cherry-pickers were beginning to migrate south for additional work, Mr Geerling said.
When the farm was first purchased 23 years ago, it was covered in gorse, manuka, flaxes and wire grass which had to be cleared and 35km of drains needed to be installed to accommodate the 370,000 super-fruit plants including 175,000 planted in the past four years.
- Toni McDonald
