Blueberries tipped for bumper season
Blueberries are likely to have a bumper season as the warmer El Niño weather pattern arrives in New Zealand ahead of peak blueberry season in mid-January.
Forty years later they offer a range of products that stretch the imagination of most people. Peter Burke recently visited Mamaku Blue’s orchard, visitor centre and cafe.
The Mamaku Ranges rise 600m above sea level to the west of Rotorua, occasionally getting snow in winter and mist shrouding the tops.
It’s cold, perhaps not appealing to many but ideal for blueberries and gooseberries that thrive in such conditions.
It all started in the 1980’s on 40ha which Anne Frost describes as too big and too small: too small to farm and too big as a lifestyle block!
The blueberry development happened when diversification was a popular word in the Muldoon government, with people looking at kiwifruit in particular, which she says was unsuitable for their location. Then someone said ‘try blueberries’ and they did, on the strength of that brief encounter buying $10,000 of blueberry plants.
“In the 1980’s $10,000 was a lot of money. We bought the plants from a nursery at Cambridge and then we wondered ‘how do you get that many plants back home?’ Because they were just a little too big to fit on the trailer,” Anne Frost told Rural News.
“So in the end, we hired a stock truck, and some people still remember the truck going past with the blueberry plants sticking out the top waving in the wind.”
That $10,000 roughly equated to 1900 plants and was enough for the first 1.2ha. Today, the Frosts have 6ha in blueberries and another 0.8ha in gooseberries and the remainder of the land is used for drystock and native reserve.
Anne says in 1982 not a lot was known about blueberries so they linked up with 99 other growers and an exporting co-operative Kiwi Blue and until 2004 most of their crop was exported. The blueberries from Mamaku Blue graced tables all around the world – from Russia to Italy and many places between.
They were led to believe that even Queen Elizabeth in London had tasted their product. The fruit was exported because blueberries were recognised as “the miracle berry” for health, with new markets opening worldwide.
However, Frost says with new varieties being developed in America and available worldwide, this niche market was no longer available to NZ and Mamaku Blue. She adds that in the 1980’s it was a different story in NZ: everybody was trying new export opportunities.
“When we first started there were 17 growers in the Rotorua region and we had our own discussion group. It was a sort of cottage industry and many people thought they were going to make a small fortune. Which was correct, it was a very small fortune!
“When we did our budget at the time we actually halved the income expectations and doubled the expenditure and we were about right, but even this took eight years hard work to achieve,” she says.
Frost says the novelty and dream of a cottage industry died a natural death as costs and availability of staff to work in the orchards were realised. Today, Mamaku Blue is the only commercial blueberry grower in the district.
It was a combination of a high NZ dollar and the flood of blueberries from other northern hemisphere countries which ended the Frosts’ exporting venture. It simply wasn’t worth it anymore and so they started selling their blueberries for processing. The lower cost of machine harvesting and less staff made financial sense. But even that was relatively short-lived. That’s when they started to develop the business as it is today.
Mamaku Blue sells blueberries from the gate and at farmers’ markets in Auckland and Tauranga. But chiefly they develop value-added products using their blueberries.
They now have a visitor centre where these products are sold, a café where people can have a blueberry muffin, lunch or ice cream, a function centre for weddings and other occasions and they take people for orchard tours to explain the special characteristics of the blueberry and its health benefits.
“When we opened our tourism complex in 2000 we had wine, liqueur and other peoples’ products. Since then, we have developed recipes for jams and chutneys preserves and now we make 95% of all the products we sell,” Frost explains. “Harry trained as a wine maker and over the years Mamaku Blue Blueberry Wine has achieved several gold, silver or bronze medals; our wine is now available online.”
She says blueberries are well known as ‘the miracle fruit’ with scientific research claiming it has reversed the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
“We are also developing a growing range of health products, soaps and toiletries, chocolates and even Blueberry dog bones for canine pets.”
During the blueberry season, customers come to Mamaku to buy berries, fresh or frozen. No Mamaku Blue berries are now sold in supermarkets and just a few products are sold in selected health shops. In a good season, Mamaku Blue will produce 30-40 tonnes of blueberries.
However, Frost says disease can be a problem and the last couple of years have been challenging in this respect. Their enterprise is HACCP accredited and they try always to use organic control.
Pollination is a challenge and the Frosts say it’s costing them twice as much as in previous years to pollinate their 15,000 trees. Bumble bees are popular in their orchard and complement the thousands of regular honey bees.
“The bumble bees are good pollinators because they will fly when our spring weather is cold and wet. Whereas the honey bees will stay home,” Frost explains. “We say the bumble bees are like the older people who will go outside working in all sorts of weather whereas the honey bees are like the younger generation who prefer and need warmer temperatures to fly.”
Another plant that suits the colder climate of the Mamakus is the gooseberry and the Frosts have planted 0.8ha of the Invicta variety, which are more resistant to mould, a common problem with the fruit.
Like the blueberry, the gooseberry has good health properties and their shop and website boast a wide range of products from the fruit.
“Gooseberries are a good source of natural vitamin C.
“They are also a body cleanser and are much sought after and known in places such as Eastern Europe, being one of the first fruits of the season especially in the northern hemisphere.”
The Frosts, with their son Phillip, have persevered with their quest to make a living from these two berries that are recognised as good, healthy foods. They have learned on the job, applied available science when needed and have adapted their business to the every changing and volatile world market.
