Walnuts: Harvesting a busy time at Canterbury orchard

Heather North and Clive Marsh with a bin full of walnuts at LightFoot Orchard. Photo / RNZ, Cosmo Kentish-Barnes

By Cosmo Kentish-Barnes of RNZ

The tree shaker and nut gatherer are cracking through Clive Marsh and Heather North’s picturesque nuttery near Lincoln.

“The trees are around 25 years old now, so it’s a bit like wandering around in a woodland these days,” she told RNZ’s Country Life.

By harvest’s end, over 30 tonnes of dried walnuts will have been turned into premium products at a local walnut processing facility.

The business partners grow two varieties of walnuts at the 16-hectare orchard, Rex and Meyric.

The majority are Rex, a disease-resistant nut with a good shell seal.

“They’re a smaller nut, so they’re not so good for in-shell use for a table nut, but they’re great for a commercial nut,” North said.

Walnuts fall from the trees from late March until the end of April.

Under the verdant canopy, a custom-made harvester moves through the dappled sunlight, picking them up.

It’s operated by retired onion farmer David Livesey, who guides it carefully around each tree.

In front of him, a rotating sweeper moves the nuts towards a pickup device that flicks the nuts up off the ground and into a bin at the back of the noisy machine.

“We imported that from France,” North said.

“They’ve got a well-developed walnut industry over there, and they have orchards of similar size to us, so they have quite suitable machinery for our orchards.”

Towards the end of the harvest, a tree shaker, bought from an almond orchard in California, comes out of hibernation to shake the last of the crop down.

North used to work as a research scientist in satellite remote sensing, and now she’s studying agribusiness.

Marsh has worked in process engineering for most of his professional life.

Image 1 of 10: The walnut trees are reaching peak production. Photo / RNZ, Cosmo Kentish-Barnes

They started growing walnut trees in the late 90s.

“We both had full-time jobs, so we wanted something that we could do at the same time,” North said.

“So, we decided not livestock.

“We wanted something that had a relatively low chemical input too and that grows well in Canterbury.”

Another key factor was a walnut processing factory that was already operating at the time in nearby West Melton.

“It’s owned by a cooperative of growers now, so we’re one of the shareholders, and we sell all of our walnuts to the co-op, and they market them under the Trickett’s Grove Walnuts brand,” she said.

As well as processing the nuts for their kernels, the co-operative also presses walnut oil.

A new walnut butter range is about to be launched too.

New Zealand growers don’t produce enough walnuts to meet domestic demand, so at the moment, a lot of walnuts are being imported from California.

Earlier this year, a scenery science expert at Lincoln University conducted a blind tasting of the co-op’s products against other kernel products on the market.

“He found that ours tasted fresher, less rancid, more nutty, and all of those tastes corresponded with traits that the customers preferred,” Marsh said.

“So, there was a clear customer preference for our product, so yeah, it was exciting to hear that.”

- RNZ