42 | Strode Road Orchard Phone: 021 349 874 Landline: 06 867 3924 www.w t r ans . co. nz Proud to Supply Temperature Controlled Transport for Strode Road Orchard One system. Every season. Timesheets, harvest tracking and payroll, connected for New Zealand growers. See AgriSmart in action agrismart.com 0800 110 172 REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Happy pickers in the mix Lochie and Gretchen McNally - all set for the coming cherry harvest. T T Aimee Wilson The owners of Strode Road Orchard in Earnscleugh never have any trouble filling their 55 seasonal vacancies over the summer months. Gretchen and Lochie McNally have a great reputation for looking after their summer staff, and the backpacker reviews are proof of that. They are also Recognised Seasonal Employers (RSE) and employ many locals as well – everyone from high school and university students to teenage neighbours living on their road. The 30ha orchard grows a range of cherry varieties for export as well as for the domestic market, and their nectarines, peaches, and plums are sold through Foodstuffs and MG Marketing. They are then distributed throughout the country and sold to supermarkets and independent retailers. “Our cherries end up all over the country and we have a lot of repeat customers,” Lochie says. The Chelan is the first variety to ripen in mid-December, followed by Folfer, with at least 40% of the total volume picked for the lucrative pre-Christmas New Zealand market. Then, post-Christmas, the export market is in full swing. “We really start to turn the tap on,” says Lochie, with Lapin, Staccato and Kordia all sent offshore to markets in Asia. The weather remains the biggest challenge for cherry growers, but by ensuring they have plenty of varieties grown over a six-week harvest period the risk is minimal. “A rain event will affect a window of cherries but not the whole crop,” Lochie says. Then, if all else fails and it has been a particularly wet season, they still have their other stone fruit to fall back on – harvesting from mid- to late-January when the cherries have finished, until the end of March. Supplying an average of seven tonnes of stone fruit a day to markets, their produce is trucked straight to Christchurch where some is flown out to export markets and the rest sent off to the North Island. With diesel prices remaining high, the cost of freight, which they have to cover, is one of their biggest overheads, next to wages and packaging. Lochie and Gretchen purchased Strode Road about eight years ago, and both came from farming backgrounds. Lochie grew up on a sheep and beef farm in Southland and Gretchen in the Waitaki Valley. She trained and worked as a nurse before the couple made the move to Central Otago. Gretchen looks after all the human resources (HR) and recruitment, along with Health & Safety requirements and audits, while Lochie prefers to be out on the orchard. They both love the lifestyle that fruit growing brings, and understand the challenges that come with the weather through all of its cycles. “The model that you run is no different to any farming model. You need good diversity to deal with those challenges,” says Lochie. “The weather is always going to be varied and you have to accept the volatility of that.”
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