('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) - (WHISTLES) - Always a favourite on every rural road. (DOG BARKS) - When I came here, I didn't know one apple from another. I didn't have a clue. - He spent 20 years creating an organic orchard... - When we first tried sending apples off for export, we got quite a good price. - ...but age catches up with all of us. - They're both in their 80s, and so it was a good excuse for us to come back and help take over the family business. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024 (EASY-GOING MUSIC) - When Bruce Campbell bought this apple orchard, he was an electrical engineer, not an orchardist. - We bought this place in 1999 when I was thinking of retiring, and, uh, I wasn't keen just to live in a town section when I... was 62, so I wanted something a bit larger than a town section, and, uh, we couldn't find anything about an acre, so we ended up buying this. - On the edge of Christchurch, the orchard had once been part of the Apple Fields conglomerate, but it had been neglected. - It was just a jungle when we came here. The house wasn't here. It hadn't been touched for, I would say, about eight years, and there was just growth everywhere. We were going to pull the trees out, but then we thought, well, it hasn't had any inputs into it for quite a few years, and perhaps we could think of going organic. - Bruce is now into his 80s, and three years ago, his son Hamish and family returned to Christchurch to lend a hand. - How's it going? - Not so bad. - I'll come and do the bottoms along here now. - Make certain you do a good job. - (LAUGHS) They're getting a bit older now. They're both in their 80s, and so it was a good excuse for us to come back and help take over the family business. - Today's job is pruning. - Basically, what we're trying to do is make a kind of a flattish kind of platform to let the sun in. Um, what we don't really like is cuts that are straight flat, because it just encourages growth. The other thing is we don't want too much crowding in the trees. So any branches kind of going backwards, we remove; and any that are coming down too much, we also remove. Of course the heavy prune usually happens in the winter. This row is probably a bit overdue. But when the blossoms come out, you kind of get a little bit hesitant to chop off too many, because of course, you're busy counting the number of fruit that you're losing. But to get high-quality fruit, you need to a good prune. - Most of Hamish's career has been in Australia, working as a cancer researcher. He was at university getting a PhD in cancer and viruses when his parents bought the orchard. - At one of the summer holidays, I came back and actually pruned the whole orchard ` so there's about 2500 trees. It was really neglected. The grass was... was waist height, the trees were in really bad shape. - When I started helping on the orchard, he knew as little as Bruce. - It was a crash course in pruning. We did have a consultant come and show me how to do it, and it was really about trying to then perfect the art of pruning. Once you've done about 2000 trees, you get pretty good at pruning. - When Bruce started down the organic path, it was new to Canterbury, and most orchardists were sceptical. - Most of them thought it couldn't be done, or it wouldn't be viable. And even the consultant we used, who was very well-known consultant, he laughed. He says, 'Oh, it's all smoke and mirrors,' he said, but it has become quite mainstream. Some of the people that doubted it have converted to organics, and they're doing quite well too. So we decided, well, we'll try it, and if it didn't work, well, it didn't matter. I mean, we had nothing to lose. (RELAXING MUSIC) - Hamish and wife Carol reckon Christchurch is a great place to bring up their two daughters. They're pleased to have grandparents Bruce and Jillian close by. - Go! Go, girl, cos girls can! - CAROL: It's been nice to come back to family. I think that's what we missed in the early years when we had our children. And definitely, it was a lifestyle choice from the busyness of Sydney life. There's pros and cons, of course. We miss our friends from Sydney and the climate sometimes, but I think it's nice to have family life back in Christchurch. It's a slower pace, and it's sort of opportunity to sort of stop and reflect a bit more than what we had in Sydney. - Being organic restricts what chemicals Bruce can use when it comes to dealing with pests. - I'm spraying with lime sulphur. It's to prevent black spot getting started in the orchard. Black spot is one of the biggest problems that apple growers have, and in particular, organic growers, because the tools they've have got to hold black spot back are fairly limited. - Despite the sceptics, Bruce went on to lead the way in organics in the region. - I think we were the first export-certified apple orchard in Canterbury. You can get certified for local production, but when you get certified for export, you have to take into consideration the organic rules and standards of the countries that the apples are being exported to. - Black spot isn't the only pest the Campbells have to deal with. - HAMISH: Codling moth is a huge pest for apple orchards. And of course, being an organic orchard, we can't spray like maybe a conventional orchard does. So what we do is we put pheromone ties on each of the trees, and what that does is it soaks the area in the mating hormone that the moths use, and it actually disrupts them from being able to find a mate. And so that way, we keep the population of codling moth low in the orchard. (CELL PHONE RINGS) - Hello. Hamish speaking. Sure. What time? OK. Not a problem. OK. Bye. - Although Hamish has returned to Christchurch to help out his father, his plans could be changed by events in four days' time. This coming Saturday is election day, and Hamish is running for Parliament. - I'm the National Party candidate for the Ilam electorate, and we've got an election coming up, and so it's a lot` a lot of work. I'm meeting as many people as I can around the electorate. - If Hamish gets elected, running the Orchard will fall to his wife, Carol, and his dad, Bruce. - Well, it puts me back on my own a bit, to a certain extent, and, uh, as you get older, you don't seem to get as many things done ` you think you're going to, but you just don't. But, um, young people have to make their own careers. - I guess, to a certain degree, ignorance is bliss. (CHUCKLES) We're not really sure what the next six months, 12 months is going to look like. So to a certain degree, it's just about running with what happens. It's very tense. This is a huge lifestyle change, so it's about, um, the unknown. We don't` We don't really know what Saturday will bring. (GENTLE ACOUSTIC MUSIC) (GENTLE ACOUSTIC MUSIC) - Six months after the election, and it's autumn on Bruce Campbell's organic apple orchard in Christchurch. His son Hamish was elected to parliament and won't be taking over the orchard, which means a change of pace too for Hamish's wife, Carol. - Hamish is away two to three weeks of the month, and when he's home, he's often not present, cos it's kind of one of those jobs that can be all-consuming. So it's taken a bit of adjustment, but then I guess to a certain degree it's about 'this is our new normal'. So understanding that, we make it work because this is our life. But, yeah, some weeks are harder than others, and I guess I appreciate single parents a lot more these days. - With Hamish busy elsewhere, Bruce didn't get a lot of jobs done in time, like thinning, so this year's crop is much smaller than usual. - It's too much for one man. As age happens and both of us are getting older, we can't put in the time that we need, and, um, costs have gone up. - Bruce has been relying on daughter-in-law Carol for help. - There's the grading of the apples, there's the helping out with the picking, there's the organising of staff and a lot of the, um, book work behind the scenes that needs doing and just those everyday things that are part of getting through. (CHUCKLES) - Different varieties of apples ripen at different times, and this morning, they're testing the Granny Smiths. - We're checking the apples, whether they're ready to pick. What we do, we actually pick samples. We check them for their flesh pressure... Yeah, they're very dense. That's 13-plus. ...and then we do a starch test to see how far the sugars have developed in the apple. We have to compare the starch pattern of the apples with a chart, because especially if it's for export, it has to be within certain parameters; for local, it's not so bad. The riper it is, the sooner you should sell it, and it's good for consumption. But for storage, it's best to have it about 3, perhaps 4. But these ones, as you can see, I think they definitely... - ...are sitting at about a 3. - About a 3. I think that's a 3, yes. And then we also do a sugar reading, a Brix test, to see what the Brix reading is, because these all determine the correct time to harvest. - So we've got 15.1 on our Brix, we've got 3 on our starch test, and our firmness is 13, so good for harvest. - Spot on. - It's halfway through the harvest season, and this week they're picking Fuji. There's a small group of pickers who come and go. - We have Paul. He's been a regular for about... 14 years since Paul's first come, and he comes every year. We can usually rely on him to come and help us out ` and he can pick. When he picks, he picks. He's the best picker we've ever had. - Bruce gives his pickers a choice ` to be paid by the hour or by the bin. - Paul often chooses to go by the bin. You can make good money if you're a fast picker with a bin rate, but, uh, it's very hard to get people now. We've always tried to pay our people above the minimum wage, because everyone's got to live. I know what it's like to be hard up. - They wear gloves to protect the fruit. - Apples bruise very easily. I don't grip them. I just roll them up. Because if people do that, you'll get a whole bin full of apples with finger marks all over it. And once you get that, well, no one wants them. It's very weather dependent. You have to get the apples picked within a certain time to get them in a certain rating if you're going to export them. But when you're doing it locally, well, you're a bit more flexible. But all the same, picking at the right time is still better for local because they do keep better. - But ripe apples appeal to birds. - I like birds, but not starlings when they come in by 100 in a pack ` and they do that. You can frighten them away, and one or two will sit up on the` on the shelterbelts around, and when they see it's clear again, they come in, and then all their mates come too. They'll sit on the netting, and they peck through and ruin an apple, because they only need one peck and the apple's gone. - We're looking through these bins that are going to storage, just to make sure that the quality of the apples we're sending to storage are the best we can possibly be. This is looking pretty good. I'm kind of struggling to find too many that we need to get rid of. We've got one little deformed one there that's probably going to have to go to rejects. These are our Fuji apples, so they're very sweet. They tend to be quite, um, big, so often, they're the ones that go to export. - But this year, Bruce hasn't had a crop big enough to service the export market. He's concentrating on keeping his local customers happy. The crop goes to a cool store until it's needed for sale. - We send it out to a company called Mill Orchard, and they have big cool stores, and they also have controlled atmosphere stores, so we can be selling apples up to December. So that's not bad for a fruit to last that long. (GENTLE ACOUSTIC MUSIC) - Along with raising two daughters and helping Bruce on the orchard, Carol Campbell runs her own florist business. She's at Wendy Reid's garden to choose flowers for the enterprise she's named Koha Iti ` little gift. - Koha Iti is an online flower business. We basically have a bunch of the week that's seasonal. This week's bunch, we're just enjoying the last of our dahlias, hoping that winter doesn't come too soon with the frost. We've got zinnias, and we've got a little bit of lisianthus in there and other fillers. So that's the style this week. - So this is Genova... - Genova. - ...which has been my absolute favourite all season. - I love coming to Wendy because she's a local grower. People like Wendy have a passion for the growing, and you know that they're looking after their flowers. If they've got a problem with pests or diseases, they're sourcing natural solutions at all possible before resorting to the sprays ` and that's my kind of people. It's about sourcing locally. So we love coming to our local growers, who give us fresh stock and often stock that we couldn't get through a lot of the mainstream providers. We enjoy them while they're seasonal, and then we create a new flower bunch for the next period that is coming in. - Carol runs her online floral business from home. - We have a very streamlined model in the fact that we have a bunch of the week that's available ` small, medium and large. However, at the moment I'm actually making a posy. - Carol's not always been a florist. - I was a schoolteacher ` so working in Sydney as a school teacher ` and then came back to Christchurch, which is really home for both Hamish and myself, um, and decided I needed a new direction. So I decided to do something a little more creative. So I came to this idea of running a flower business, but with a very much of a Earth-friendly, sort of sustainable model that, you know, had a feel-good factor for those that are receiving the flowers, but also for me as a florist making the flowers. I really like to see what it looks like. This is why I have a mirror here. I stand here. You're making your bunch and you're going, 'OK, how does it look?' I can see I've got a gap over here. So I want to make sure that when we're doing a posy, I'm turning it around, and I'm fitting those into the gaps to make it look a bit fuller. So my mirror is my best friend. When we wrap the flowers, I wanna make sure that we're wrapping them in materials that are recyclable, can be reused and will break down over time. When I wrap these up, there will be put in a bag that's cornstarch, so that's biodegradable. We'll wrap them. We have different wrapping techniques, but we have brown paper or we have hessian that we know that we can reuse. But at the very least, if it does get discarded, we know it's a natural product. It'll break down. (ENGINE STARTS) - And when it comes to deliveries, Carol's doing it in style. (EASY-GOING ACOUSTIC MUSIC) - Christchurch florist and orchardist Carol Campbell does her deliveries in a quirky vehicle, an Italian Piaggio Ape. - The little Ape, it does get, uh, the eyes of the passers-by. It's like a little motorbike with a cab. So it's got all the challenges of a motorbike controls. It's fun, but you've got to remember it doesn't have modern technology, so you've got to do all the checks and balances before you get too far down the road. Those people that have put in their order by 12 o'clock get same-day delivery. So we'll pop around the town doing those. Vicky? - Yes. - I have a delivery for you. - Oh, what a beautiful bunch of flowers. - Have a good day. - Thank you so much. Thank you. - At the end of the week, all the stock we've got leftover from our bunch of the week is donated to charity, so to volunteers that are doing awesome work in our community, so sharing some aroha with those that are making a difference in our world. Emily, I have some volunteer bunches for some of your lovely workers. - Thank you so much. Aren't they amazing? Beautiful bouquets for beautiful volunteers. - Back on the orchard, Carol and father-in-law Bruce are grading apples. When Bruce decided he needed a grading machine, his engineering background came in handy. He built a number-eight-wire system from bits and pieces. - We found a bin tipper at one place that was selling out, and, uh, we got a conveyor there, um, from another orchard, I think it was. and these brushes also from another place, and, uh, it enabled us to get a bin, tip it on to this conveyor, bring it through over these brushes, which cleans them up and allows us to sort them as we go. And then we found this old potato grader, so we put that on the end, and it does a rough grading by size. It's fairly rudimentary, but it does the job for us. - We want the best-looking apples. So these being Fuji, nice red colour, good background cover. So if they're a bit green, um, I'll discard them. If they've got a little bit of black spot, like one or two, that's fine. It's just the surface. But if they are quite an extensive one, like this has obviously got a bit of a hole in it, that's going to be discarded. Small ones are discarded to keep the sizes up, and generally making sure that the apples that go through are the best quality and also the best look. We eat with our eyes. For the rejects that we're putting in here, they'll be put into a juice bin, and then that juice bin is sent out and made into our juice. So every time we have a juice run, it's a slightly different mixture of discarded apples. (GENTLE MUSIC) - On Saturdays, Carol drives across the city to Lyttelton. - I really love the Lyttelton markets, actually. It's a lovely cute little tight-knit community, and we have our locals that we have a lovely kind of rapport with. - Husband Hamish gets home from Parliament at weekends. - Being an MP is fairly full on. Every now and again, I manage to escape and come` come to the markets. I try and help out around the orchard whenever I can, but it's a fairly full-on job being a member of Parliament. - Marine reserves? - Yes. - Why are National not supporting more marine reserves? Because they increase the total number of fish. - We are. - You are? - Yes. - Yeah, a lot of the time I feel like a solo parent. There's often in the weekends, of course, that I'm doing this alone because Hamish has got other commitments. So it's not just during the week, but you get to work out what's the new normal, and you get to appreciate the time you have together and understand that there's other times that you don't have the monopoly on his time. - It does play on my mind that the family have to pick up the tab when I'm busy being... being away up in Wellington. I'm really grateful for Carol, who does more than her fair share with the orchard and also with her flower business as well. So, yeah, it does` it does play on the mind. - While Carol is a big help to Bruce, she's also busy with her flower business and family, so Bruce knows he has decisions to make. - We're not going to carry on doing the whole lot ourselves. The option is that we downsize it and try and make it more efficient for the size you've got; the other option is there are some people that are interested in leasing it, and that could be an option that we go down; and the third one is we do nothing and just eventually, uh, pull the trees out. - Bruce will have to make a call soon, but in the meantime, he's philosophical. - Age happens, (CHUCKLES) and no one escapes. So you've just got to be realistic about that. I may be.. I may be feeling well and fit now, but who knows? (SOFT REFLECTIVE MUSIC) (TRACTOR ENGINE THRUMS) (MUSIC FINISHES) ('COUNTRY CALENDAR' THEME) - Next time ` - Up you go. I always sort of had farming in my blood. - this farm manager was challenged by the owner to do things differently. - It got me thinking ` why are we doing this? When you put a dog around the cows and calves, it can stress the mother out. Just over here, we've got a brand-new calf. It's about half an hour old. They're just way calmer if they're with the same mates for their whole life. It really opened up the world of farming in a different light for me. - That's next time on Hyundai Country Calendar. (COWS MOO)