In comparison to the serenity of the paddocks of sheep, goats, pigs and cows outside, the store at French's Farm is a hive of activity.
'Welcome to our madness,” laughs Katherine Hughes, daughter of business owners Mike and Robyn French.
She and Robyn are busily filling fruit and vege orders that will be delivered around Papamoa, Te Puke and Mount Maunganui that day.
Katherine's phone dings with fresh notifications of new orders every few minutes. It's the family's only nod to technology with everything else done on scales and an ‘old school' notepad and pen.
'It keeps everything transparent so the customer can see what's going on,” says Mike. 'We're known for quality and these two [Robyn and Katherine] wouldn't let anything go out the door that they wouldn't buy themselves.”
Livestock and veges
The family has leased the 1.5-hectare piece of land on the outskirts of Te Puke for the last four years. It's now home to livestock, chickens, ducks as well as a startling array fruit trees and vegetables. When reminded of the 1980s British TV series ‘The Good Life', Robyn laughs.
'Yes, that's us,” she says. 'A lot of the things we do is to be as self-sufficient as possible. We've always been country people. I love it and wouldn't have it any other way. If I could be out in the vegetable garden all the time, that's where I'd be.”
The French family is also taken by the idea of providing quality food for the community.
'What we don't grow or produce ourselves, we source from other organic growers,” says Katherine. 'So mum and dad go to Gisborne twice-a-week and that's where the oranges, pears, apples, mandarins come from.”
Purpose
Everything has a purpose. The goats are milked, the chickens and ducks lay free-range eggs, the livestock provides meat for the family and is bartered for leftover bakery scraps that are used to feed the pigs.
'My kids and granddaughter love it here,” says Katherine. 'Depending on the season, they can wander down and pick a peach, plum or nectarine off the tree. Mum and dad always wanted to stick with the old-fashioned varieties to preserve the species.”
As we're talking, a message comes in from a grower in Gisborne that a hailstorm has stripped the leafy greens and the smiles fall from the French family's faces. They've been affected by weather disasters before.
'This property has a high water table. In 2018 rain flooded the paddock of potatoes, ruining an entire crop,” says Katherine. 'It cost so much money. The year that I came closest to calling it a day, though, was the one where I lost all my lambs in a cold snap. It was awful. You learn, though, I'm ready for it now.”
Pet project
Mike's pet project is growing a range of tropical fruit. The plastic shed is kept around 20 degrees Celsius to allow mangos, coconut, babaco, passionfruit, bananas, pineapples, paw paw, jackfruit, star apple, dates and even coffee to flourish.
'I grow coffee just to prove that I can do it,” says Mike. 'I grew up on a station on the east coast, just north of Ruatoria.
'My dad was a keen gardener and we had five different orchards with the original one planted in 1860 with apple trees that came from Kent in England. As a 13-year-old, I was allowed to climb up into the trees and do what I liked, so I got to see each season what helped the trees and fruit grow.”
Three of Mike and Robyn's six children, and three of their 15 grandchildren, work on the farm to keep on top of the growing demand.
'We were doing a few deliveries and selling from the gate when Covid struck,” says Mike. 'Suddenly, people were avoiding supermarkets, so we were inundated with orders.
'Instead of doing 15 deliveries on a Wednesday and three or four on a Tuesday and Thursday, suddenly we were doing 30 deliveries every day. Sometimes until eight o'clock at night. It was crazy. A lot of those customers have stayed with us.”
Grow anything
'We'll try to grow anything,” says Katherine. 'We grow berries – raspberries, strawberries. Mum and dad will decide to try growing watermelons, so they'll grow a whole paddock of them. Then one year, dad decided to be different, so he grew pumpkins. Mum grows peas and we just go out and eat them straight off the plant. They're lovely.”
'Some days we're up at the crack of dawn,” says Mike. 'We'll come in during the day and have a rest, and then back out. It really is a good life.”
0 comments
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to make a comment.