Kevin Kempter attends high school in Cooroy, a tiny town in the Noosa Hinterland of Queensland in Australia. Kevin’s passion for  growing things brought him to Galeru as a horticulture trainee where he works in our rainforest orchards almost every Thursday to develop his knowledge of native plants. He spent much of his Christmas holidays helping with the harvest, (Christmas occurs during mid-summer down here in the southern hemisphere.)  In the photograph, Kevin is checking out the fruit on a tree which, you will notice, forms along its trunk.  The species is Davidsonia jerseyana. and its fruit are called rain plums because they look like plums.  When ripe, they turn deep purple.

Abundant rain and ideal conditions triggered a bumper yield of rain plums this 2011-2012 harvest season. The Davidsonia flourishes best where it is not subject to wind or severe heat. Its natural environment is under-storey and since the rainforest invariably comprises diverse species, we at Galeru have planted in similar manner, incorporating the canopy of some trees to provide shade or a windbreak for others.  

The fruit is delicious when turned into a sauce and recent laboratory tests have established the anti-oxidant level of rain plums is not only very high but actually RISES  when it is cooked. Rain plum sauce is very popular with customers who visit  our Galeru stall at the  Big Pineapple  Growers’ Market.

Galeru Rainforest Products at the Big Pineapple in Queensland

 Martha and David are delighted the Big Pineapple Saturday Morning Growers Markets re-opened this month. Even better! The stall featuring our unique rainforest yoghurts,drinks,cakes and sauces that are grown and produced in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland is situated INSIDE  the famous icon’s facility. As much as we  appreciate the customers we acquired at farmers markets in the region, we have to admit(reluctantly) we aren’t getting any younger and contending with vagaries of the weather - wind and rain or extreme heat -  under a fragile canopy got to be too much for us to handle.

During the months of July and August we took a break from the markets to participate an an exciting pilot project involving the extraction of cane juice from sugar cane in commercial quantities. And now - at what we feel is an opportune moment - Galeru was invited to participate in the re-opening of the Big Pineapple Saturday Growers Market under the auspices of a new ownership and management. There will be more blogs about what is happening at the BIG PINEAPPLE  and Galeru’s participation in coming developments…. In the meantime, you may find it worth your while to call in of a Saturday morning and find yourself caught up in the new energy of this grand lady of Australian icons.

Our rainforest products are merely an indication of the immense variety of produce available for you to sample and purchase as you see fit. Fresh produce, meat direct from the farmers, fish, bakery items, chutneys, unique food gifts and indigenous art are all part of this exciting mix…. the prices are reasonable and the quality excellent. The  ATMOSPHERE above all is vibrant. It’s as if the new management has swept out the cobwebs and breathed new life into a venue that now suits the needs of growers and warrants the support of  both the locals and our visitors from interstate and elsewhere.

And if you read this blog, do stop by, say hello and - if you feel inclined - by all means have a taste of our unique rainforest fare.

Did you catch Poh’s Kitchen this Wednesday evening on TV? Poh was making a “Maple Crunch Muesli” and I was delighted when she added our Australian riberries to incorporate  their unique and delicious flavour. If you’re interested, you can download the programme episode from Poh’s website at www.abc.net.au/tv/pohskitchen/  Here at Galeru we process the riberries so they are ready to use as either Rainberry TM Compote or Rainberry TM Chutney.   We also provide  riberries (frozen) as part of our food service to hotels and restaurants.

The riberry is a lilly pilly native to Australia rainforests

 Riberry (Syzygium leuhmannii) is one of a multitude of varieties of lilly pilly that is native to Australia. Galeru is now the world’s major source of this unique fruit.  Over a decade ago our growers began planting riberry trees in orchard circumstances on their properties along Australia’s rainforest coast, from  Woolgoolga NSW north to Goomboorian in Queensland,  no more than twenty minutes from Tin Can Bay and FraserIsland.  The pictures in thie blog were taken at Galeru’s rainforest orchards in the Noosa Hinterland where these trees were planted to reclaim pasture on a small property ( 12 acres) that was no longer commercially viable for dairy  or raising beef cattle. It is a sad fact that  peri-urban horticulture and agriculture is being swallowed up by suburban sprawl. Even nurseries are going out of business as bitumen for parking lots and infrastructure for shopping centres deprive all of us of vital topsoil for growing the food we need NOW! never mind in the future. It is perhaps ironic, that one of the few horticultural enterprises that remains viable in the peri-urban region is the growing of native trees on the very land where they were felled to make way for what is no longer sustainable.

My next blog will give you a glimpse of how Galeru growers figured out the viable way to plant and harvest these trees.

Harvest Time at Galeru

October is upon us and once again we have to gear up for the coming harvest of our rainforest orchards. The rain plums (Davidsonia) are loaded. So are our raincherries (Syzygium fibrosum). And the riberries (Syzygium leuhmanni) that comprise the bulk of our lilly pilly trees.  It is a little early yet for the native tamarinds (diploglottis) and yet again we have lost a lot of our blue almonds (Athertonia diversifolia) due to extreme wet conditions that encouraged a fungi infection presently beyond our control.  Harvest time coincides with school holidays here in the  Noosa Hinterland so we can provide High School students gainful employment during their summer break. Every year they bring in the harvest, screen and wash  the berries and plums and tamarinds we then freeze for future processing into our unique Galeru products: Rainberry Compote, Rainberry Chutney, Raincherry Compote, Rainplum sauces and Rainforest Salsa. We have also come up with a really yum drink … but more on that in the future. We also have our Galeru Food Service that caters to restaurants and hotels. So if you happen to be thinking of something special to go with trukey this coming Xmas - like our Rainberry Compote  made from riberries, check out that information available on our web page.   And now I have to get back into our rainforest orchards… there’s a lot to do. CASS.

Tiny Tamarinds

David’s pioneer crop of Syzigium fibrosum planted in his rainforest orchard near Cooroy. It took five years for the trees to produce fruit. After their initial crop, the yields have been substantial.