26 Jan 2018

Harvesting Blackcurrants

From Country Life, 9:19 pm on 26 January 2018
Geoff Heslop

Geoff Heslop Photo: RNZ Cosmo Kentish-Barnes

Canterbury's blackcurrants are off the bushes and volumes are 30 percent down on usual.

Blackcurrant grower and chairman of of Blackcurrants New Zealand, Geoff Heslop, is putting the drop in yield down to the weather.

"It's been a trying year. When we were doing our bush maintenance in September it was really wet, it stayed that way until mid-October and then it didn't rain again until we started harvesting at the beginning of January," he says.

Geoff has 35 hectares planted in blackcurrants; the rest of his farm is in mixed crops as he doesn't want to put all his eggs in one basket.  

The Heslop family has been on the farm for 100 years. In May they will receive a Century Farm and Station Award, which recognises families that have operated and lived on the same farmland for 100 years or more.