Not happy to sit back and retire, Graham Eipper and Barbara Bartholomew decided in 2004 to uproot from Griffith and buy a citrus orchard at Sandigo approximately 22 kilometres from Narrandera, NSW.
Two years later, a weak citrus market saw the couple looking to diversify their orchard in search of supplementing their orange income.
“With the poor prices we were getting for oranges, Graham and I thought it would be good to grow something else,” Barbara said.
“I was sitting in front of the fire during winter, looking through The Land, and saw an ad from a man in Megalong Valley in the Blue Mountains who was selling hazelnut trees.
“We purchased and planted 1200 trees on about two and a half hectares of what was formerly an old peach grove which wasn’t being used.
“Now we harvest around 150 kilograms of hazelnuts each year to supplement the 600 tonnes of Valencia oranges we harvest from more than 32 hectares of orchard,” she said.
Graham and Barbara’s enterprise is now called Glendale Citrus and Hazelnut Orchard and, despite it being a lot of hard work and a labour of love, the pair would not have it any other way.
“We were told hazelnuts were impossible to grow out here, but we have made it work,” Barbara said.
“We have had to be very diligent with our watering, especially in the warmer months.
“They need watering every second day and sometimes once a day during the really hot period.
“If we can get them through January when it is very hot, they are ready for harvest in February.
“We harvest by hand with these little rollers which can be hard work, but worth the effort.
“We also found that they grow better if we let them grow their way.
“We don’t try and prune or shape them at all,” she said.
The pair are helped on their orchard by their son, Robert, who has moved to the property after a career in hospitality in Sydney.
They also employ backpackers for seven months of the year to help with the citrus side of the orchard.
“I don’t know what we would do without the backpackers,” Barbara said.
