Thursday, November 20th, 2014
This was the day we left the Waikato for the Bay of Plenty, as we headed for Te Puke, the kiwi fruit capital of New Zealand. This entailed traveling through: Tamahere, Cambridge, Karapiro, Te Poi, the Kaimai Mountains (which separates the Waikato region from the Bay of Plenty region), Tauranga, and Papmoa.
Te Puke is the best place in the world to grow kiwifruit, mostly because of its climate. It is cold enough in the winter to get rid of most of the pests during their winter. However, it rarely frosts over and because of the hills, most of the super cold air funnels into the gullys between orchards that are full of the natural brush. Fun Fact: Kiwifruit vines are actually considered an invasive species in the Bay of Plenty region, because birds eat the seeds from the bad fruit. This causes the seeds to be spread where it eventually takes over the native vegetation.
Tauranga was Wayne, our bus driver's hometown. It is currently home to New Zealand's biggest and busiest port, Mt. Maunganui Port, named for the mountain that sits at the entrance of the port. In the almost 2 hour drive to Te Puke, I was once again reminded about the Kiwis' love for roundabouts. You could not travel more than 5 miles without going through a roundabout.
Once we were in Te Puke, we headed for Trevalyn's Pack and Cool, where we met Daniel Brinie, Trevalyn's avocado manager. We arrived just in time to see them pack avocados. Trevalyn's has been around Te Puke for about 35 years. Back in the beginning most orchards had their own packing houses on site, but as the years progressed packing houses moved to central locations so they could serve several different locations. Trevalyn's, itself, has its own orchards.
In New Zealand, all kiwifruit producers are required to supply one marketer, called Zespri. This means that all of the kiwi fruit produced in New Zealand is shipped to packing houses where it is packed, then Zespri is responsible for shipping it around the country and overseas. Next time you buy kiwifruit at your local grocery store, check out the little sticker. If it says Zespri, then it was grown in New Zealand! As a farmkid, I think it's pretty cool to know where your food was produced.
One of the coolest things we saw at Trevalyn's was the pollen mill. For one reason or another, kiwifruit does not pollinate as efficiently as some producers would prefer. Some kiwifruit growers rent beehives to be placed in their orchards while others spray pollen on their female vines. Trevalyn's picks male flowers just before they open and dries the pollen. It is then mixed into a solution which is sprayed directly onto the female flowers when they open. This has been shown to increase the fruit size and their seed number. It is a very profitable venture for Trevalyn's and can cost up to $2000 per kilogram.
From Trevalyn's we headed to Kiwi360, a kiwifruit orchard that also serves as a tourist attraction, giving tours of their orchards and educating foreigners on New Zealand's kiwifruit industry.
New Zealand's average kiwifruit orchard is 4-10 hectares. Last May, Kiwi360 harvested around 100 million trays producing 350,000 tonnes of kiwi, which roughly translates to about $1.5 billion (about 22% of New Zealand's GDP). About 75% of the national harvest is of the Hayward Green Flesh variety while about 25% is the fairly new gold flesh variety. However, a bacteria called Pseudomonas syringae (PSA) was discovered in kiwifruit orchards in Bay of Plenty in November of 2010. The gold variety happened to be very susceptible to the bacteria, causing most of the vines to be wiped out. They have just now started to recover and have begun their breeding programs over again.
I could write a whole blog post solely about the origins of New Zealand's kiwifruit industry so I should probably keep moving.
We ate our lunch on Maketu Beach where we made some new friends and took a lot of pictures.
We would be spending the next few nights Taupo at the Taupo Urban Retreat (which happened to have its own bar). Fun Fact: Taupo is the coldest city in New Zealand and is usually the only area that sees snow in the winter.
We were able to eat our supper at Victoria's Cafe Kitchen Bar where we were served burgers made with beef from LakeTaupo Beef, which is owned by Mike and Sharon Barton. The Barton's farm would be our first stop the next day.
We spent our night bonding with the other foreigners at our hostel and yes, that bonding included beer. Alcohol, in my limited experience seems to break the international language barrier.
Megan and I ended up in a room with 2 other roommates who were not a part of our group. The best part of my night had to be when I was headed back to the room with an armful of laundry and ended up behind a tall, blonde guy who turnedout to be from the Netherlands on the stairs. It was just my luck, that he happened to be going the same direction I was heading so I got to be the creepy girl that seemed to be following him to his room at 2 in the morning, and wouldn't you know he ends up being one of my roommates. He ended up checking out the next day, hopefully it wasn't because of the weird girl who stalked him through the hostel (pretty sure that's a horror movie).
Alright, that's it for this one. If you aren't sick of me yet, stay tuned for Part 6!
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