Bestview Orchards near Canobolas experienced 75 millimetres of rain at the weekend and 30mm on the following Monday, Western Magazine reported. This caused them to call in a helicopter to blow the rain from the fruit. And they had to do this multiple times.
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A month ago owner Adrian Vardanega, a second-generation orchardist, started preparing his orchard for the wet burst, as he would like to harvest 90 to 100 tonnes off his five-and-a-half hectares. On these, 11 different varieties of cherry trees are bearing fruit now, and more rain isn’t really needed.
This season’s weather was the biggest threat growers were facing, said Vardanega. “After Friday night we had fog until lunchtime and that means fungicides and helicopters.” A helicopter visited this orchard twice that day to dry out cherries.
It’s no longer unheard of for helicopters to blow rainwater off trees, but according to some growers it remains a game of chance: “But knowing my luck after spending 5000 to 10,000 dollars on helicopters drying our trees, sometime later they’d get another shower. It’s Murphy’s law.”
