At Sil Moonen from Roggel, the blueberry season is off to a good start. "We had beautiful weather during the flowering period, which ensured perfect fruit set. The harvest is therefore good, although the hot weather of the past few days threw a bit of a spanner in the works, resulting in us having to stop harvesting earlier because of the heat."
Marketing is still fairly minimal, according to the grower. "Last week and the week before it was still going reasonably well, but now that the holidays have started, demand has dropped. Poland has a later start to the season, but they benefit from a large domestic market," says Sil. "According to market analysts, the Netherlands would be fine with its own harvest, but somehow Polish blueberries always end up in our shops. There's always a lot of talk about CO₂ emissions, but apparently, that doesn't matter so much in those cases."
© Sil Moonen BV
Kathadin and Duke
© Sil Moonen BV
Moonen usually picks the first batch of berries by hand and does a second hand-picking on certain varieties to ensure the best quality. The rest is harvested by machine. Last year, the grower replaced another 5 hectares with new varieties, opting for the free variety 'Calypso' and newcomer 'Kathadin', among others. He previously grew blueberries in Germany and the northern Netherlands but sold those nurseries, so his entire acreage of 40 hectares is now located in the municipality of Leudal, good for around 400,000 kilos of blueberries per year. When asked which sales markets he focuses on, Sil laughs and says, "Whichever market pays best, which is why we're keeping quiet at the moment."
"We also sold some Spanish berries this year. When you see that they can put a plant in the ground in January and pick 2 kilos per plant the following year, while we have to wait three to four years for that, you sometimes ask yourself what we're doing here. And we're already passionate about it, but the Spaniards, in turn, look toward Morocco with eager anticipation. When you see the high prices they've been able to achieve there, we can only dream of that. I sometimes tell my daughter: 'If I were young and not so tied to this place, I'd take the first train in that direction...'"
For more information:
Sil Moonen
Berryfarm.co.uk
Mortel 27
6088 AH Roggel
Tel: +31 (0)475 494727
Mob.: +31 (0)6 532 88 523
[email protected]
