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PROPAGATING trees, growing fruit, making juice and drying produce is all in a day’s work for South East couple Chris and Michelle McColl.
The Kalangadoo apple growers are passionate about reducing food mileage and making sure their community has access to local produce, all while getting back to the basics with the help of their furry and feathered friends.
From chooks, geese, maremma dogs and Jersey cows to bees and native birds, the pair run a range of animal species in their organic orchard as natural critter control.
“What we’ve been focused on in the past few years is trying to incorporate animals or poultry into the system and encourage native birds and insects to do the work for us,” Mrs McColl said.
“In Australia we have a substitution mentality where people think changing from a non-organic chemical to an organically certified chemical or product to kill the pests and it’s not how natural ecosystems work.
“So, we are trying to develop a natural system and we are very conscious of nutrients staying on the orchard where we can.
“If we can get healthy soil, then we’ll have healthy plants and then we’ll have healthy people.”
During their everyday organic operations, the McColls continue to close in on their main focus - to grow the tastiest, most nutritious fruit.
“We started out with just five varieties of apples and we’ve ended up with 30 main varieties and we’ve also introduced peaches,” Mrs McColls said.
“We are very focused on local and success for us is selling as much as we can as close as we can to home.”
The pair have even encouraged other growers to get on board, selling on a small scale.
“It seems to us such a shame that we are living in this highly productive part of the State and yet it is often quite hard to access fresh, local fruit and vegetables and produce,” Mr McColl said.
“We were involved in getting the farmers market going in Mount Gambier and that is one way to make local food accessible to the community – we want to focus on localisation not globalisation. We are all about providing fresh produce that is keeping people healthy and money within the community.”
The McColls have a background in agricultural science and about 30 years of experience in horticulture, from Central Australia to the Middle East.