Bob's Wonderful Plums

Jessica and Bob at Byron Markets

Raining today at Byron Markets, but Bob was still there with his chemical-free fruit and vegetables. Jessica came along for the tomatoes (and Russian cucumbers). Normally plums are not my favourite fruit, but these ones were deliciously sweet. 

Bob grows all this wonderful produce at his property in Dunoon. He tells me some of the trees there are very old – at least 30 years. Bob has a great variety of fruit for all seasons – peaches, custard apples, plums, pineapples, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados and even a few bananas. His vegetables are great and this week he had enormous spring onions, lettuce, chokos and beans. Like everyone else in the district Bob also grows macadamia nuts, but unlike some of his neighbours, he does not spray.

Bob and Jessica and Bob's splendid market stall

Bob started life as a dairy farmer (conventional) but gave that up 15 years ago and now concentrates on growing fruit and vegetables the natural way.

You’ll find Bob at the local Sunday markets. He does Bangalow, Byron, The Channon, Mullumbimby (on the third Saturday) and travels over to Casino on a Thursday.

Feasting on Figs

This morning we stopped for breakfast at Wises Fig Farm. One of the original farms in the area it has been a fruit farm for three generations. Although it is nearly the end of the season, their Black Genoas are simply the best I have tasted, and let’s face it, nothing tastes better than a ripe fig picked that same morning. We arrived just in time to get a box of their “jam” figs. We’re talking 4-plus kgs of very ripe, squishy delicious fresh figs, picked at 6am that morning and not even been in the fridge long enough to chill.

There are two varieties being picked at Wises right now; the Black Genoa and the Brown Turkey. I liken the flavour of the Brown Turkey as the reisling of the fig world, whereas the Black Genoas have a full body, rich flavour - more like the pinot of figs. Oh yum!

Wises used to do pick your own, for a range of fruits, but bureaucracy and the Sunshine Motorway development has curbed that. In it’s heyday, the farm had a fresh fruit stall, café and PYO operation. However the government wanted to double their rates, re-zoning them from farm land to “tourism”. So they shut up the shop, ceased the pick-your-own and re-focussed their efforts onto growing the best ever figs.

Parts of the original farm, which used to go down as far as where the Sunshine Plaza now is, have since been sold. Firstly to make way for the Sunshine Motorway, which now runs along the border of the farm. And more recently, the Wises sold off a block of land to developers. As a result, the entrance to the farm is discreetly tucked away at the back of a swish-looking housing estate off Wises Road. Despite that, a growing number of locals seem to know where to find the farm.

Picking starts at 6am. They use no pest control, other than biological controls for fruit fly. So pickers compete with the birds for the ripest figs. Figs are packed into punnets of about 1kg and popped in the fridge in the shed. Sales operate on an honesty box system and it is definitely good to get there early for the large $20 boxes of jam figs. A little squishy, they definitely need eating the same day. But we had no trouble doing that! The wises have two stands of fig trees. The older ones are about 10 years old, and due to the increased popularity of their figs, they’ve found a need to plant more trees to keep up with demand. The younger trees have been in the ground for about 4 years.