Just outside of Port Macquarie is Ricardoes, a farm where you can pick your own strawberries!

As the title implies, they also grow tomatoes, but you can’t pick your own.  Tomatoes was how the farm started, and strawberries are their second-biggest seller, but they also have a small citrus grove and some other vegetables.  This is the store/café, where they sell the produce:

Yes, that is an igloo behind it – for growing tomatoes.  This was the strawberry igloo:

I don’t know if they’re actually called igloos, but that’s what the employees called them, and they’d know better than me, right?  Plus, it’s just a fun word – igloo!

Check out the koala statue:

They had a lot of local produce, including jams, relishes and marmalades made from their crops.  I picked up some balsamic glaze made from their olives – I figured I could have it with the strawberries afterwards.

They offered farm tours at 11 on weekdays, so I popped along to have a look.  It was just me and an elderly couple interested in the tour, so it was a pretty private one.

The first place we went to was the tomatoes – the first room had seedlings that were just planted a few weeks ago:

These ones were several months old:

They’re grown hydroponically, in coconut mulch.  The igloo is also climate-controlled, which – besides the obvious use of allowing them to grow tomatoes out of season – also means they don’t have to use as much fungicide/pesticide and the like.

The rows of tomatoes were very long:

Those metal rails are used for the trolleys during picking, and in winter they also run hot water through them to heat the place up.  The water in heated in a furnace, which isn’t fuelled by coal, but instead powered by burning macadamia shells.  I had no idea that was even a thing, but I suppose they’d burn just fine.

After the tomatoes, we got to look at the strawberries:

Strawberries are a very fragrant crop – I could smell them before we even walked into the igloo.

Again, hydroponics mean they’re planted in trellises – they get five layers on each side, so they get a lot more strawberries that way.  They also have bees in among the strawberries to pollinate them, otherwise the fruit doesn’t form.  I managed to get a picture of one:

Okay, it’s not a very good picture, but insects are hard to capture – they’re little and they zip around all over the place.  I got some video, and that’s not very good either:

 

There were a lot of bees – apparently, they have two hives around the strawberry igloo.  The bees aren’t shut in the igloo, either, they can forage wherever they please.  Our guide says they don’t bother restricting them because bees are massively efficient pollinators – just one percent of the hive would be enough to pollinate all their plants.  And given that the hives are so close to the strawberries, I think they get a lot more than one percent.

That was the end of the tour, so our guide gave us plastic buckets and tiny scissors, and then it was time to pick our strawberries!

It’s more fun than you’d think it would be.  It was cooler in the climate-controlled igloo, and the whole place hummed with bees and smelled of strawberries.  I was careful stepping between the trellises, trying not to disturb any of the bees.

With the way the frames are set up, you don’t have to bend down, but there are still a lot of strawberries down low.  So, I was bobbing along the rows like a demented emu, snatching the ones below eye level that everyone else overlooked.

It was strangely satisfying.  I went hunting through the greenery for a flash of red:

And took only the best:

Those little scissors are a definite necessity – those strawberries are attached more solidly than you’d think.

My bucket of deliciousness:

When I decided I had enough strawberries, I was at the opposite end of the igloo, so I started towards the end row to follow it back to the door.  But I spotted this:

What’s that funny white box up there?  It’s one of the beehives!

 

Feeling pleased at having found one of the hives, I then went to pay for my strawberries.  I was told to put them in the fridge as soon as possible – apparently when they’re picked fresh, they don’t have any of the chemicals for artificial ripening or preservatives.  So, I took them straight back to Turtle Shell and did exactly as I was told.

I’m eating some now as I write this up.  It’s honestly surprising what a difference fresh-picked makes – the flesh is softer and sweeter, but the core of strawberry is much firmer.  I usually just eat it along with the rest of the strawberry, but on these, it’s way too tough, so I’ve just been stripping the soft flesh off the core and throwing it away.  Like tiny apples or something.

I confess I’ve already eaten half of that bucket.