Owned by two families, Rachel and Euan White, as well as Rebecca and Mike Casey, Forest Lodge Orchard is a 5.7-hectare cherry orchard located in Mt Pisa near Cromwell.
“Mike and I are old mates from high school in Wellington many moons ago. We each have roles in the business: Rachel handles logistics, communications and HR; Rebecca handles the accounts and packaging; Mike handles the business side, and I am the orchard manager who grows the fruit,” said Euan White.
“Mike and Rebecca brought the land six years ago and brought Rachel and me on board, and without a single minute of previous horticulture experience between us before this, we are doing pretty well.”
Forest Lodge Orchard has 9,300 cherry trees planted in upright fruiting offshoots (UFO). The trees are vertical and flat, creating a 2-dimensional face on which the fruit grows. This has improved light inception (no part of the tree is in the shade) and increased harvesting, spraying, and pruning efficiencies over traditional 3D trees. This style is called ‘robot-ready’ in that it is ready for automation, as everything is flat and straight, unlike a regular tree.
As the world’s first fully electric commercial cherry orchard, everything on the orchard is electric, including the tractor, orchard vehicles, frost-fighting equipment, and irrigation.
Eighty percent of the operation is from the orchard’s solar array, which also exports surplus power to the grid. The site has 160kW of solar panels and 300kWh of battery storage.
Having hosted around 11,400 visitors at the orchard in the last four years and 28 current or former Ministers and MPs sitting on the electric tractor, White said everyone has been interested in what they do.
Central Otago is known worldwide for its cherries. White mentioned that cherries grow best when the climate is nice and hot in summer but cold in winter. This lets the dormant buds develop over winter, roar back to life in spring, and ripen beautifully in summertime. Forest Lodge Orchard harvests its cherries from mid-December to the end of January.
Most of his day-to-day work has involved typical horticulture, from checking the trees for pests and diseases to arranging staff and monitoring the weather for frosts. At the same time, he has also been involved in electrifying other farming operations and hosting visitors.
“Learning how to use electric equipment was a big learning curve, but it is a piece of cake once the routines are established.”
Summer 2024-25 will be the orchard’s largest harvest due to maturing trees. As they age, they produce more, and the orchard has estimated that they will produce 80 to 100 tonnes of cherries this harvest.
Producing five different types of cherries, White’s favourite was the Rainier, a yellow and red cherry with very little juice and crunchy flesh. It has been the first to be picked and is a pre-Christmas variety.
Read the full story in the October issue here
