18 April 2012

Any pick-your-own orchards, or orchards open for visits in the Canberra region?

| birder
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I’m an expat from the US and we love Canberra!

With autumn upon us, I’m wondering if there are any pick-your-own orchards in the region.

I have such fond memories of plucking apples and pears from orchard trees and would love to have my daughter experience it as well. (You collect the fruit in baskets and then are charged a set fee by weight, eg, $4/pound.)

I did a google search and since I didn’t find anything, I’m wondering if there just aren’t any such creatures in the region.

If this is the case, do you know of any orchards that are open for visiting?

I think it would fun even if we couldn’t pick our own.

On that note, if you know of any pick-your-own berry farms, I would love to put that on file for next spring/summer. It was always so much fun picking ripe, plump blueberries, strawberries, raspberries….

As an aside, here’s a website listing all the pick-your-own farms in the Northern Virginia area in the US. It’s like a national pastime! http://www.pickyourown.org/VAnorthern.htm

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Thanks everyone – extremely helpful!

“Unanimous outcome” or not, I can guarantee from first hand experience that a lot of cherry orchards at least do pick-your-own.

Wasnt this covered in a thread a couple of days ago, about exactly the same question?

Im fairly sure the unanimous outcome is that orchards generally dont allow the public to pick their own fruit because in general people dont know how to pick fruit, which leads to damaging their plants and other unpicked fruits, and also leads to the fruit that is picked being of a lower quality than if a ‘professional’ fruit-picker had selected and picked the fruit properly.

In late spring / early summer I recommend heading up towards Young, where there’s a lot of orchards, many of which do pick-your-own. Mostly cherries but also some other stonefruits.

Just head for the Olympic Highway and look out for the signs.

Montrose Berry Farm (www.montroseberryfarm.com.au) do berry picking in summer. We went up there in January and had a lovely time. The berries aren’t that cheap, but you do get the fun of picking them as well. Oh, and try their amazing berry vinegars. Noms!

yes – go to Pialligo – esp no 10. I’m not from no 10.

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