Visiting the Baldwin's hazelnuts and sheep

Today we tripped down to Basil and Jean Baldwin's property near Millthorpe to visit in the afternoon.  Basil and Jean are lifelong Tintookies, who we first met in NSW many years ago when we were brand new to orienteering and travelled to our first National event.

Adrian U had planned to go and visit them and see their sheep, and hazelnuts, which Trev and I had heard about at times, so we invited ourselves along.

We had a really pleasant time learning about growing hazelnuts and sheep and wandering around their property with them.

The Baldwin's grow a few different varieties of hazelnuts,  which are wind pollenated and reproduce by growing suckers. Their favourite is Barcelona. They grow for wholesale market and supply hazelnut pancake mix for the Ghan, nuts for nougat producers and for muesli makers. This is what their hazelnut plantation is like.

The brown on the ground is the old leaves and empty hazelnut shells left behind after the nuts have been raked and then vacuumed up.
The plant produces catkins which are apparently yellow (these are faded)

The tiny hair like projections that you can see here are the dried remnants of bright red ones from the latest developing trees. These are the parts which  accept the pollen and do the reproduction thing.  These do their job and then the tree shuts down for months and appears to be doing nothing.

Then the flowers start to form,which contain the hazelnuts. This is a dried off sample of what they are like. 

Then the hazelnuts fall to the ground and can be raked into windrows and then vacuumed up for processing.

Processing involves cracking the shells, releasing the nuts and sorting for size. This is some of the equipment used.

Nut cracker and sorter from the shells

Size sorter 

They breed Australian White sheep, which are a blend of Dorset, Dorper, Texel,  and Van Rooy breeds which makes them good mothers, self shearing and meat sheep.
The fleece is like hair.

We also saw their old gold mine, and plantings of many varied trees.
They have an ancient blackwood tree which has collapsed many times and keeps on growing from one small part only.

You can see all the dead parts and the small bit which is still living. 

We also enjoyed a lovely cup of tea, delicious fruitcake and lots of orienteering and mapping talk, before heading home again.  Tomorrow we are back into the orienteering and will travel out to watch our SA kids run their individual long races (go SA).