WHILE this time of year is well-known for being the start of the citrus harvest in the Riverland, a family of local organic date growers are getting ready for a busy picking season of their own.

The Gurra Downs Date Company, based in Gurra Gurra, has been owned and operated by Anita and Dave Reilly since they first began growing date palms in 1996.

By 2000, the couple had stopped using chemicals on their property, which was certified as fully organic in 2003.

“We have a very sympathetic market chasing fruit all the time so it has been an advantage,” Mr Reilly said.

“The expense of growing fruit organically is considerably higher than conventional – if we want a certain level of nitrogen or potassium we need to bring it in by the truckload in compost and manures.

“The reason why we’re organic is if we’re up against conventional fruit and the price is the same, most marketers will select the organic fruit.

“We also have our family out here working, so we don’t want to be spraying insecticides and fungicides.”

In lieu of pesticides and herbicides, the Reilly’s rely on a range of farm animals, including 150 geese, sheep, turkeys and guineafowl to manage pests and weeds, while maremma dogs guard the animals.

There were a lot of questions to be answered and, in a lot of regards, there were big gambles taken by investing our lives and careers into growing these trees without really knowing if they would work in Riverland conditions...

“They all have different roles to play – the geese are very good at weed control and rounding up any fallen fruit,” Mr Reilly said.

“As soon as a piece of fruit hits the ground there is a goose on it and that minimises insect problems.

“The turkey and guineafowl go through and go for any insect, and the sheep clean up the weeds.

“We’ve managed to minimise tractor hours, we spend minimal dollars on diesel, and we haven’t bought a drum of herbicide for this property for more than 20 years.”

Mr Reilly said harvesting the dates will run through until the end of June.

“One of our two main cycles each year is pollination, which happens in spring and takes a month or six weeks,” he said.

“There’s always something to do with the tree even after they’re pollinated.

“A couple of months later we’re tying the fruit arms down, then around December we put the date sacks on which takes a little bit of effort, and some bunch-thinning happens a little bit earlier than that.

We probably visit the same date palm as many as a dozen times in a year by the time we’ve picked. It’s labour-intensive and a very demanding tree to grow.

“The fruit is starting to ripen rapidly now, which is what we like to see and what we expect at this time of year, and the fruit quality looks to be very good.

“As long as it stays dry we’ll have a very good pack out rate.”

Mr Reilly said the company was now in its 13th year of selling dates.

“Over the last 20 years we’ve really narrowed it down, working out which are the best cultivars and from there we’re multiplying rapidly,” he said.

“We have to find the right cultivars to match the conditions and we don’t actually know that until we put the trees in the ground and give them several years to try them through the variability of the seasons.

“We’ve imported about 50 cultivars and the mindset was always trying to find the best six picks, so the deck has been shuffled a few times, but we are very happy with the selections that we’ve made.”

While Dave and Anita founded the company, their four children now all play their own role in the business or on the farm, with eldest son Shaun being production manager.

“They’ve all loved growing up on the farm and they come back whenever they can,” Mr Reilly said.

Mr Reilly said the company had “quite discouraging feedback initially” and struggled to attract funding.

“I thought there’d be some interest from government agencies to invest in this industry,” he said.

“I think people thought it was risky as well and relatively unapparent, so we’ve had to do a lot of the work ourselves.

“There were a lot of questions to be answered and, in a lot of regards, there were big gambles taken by investing our lives and careers into growing these trees without really knowing if they would work in Riverland conditions.

“We decided to just get as many horses in the race as possible…

“Our other activities include a date palm nursery supplying to farmers and gardeners Australia-wide, wine grapes, pomegranates and figs.”