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As the Meyer lemons offer three harvests a year all family members – (from left) Tracey Scott, Hamish Hulme-Moir, Georgia and Campbell Hulme-Moir, and older siblings (absent) Nina (21) and 19-year-old Blake Marshall – are often roped in to help with the picking
Revitalising the family orchard’s roots An ageing orchard, drainage issues and a lack of experience failed to deter a duo of newbie growers from reinvigorating a family orchard. KRISTINE WALSH reports.
Tracey Scott and partner, Hamish Hulme-Moir, say there are advantages to knowing little about orcharding. The duo has spent years establishing an orchard in the small inland settlement of Ormond, just out of Gisborne. “Because we were newbies, right from the beginning we got stuck into learning absolutely all we could,” says Tracey. “To give ourselves the best chance, we committed to doing everything as best we could from day one.” The three-hectare orchard is part of a five-hectare navel and valencia orange orchard that Hamish’s parents, Lachie and Kris, had bought as a going concern in the early 1990s. “But by then Hamish was ready to leave home to train as a diesel mechanic so, apart from occasionally fixing Lachie’s tractors, he wasn’t really part of it,” Tracey says. “He [Hamish] was as new to growing as I was.” 24
The ORCHARDIST : JULY 2022
When the couple met, Hamish was living in a house he built on the property – replacing an existing cottage. Tracey, a solo mother with two young children at the time, lived just up the road. “We always joke that we didn’t have to go far to find each other… less than 150 metres!” Tracey laughs. Tracey and Hamish had two children together by 2014 – the same time that Lachie and Kris decided it was time to put their feet up. “Hamish had always said he would buy them out but made sure that’s what I wanted, too,” says Tracey. “He knew it would be a lot of work for both of us so, me being a townie, he made sure I knew what we were getting into.” Having worked out a split arrangement where they bought one half of the orchard and leased the other, Hamish and Tracey ended up with decades-old orange trees that had
