Going Nuts in New Zealand - I left the cobnut plat and went travelling

February 2014

There were three of us travelling around the North Island and we had left the coast behind and taken the road from Oportiki to Gisborne. Our rented motor home was making light work of the curving twisting road as it climbed the beautiful Wairata Gorge. We were heading for Wairata Forest Farm, the home and property of Murray Redpath, Chair of the Hazelnut Growers Association of New Zealand, and his wife Anne.  Murray, who I had contacted by email, had said we would be welcome to visit the farm and the previous evening we had rung to make sure we had the directions. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the scenery was magnificent:  'Think Wye Valley but broader and deeper,' I reflected - and with slopes covered with elegant waving tree ferns instead of beech and oak and birch.

A tributary of the Wairata River

We had been driving for about half an hour, climbing and meeting the occasional loaded timber truck coming in the opposite direction and the question in our minds just then was where, in that steep-sided and tree-covered terrain, would there be anywhere level and open enough for a farm?

Tree ferns line the hillsides

At last we reached the spot where we had to turn off the highway.  We crossed a sturdy bridge over a tributary of the Wairata River onto a narrow and roughly gravelled, single-lane road which ran above and beside the tributary river which we had just crossed.

We turned off the main highway

  Soon we passed a sign to a farm advertising accommodation, chalets and fishing; this would be Murray's brother's farm; the two brothers, I learned from the notes I had been sent, farm adjacent properties.  Onwards and upwards and eventually the view opened out as the road came to an end at gates announcing Wairata Forest Farm.

We got there!

A view from the farmhouse

  We had arrived and Murray had seen us and was coming to greet us.  As we got down from the van, rather stiffly after the bumpy ride, the silence of the hills all around us was absolute, broken only by the sound of cicadas  and the occasional bray from the two donkeys in one of the fields.

Wairata hazel nuts, ready to harvest

The farm consists of some 575 hectares on which cattle  and sheep are grazed on hillside fields, timber is sustainably harvested along with a variety of fruit and - the thing we had come for - hazelnuts.


 Although in Kent cultivated hazelnuts are called 'cobnuts', in New Zealand, as in North America, Australia and elsewhere, they are all 'hazelnuts' (this explains why the nuts you see in the supermarkets at Christmas, which probably come from Turkey, are labelled as hazelnuts).

At Wairata forest Farm, as well as growing the nuts as a commercial crop, the main interest is the nursery where Murray raises young trees for sale to growers and would-be growers.  We were shown the nursery where he has bred young trees  grown from seed imported from Oregon in the USA.  

Murray Redpath with  young trees

We spent some time in the nursery and heard about the various blights and diseases which can affect the trees which include Hazel bacterial blight (Xanthomonas corylina) and and Green Shield beetle, which the breeding programme is aimed at providing resistance to.

Evidence of blight on hazel leaves

The disease known as Big bud, I learned, is not the problem that it is at home in Kent, as those bugs do not thrive in the damp conditions. However one pest which plant-breeding can do nothing about is the possum against which the only protection would seem to be a well aimed bullet.

As well as providing resistance to pests and diseases an important aim of the programme is to produce varieties as pollinators for existing varieties which flower late in the season. Oregon state in the USA is notable for nut-growing and Oregon State University is a centre for plant-breeding. Murray, whose background is in soil science, spent time there and returned with seeds (i.e. nuts) which he went on to raise and breed from in order to produce varieties which would do best in the New Zealand climate and environment. He would have liked to bring back young trees but the New Zealand authorities are fiercely protective about importing plant stock for fear of pests and diseases that this would have been a lengthy and expensive process.

We were taken next to the commercial orchards where we found a set-up very different from the way we grow cobnuts in Kent.  Down here the trees are allowed to grow tall - and in the New Zealand climate, where every kind of tree seems to flourish, that means both tall and strong-limbed.

strong branches characterise these hazel trees

A lone Kent Cob tree

 Among the different varieties that were pointed out to us was one specimen of Kent Cob.  As you can see from the photo it is doing pretty well,but it is less productive here than some other varieties. The variety that seems to do best, and most numerous here, is one called Whiteheart.

 Kent Cob and 'maid of Kent'  

Harvesting the nuts from trees this height might, you would think, be a problem but here they do as olive-growers in Europe do, spread nets under the trees and wait for the harvest to fall into them. 

a tall tree....

...the answer is nets

There is also a kind of vacuum machine which can hoover  them up.

vacuum equipment

After we had looked around and taken our photographs we were invited up to the house and enjoyed a farmhouse lunch which included delicious home-grown nut products. Anne was away helping out with shearing on another farm but over lunch we heard more from Murray about the farm and the nut-growing business: for example I had no idea that the company Ferrero (the chocolate firm) is a major buyer of hazelnuts which, besides going into those ambassadorial chocolates, are the ingredient for their other product, Nuttella.  In fact they have planted extensive hazelnut orchards in Chile for this purpose and encouraged farmers there to plant their own orchards, to feed the Ferrero firm.  Unfortunately there is no Ferrero factory in New Zealand, which seems a shame. Like most small farmers everywhere, the nut-growers of New Zealand feel badly neglected by their own government which seems to provide huge subsidies for huge businesses - e.g.timber and dairying which is overtaking sheep-farming these days, to supply, amongst others, the enormous China market.

We were deeply indebted to Murray for his warm welcome and his generous hospitality and for giving over so much of his time to us.  We parted with promises of exchanging newsletters between the hazelnut growers of New Zealand and the Kentish Cobnuts Association.  

NIce to meet you!