Fruit vendor

Beautiful and fresh fruit and vegetables.  Every housewife and mother's dream.

I just wonder if they would be willing to buy it from a makeshift structure in the middle of New Brighton in Port Elizabeth and not from a supermarket?  The housewives and mothers from the township do but I'm very curious how many suburban ladies would.

Citrus farm tour

While browsing around the stalls at the Patensie Citrus Festival on Saturday I heard the announcer say something about tractor trips to one of the citrus farms and I immediately went to enquire. Five minutes later the family was sitting in a trailer behind farmer Danie Malan's tractor in anticipation for the tour to his farm to start.

Along the way Danie stopped to tell us about the young citrus trees that we saw and how the sun can easily burn their trunks hence the trunks getting wrapped.  The second stop was at the lemon orchard where I got to hop off and pick a couple of lemons that went into dessert on Father's Day (the next day), lemon meringue.  After another short ride we got to the naartjie orchard, our main destination.

Everybody on board got a bag and could get off the trailer and pic their own naartjies.  Pipless and guaranteed sweet.  This is the type of thing that city folk love to do as most of them have never had the opportunity to walk between the trees and pick their own fruit.  This has great tourism potential for an area with city slickers going there for a weekend to experience the farm atmosphere.  The Gamtoos Valley has a lot of very good farm based accommodation establishments, so perhaps all they need to do is to offer the farm experience along with it and they would be able to attract even more people to the beautiful part of the province.  But I digress. 

The farm tour was by far the Kidz' favorite part of the day.  Especially Drama Princess loved picking the fruit and I'm sure she will enjoy living on a farm so much more than in the city.  The In-Laws joined us at the festival a little later on and also went on the tour with the Kidz tagging along again.  Like the farmer said, "They're my best customers." 

Montagu Dried Fruit

I love summer fruits (well, any fruit actually) like peaches, plums and apricots.  That was one of the many reasons I looked forward to spending the first part of our summer holiday in the Klein Karoo town of Montagu.  The area has a rich soil and amazing micro climate and along with the fact that there is an abundance of water makes it ideal to farm summer fruits.

On our first day in Montagu I discovered the Montagu Dried Fruit Factory Shop.  Let me not start about my love for dried fruit.  Nom nom nom...  Montagu Dried Fruit and Nuts was established in 1991 and as one of Africa’s largest wholesalers of dried fruit and nuts and currently markets 35% of all dried tree fruit in South Africa.  The shop has an amazing range of dried fruit (and nuts) and we probably returned another three or four times while we were in town. 

Except for the dried fruit, they also sell fresh apricots and peaches.  The apricots sold for... wait for it... you won't believe this... R2 per kilogram.  Drama Princess filled up a couple of bags for us and we had to keep reminding the kidz not to over indulge as we didn't want any tummy problems.

The factory is situated right behind the shop, but visitors aren't allowed inside the factory itself.  We did go on a tractor tour (which I will post about shortly) during which was saw the peaches being dried in the sun.  I posted a picture of peach pips yesterday and a couple of people asked what it's used for.  Somebody in town told me that Montagu Dried Fruit is the only place in South Africa that "produces" the pips like this.  They break them to get the moisture out and then they also get dried in the sun.  Its then sold to people who put them in the gardens, specially in garden paths and drive ways.  All the roads in Montagu Caravan Park where we stayed is covered in peach pips.  I wish I could get my hands on some.

Peach pips

Roadside pineapples

Farm stalls isn't too rare a sight on South African roads and if you want to buy fresh fruit then these farm stalls are the place to get them from.  Locals selling fresh fruit from the side of the road is a lesser common sight, but often seen in areas where fruit are gown.  The Eastern Cape around the town of Bathurst is ideal for Pineapple growing and I found this roadside pineapple stall just outside of Grahamstown.