Farm to Table: Mandarin Picking

Spent an amazing day at Anderson’s Farm in Wisemans Ferry picking our own mandarins and oranges.

I always remember as a child, taking short road trips out of Sydney to local farms, to pick your own fruit and vegetables. And assumed that today, this was something you could no longer do.

It wasn’t until my sister-in-law made a statement one night that she would love to go fruit picking, I began to wonder; do farms actually still do this?

Now I knew being the beginning the Spring, even if there were farms who still allowed you to pick their fruit and vegetables this wasn’t the best time to go. Most of the winter fruits were dying out and the new summer fruits hadn’t really begun to flower.

But after a few calls, to some local farms not too far away; I finally found a farm still open. Anderson’s Mandarin and Orange Farm in Wisemans Ferry. Just over an hour north west from Sydney. I was instructed by a farmer at Anderson’s that it was the end of the season, so if I wanted some fruit we had better hurry, as the gates were closing in a few weeks.

So the following Saturday, on 10th September (my birthday in-fact), mine and my partner’s family all piled into a few cars for a road trip to go pick fresh fruit from the farm.

And what a beautiful day it was. We had a great day picking our own fresh fruit.

The fruit was a bargain too. You had a choice of either paying $5 entry free only, to wander the farm and eat as much as you liked. Or if you wanted to take home fruit, then it was an additional $10 for a bucket (which wasn’t small at all) to pick as much as you could fill. No time limit either. The gates opened at 10am and closed at 4pm.

It was a little difficult rummaging through the tree foliage for the best fruit; as it was the end of the season and all the good stuff had already been taken. But in the end we all walked away with a pretty decent bucket load of fresh mandarins and oranges.