Meet the Producer…Hansen Orchards
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away” is an old-fashioned saying that might not be heard much these days. But it’s essentially why Howard Hansen, a fourth-generation orchardist, is still passionate about growing apples. Find out what else keeps Howard excited about working in this industry.
For Howard, apples are part of the health food industry, and although apples have a lot of competition from other fruits such as berries, he feels they still represent extremely good value to the consumer as well as being very nutritious.
The country agrees, with 84 per cent of Australian households regularly buying apples. Australians eat an average of 10 kilograms of the fruit a year!
Howard’s great-grandfather Carl Hansen worked for Dr Benjafield who was one of the first people to plant apples at Wedge Garden on the Tasman Peninsula. In 1887 Carl was granted his own piece of land and started planting his own apple orchards
Six of Carl’s sons became apple growers including Howard’s grandfather Rupert. In 1944, when Rupert’s son Carl was just five years old, Rupert moved his family to an orchard at Grove in the Huon Valley. Carl, now 84, still goes to work every day with Howard and they carry on the family tradition. It’s too early to tell, but there’s a strong chance Howard and his wife Alicia’s son Que 20, or daughters Georgie, 17, or Skye, 12, will continue the family business.
Howard says that if Dr Benjafield were to come back to present-day Tasmania, he would be excited to see that there is still a strong apple industry in Tasmania, albeit reduced in size since the heyday of the 1950s to 1970s. In those days, Tasmania produced the counter-season apple supply to the northern hemisphere. Now since the advent of storage technology, this international demand has reduced.
These days apples are no longer the staple of the Hansen business – cherries now make up the greater part of planting in the Huon and Derwent valleys, with about 65% of the orchards devoted to cherries and 35% to apples.
However, apples are still core (pardon the pun!) to the Hansen’s business. Howard’s workforce varies between 50 and 600 people according to the season. Those employed year-round work with apples, and come the cherry harvest, they are ready to step into roles supervising a few hundred seasonal workers.
Work outside the apple harvest season includes planting new orchards or replacing trees with new varieties as the market for apples changes. However, Howard says, there is always a reason new varieties are developed – the apple tastes better, stores better or grows better.
For this very reason, Hansen Orchards’ biggest apple plantings – about 40 hectares currently – are devoted to envyTM, an excellent eating apple which, according to Howard, ticks all the boxes – it’s crunchy, sweet, big and red. Next is Jazz, and then Royal Gala and Pink Lady, currently the two most popular apples in Tasmania by volume.
Howard’s passion for the industry comes through when he talks about envyTM: “I love them, and I think everyone else will too”.
