Heavy rain down the eastern seaboard of Australia has made life a little harder for me as the buyer at Yarra Valley Farms. The berry category has been the first to suffer with heavy rain at Coffs Harbour stopping the harvesting of blueberries for a few days. Strawberries from Victoria have also suffered but the granite belt in Queensland has kept us supplied this week. There has also been a lot of damage over the weekend to the Young cherry growing district. Those growers at Young have really had a very bad run of late. I hope the rest of the crop is spared the bad weather. The other damage is to some of our local vegies, specifically delicate lines like coriander and English spinach. These will recover quickly if we have some good dry days, preferably not too hot. Finally, at this time of year Victoria supplies us with lettuce, cos lettuce, broccoli and caulies and none of these will be very good for the first half of this week.

We are now phasing out grapes from the USA and starting the new season Aussie grapes in all varieties. We don’t need any more rain where they come from either! There are lots of all tomatoes on hand and prices will ease all week due to a lack of demand. Bananas have settled down to a really affordable level again, much to everyone’s joy. Our local navel season is coming to an end and the first Valencias, our local traditional summer orange, are now in our warehouse. We still have very good stonefruit, specifically peaches and nectarines and all varieties are eating very well with the best value being in the smaller sizes.