After 55 years of ownership, the 12,648 hectare property on the Ward River has sold for $20.7 million.
The Yeomans family’s fruit history at Greenhill Orchards dates back to the late 1800s when a single cherry tree was planted on the property.
“My family arrived from England in 1863 and settled here on the property in 1865,” owner and operator Warren Yeomans said.
“We only discovered last year that the first fruit tree to be planted here was a cherry tree. So there’s been fruit here ever since they settled. The business has grown a lot over the past 150-plus years but most recently we have consolidated the business and are trying to do more with less.”
The Greenhill Orchards is home to an estimated 5000 fruit trees today and sits on the top of the Great Dividing Range just north of the thriving small town of Uralla.
The fruit growing industry has changed considerably over the decades with the big getting bigger and the boutique producers finding their feet.
“There’s a lot less orchards and the majority of the ones that are left are bigger organisations but there is a niche space for smaller operations that supply local outlets or sell out from the farm gate,” he says.
Greenhill Orchards grows cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums, pears and apples but are really known for their apples and pears.
With the worst drought in living memory followed by consecutive wet seasons, the last few years have been tough on operations.
“Sometimes the wet can be worse than the dry and presents its own set of issues but you couldn’t have had a worse year than the drought year we had in 2019. We’ve also had hail and wind storms that have caused significant damage too. Why do I do it? I guess I’m an eternal optimist and I’ve been doing this since I left school in 1977.”
Over the past two years, the pandemic has instigated a swing back to people shopping locally.
“In a general way there’s a trend towards buying local and farmgate is part of that and people are starting to think about where their food is coming from.”
Greenhill Orchards is the last commercial orchard in the Armidale region making it less commercially viable to send their fruit to major centres.
“We aim for the local market because that is our niche. If you had to try and justify getting into the bigger market system the distance and the extra cost involved doesn’t make it viable. So we sell up to 200 kilometres away. Mr Yeomans said they also were lucky that they hadn’t experienced a shortage of workers when the borders were closed, something that has impacted other farms locally. The closest commercial orchard is Stanthorpe, which is over 250 kilometres away. So there’s not the pressure for looking for workers, we have found being able to employ locals has worked really well.”
Mr Yeomans grandfather was born on the property and was still running the show when Warren took over.
“My grandfather was retiring when I started so I think it took him 20 years to retire and he lived here until he was 99. It’s been a family transition overtime, my dad and myself bought out the rest of the business from my uncle and now my dad is in the process of trying to retire and he’s in his eighties. I think the main thing is that my dad will always need something to do no matter what.”
Given Greenhill Orchards specialise in pears and apples, Warren Yeomans’ son Tom is now looking to expand the business into the cider arena.
“My son is actually developing a cider business to complement our orchard. We have been doing apple and pear juice for a while but now he has gone a step beyond that and is developing the cider business. Tom is also a mechanical engineer so his engineering mind helps me figure out how things work.”