Spear in hand
It’s asparagus season down at Maurie Cafra’s farm in Koo Wee Rup. Thirty or so pickers from Vanuatu, Vietnam, England, India, Italy and Romania have arrived in town for the harvest.
Walking along a poplar windbreak, magpies looking down, Maurie checks his weather app for rain, which he’ll do at least another six times each day during harvest.
The weather’s been warming up so it’s been a busy week keeping up with the world’s fastest growing vegetable.
To Maurie and his spear growing peers harvesting asparagus is the farming equivalent to playing speed chess.
A pumpkin, which Maurie Cafra also grows, can sit for months in his paddock with no ill-effect but if Maurie leaves an asparagus spear unharvested for just one day, it’ll be too long, too woody and too late.
Down at the Fair Food warehouse, produce buyer Joshua Arzt, who has been resigning himself to a sparse asparagus season with prices around seven or eight dollars a bunch, perked up and posted a three bunches for $9.95 special this week.
Sunday’s inch of rain might put a bit of a dent in the picking proceedings but with another warm week ahead Joshua’s hoping the good harvest continues.
Before it was home to Australia’s largest asparagus crop Koo Wee Rup was one of Australia’s largest wetlands.
Because the “swamp” was a barrier to the early colonists trying to get from Melbourne to West Gippsland, the government formed the Koo Wee Rup Drainage Committee to address the situation.
They dug the first drain in 1870 which was flooded out after a few years. They then dug the bigger Bunyip Main Drain, which was overwhelmed in the big flood of 1900.
The Committee widened the Bunyip Drain but more floods in 1923 and 1924 required yet more drain digging.
The new drains were overwhelmed by the superflood of 1936 which triggered a royal commission and the construction of even bigger drains and some new levees.
With the floods seemingly under control people began to farm the rich, peaty soils which turned out to be very good for growing potatoes and later to be absolutely perfect for growing asparagus.
Especially, as Maurie points out, when the soil is inoculated with a symbiotic asparagus-friendly mycorrhizal fungi that he happily credits with the health of his crops.
This spring when you’re biting into one of Maurie Cafra’s perfectly grilled tender asparagus spears, remember to say a quiet thanks to his workers, who will be getting up for work around 2am tomorrow morning to cut around 300kgs of asparagus by torch light.
Right now’s probably the best time to get some of Maurie’s asparagus – you can find it here.
Have a great week
Chris
