Shane O'Dea and his fresh pistachios / Boxes at 61%

17th April 2017

The picture above is Shane O’Dea cuddling his family’s harvest of fresh pistachios (that’s right, fresh). Last year Shane wandered into the Fair Food warehouse with a five kilo box of shiny pink nuts and asked if we were interested. Needless to say we said yes and asked him if he would come back again this year.

Shane’s family planted 2000 pistachio trees on their Goulburn Valley property thirteen years ago. Luckily he has a side gig as a paediatrician this being only his third harvest. He thinks they might begin to make money in time for his kids to enjoy some profits.

Shane says they chose the hardy heat, cold and salt tolerant pistachio with climate change in mind (they’re also adding pomegranates to the mix this year). The fresh nuts are only available for a few weeks each year, most are sun-dried and bagged up for sale at farmers markets (we’re hoping we get a few kilos for Fair Food this year).

Now you could quite easily live your whole life without ever seeing a fresh pistachio and after a taste you really get a feel for the nuts origin. You eat fresh pistachios like young broad beans, peeling off the two outer layers to get to the tasty kernel inside. Shane says keep them in an open bowl in the fridge and eat them within a couple of days.

This coming week we’re featuring Shane’s nuts in a selection of set produce boxes as well as in the webshop. Oh, and last week we sent some to our landlord, former owners of Australia’s largest nut business, for a taste test. The report back went along the lines of…. “Oooh, they’re very good.”

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