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"A great choice".
Maria Delvolve is the manager of SA Delvolve Detours: a corner of paradise where pome fruit reigns supreme, with 54 hectares of apples and 1 hectare of pears in a single block adjoining the farmhouse. Half of the farm is farmed organically. All the produce is sold to the Stanor cooperative - of which Maria's husband Antoine is a founder - and then marketed by Blue Whale. Founded in 1962 by Antoine Delvolve, the company now grows a large number of apple varieties, both club and non-club varieties, including organic Gala, organic Golden, organic Ariane, organic Juliet, organic Pixie and organic Crimson, as well as Jazz, Fuji, Heisi, Granny, Candine and Rosyglow.
Some very technical varieties are more difficult to manage, and particularly to prune, than others," says Maria, "but we have a team of pruners who are experts in their field.
Expert pruners, indeed, and loyal ones, who return to work at Detours every season. All are equipped with electric pruning shears and work on a lifting platform: a choice that may have come as a surprise, given that pneumatic pruning shears connected to a compressor are generally used when there are motorised gangways in the orchard. But in terms of comfort (the nuisance of frost, the noise of the compressor, etc.), Maria believes that choosing electric pruning shears makes good sense. "Generally, there are two of them per gangway. First they work at the top of the trees, then halfway up and, finally, at the bottom of the orchards, on foot.
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