Orchardist Wayne Skein shows his two-year-old daughter Una what to expect during this promising season.
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Every flower on these pink lady apple trees is a forming apple, and 90 per cent of the blossom will be blown off to ensure a premium harvest in the high country at Batlow.
''You might have 1000 apples on the tree, but you only want 300, or you might have 500 and you only want 200. You can do it mechanically with a tractor, or by hand, which is very expensive,'' Mr Skein, who followed his father Malcolm into the orchard industry, said.
This time last year a dump of snow put paid to a promising harvest and if it were not for the farmers' markets in Canberra and Sydney Mr Skein would have suffered heavy losses.
He said he was lucky to get a higher return for his fruit from the farmers' markets, which account for 20per cent of his production.
''A lot of the neighbours pushed their stone fruit out - there was no money in it - we would have done the same except for the farmers' markets.''
He has more options at the markets to sell fruit as either first class or seconds, whereas in the Batlow Co-op any fruit with a blemish is discarded.
''We can get away with it, the apple doesn't have to be perfect. All our fruit is unwaxed as well, all it does is get washed with water and goes over a stone fruit grader and is packed.''
While farmers' markets at Woden, Exhibition Park in North Canberra and at Warwick Farm in Sydney offered better returns, packing fruit and rising at 1.30am on a Sunday was hard work, time consuming and deterred many growers.
Mr Skein has 30,000 trees. The Skein family has five farms in Batlow. They are pruning, mowing under trees and grafting new varieties ahead of the peak summer months, when people from throughout the world come to the district looking for work.
He met his wife Mendie who had travelled from Holland to work in the district.
He said Batlow was blessed with good rainfall, cool nights in late summer and early autumn to colour his apples and 30-degree temperatures in late summer to ripen stone fruit. He has numerous varieties of apples, and pears, nectarines, plums, apricots, peaches, blue berries and boysenberries.
''We're planting a lot of late stone fruit, like peaches and nectarines to take them through and beyond when the Sydney area west to Marulan finishes [its growing season].
''We will be just starting and that will take us through to the end of April.
''We have also planted 2000 early Fuji apples and will harvest them in February, as opposed to April ... They will be harvested at the same time as the galas, so that'll be good.''
Capital Region Farmers' Market asked in a 2009 survey why people visited the market, and more than 70per cent rated the quality and shelf life of the products as the most important reason.