SHIELDS ORCHARD

Shields Orchard is a small family based orchard that has been retailing our own fruit since 1955. Since 1992 we have been also been providing the opportunity for individuals and small family groups to "Pick Their Own" apples. There is no enty charge; the only charge is for the fruit picked. We provide a basket or you can pick into your own bags. We weigh the bags and charge per kilogram... We have a very light crop of fruit- between 20% to 25% of the apples we would normally pick. Some varieties have very few apples at all. Pink Ladies, of which we have around 700 trees, have maybe 1000 kgs of fruit on them... We believe this is due to the wet weather we experienced 2 years ago when over the February, March and April period when we had 1500 mm of rain. This stressed the trees, some of which we saw last season.