Hahana Fruit: Rewriting the Apricot

Fresh apricots prepared for sampling at local markets, where the Wilsons connect directly with customers.

On a hillside above Clyde, the rows don’t look quite how you might expect.

Instead of big, spreading orchard trees, everything is trained tightly onto wires, more like a vineyard than a traditional fruit block.

It’s deliberate, and it says a lot about the way Tammy and Trent Wilson approach farming.

They didn’t come into horticulture through generations of orchardists.

 They came from dairy, with a different lens on risk, labour and what actually makes a system work.

What started as a small two-hectare block has grown, piece by piece, into around 30 hectares across Nga Kuri Farm.

“We just wanted something of our own up here,” Tammy says.

Central Otago had always been a draw.

 Over time, weekends turned into something more permanent, and eventually into a decision to build something from the ground up.

The plan, at least on paper, was straightforward enough - buy land, plant trees, and make it work.

The reality has been anything but simple.

Cherries grown on a wire system at Nga Kuri Farm, allowing fruit to be picked safely from the ground.

Doing it differently

The structure of the orchard is one of the first things that sets it apart.

Rather than allowing trees to grow into large, traditional forms, everything is trained onto a wire system. Trees are planted on an angle and laid down, with fruit grown on upright shoots that are kept within reach.

It’s known as UFO planting, and for Tammy, it made immediate sense.

“We didn’t want people on ladders,” she says.

Coming from a dairy background, where health and safety is a constant consideration, the idea of workers climbing ladders across uneven ground didn’t sit comfortably. So, they built a system that allowed fruit to be picked from the ground, reducing risk and making the job more manageable.

It’s more expensive to establish, with the added infrastructure of posts and wires, but it allows for tighter planting, better light penetration and, importantly, a system they can realistically run themselves.

That thinking carries through the whole operation.

“If it doesn’t make money, or it doesn’t make sense, we just don’t do it,” Tammy says.

There’s no attachment to tradition for the sake of it. Decisions are made based on what stacks up financially and practically.

Tammy and Trent Wilson of Hahana Premium Fruit, pictured at the Wanaka A&P Show.

Not just another apricot

Alongside cherries, the Wilsons have focused heavily on apricots, but not in the traditional sense.

Through Hahana Fruit, they are working with new cultivars under the NZ Summer Fresh programme, aiming to reposition apricots as something more than a commodity.

The fruit itself is noticeably different. It is sweeter, lower in acidity, firmer, and carries a red blush that makes it stand out visually.

“They’re not just a normal apricot,” Tammy says.

The long-term goal is to create a premium product with its own identity, rather than something that is simply sold by the kilo alongside every other apricot on the market.

But that comes with its own challenges.

“If too many people grow it and it just gets sold as an apricot, you lose that.”

Maintaining value relies on controlling supply and how the fruit is marketed, something the industry is still working through.

A selection of Hahana Premium Fruit, showcasing the colour and variation of the crop.

Making it stack up

Like many smaller operations, the biggest constraint is not land - it’s time and labour.

The orchard is largely run by Tammy and Trent, with additional help brought in when it’s available and affordable. There is no large team behind them, which means every decision is weighed up carefully.

“We can’t afford to have five people working here full time,” she says.

Everything comes back to what they can physically manage, and whether it will return enough to justify the effort.

That’s also where the dairy farm plays a role.

Alongside the orchard, the couple have recently purchased a 300-cow dairy farm near the Catlins - a very different type of property, hillier and more remote than a typical Southland dairy block, but one that works for them.

“The dairy farm is what pays the bills,” Tammy says.

For now, the orchard is still building towards that same level of return.

A season that changed

This season, though, shifted in a way they hadn’t planned for.

The apricot harvest was left on the trees.

Not because the fruit wasn’t there, but because something else took priority.

Last year, in the middle of everything - establishing the orchard, running the dairy operation and managing day-to-day farm life - Tammy was diagnosed with breast cancer.

At first, it didn’t appear serious. Early tests suggested it might be nothing, but within weeks that changed. By October she was undergoing surgery, and by January she had made the decision to have a double mastectomy.

The reality of it forced a reset.

“We just kind of went - there’s more important things to worry about,” she says.

With Tammy recovering and Trent balancing two properties, the usual calculations around yield and return became secondary to what was actually possible.

“You just look at what you can actually achieve,” she says.

So, they scaled it back.

The orchard kept running where it needed to, but anything that didn’t stack up financially or physically was left.

What has stood out, though, is the support around them.

“We are very lucky to have amazing friends and family who have helped us so much over the years,” Tammy says.“We always have people put their hands up to help when we need, and know how lucky we are to have people like that in our lives. Whether it's helping at the shows behind the stall selling fruit, creating a Givealittle page to help us with the costs of cancer and the mastectomy, or giving us a hand on the orchard, we are never alone.”

Rethinking what good fruit looks like

Spending time at markets has also shaped how Tammy thinks about the product itself.

She sees, time and again, how quick people are to reject fruit that isn’t visually perfect. Small marks or blemishes are enough to have it put aside, even when the quality of the fruit itself is unaffected.

So, she has started pushing back on that.

Rather than swapping out marked fruit, she often encourages people to keep it, sometimes adding another piece alongside it.

“Sometimes the not-so-pretty fruit is actually the better fruit,” she says.

It’s a small interaction, but it speaks to a larger issue:  the expectation of perfection, and the amount of food that is wasted because of it.

Still building

The orchard is still in its early years, and there is a sense that things are far from settled.

There are ideas in the background - expanding direct-to-consumer sales, making more of the fruit that currently doesn’t go to export, and potentially opening the orchard up for people to experience it more directly.

For now, though, the focus remains on getting the fundamentals right.

It’s a constant process of adjusting, learning and making decisions based on what is in front of them at the time.

“Fake it till you make it,” Tammy says.

It’s said lightly, but there’s a fair amount of work behind it.

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