Editorial: Core! Apple industry is booming

I picked apples once.

I did it for a day when I was about 16 or 17 and had every intention of going back the next day of my holidays and doing it again to earn some extra dosh.

But I had not planned on my enthusiastic exertions of day one to catch up so quickly - and so painfully.

My shoulders were on fire and my elbows and knees saw fit to take industrial action ... go-slow time.

The chap who ran the orchard crew had, I must say, warned me to "slow down young fella" as I virtually sprinted from ladder to bin and back again with my hastily filled shoulder-strap bags of apples.

Hey, I was young and fit and what's a bit of ladderwork and apple plucking at the end of the day?

It's hard yakka when carried out in the fashion I carried it out, that's what it is.

"Just steady as she goes," the orchard gaffer had told me, and I suspect the more experienced pickers watched on with slight amusement - knowing full well the following day, in terms of me turning up again, could be in jeopardy.

They probably even took a sweepstake on it.

But today, some four and bit decades later, I can stand up and declare that I was part of a much valued and vital part of this country's expanding export industry - an industry which the economic pundits are predicting will become a billion-dollar one by 2022.

The apple industry is an absolute success story and Hawke's Bay has been way up at the sharp end of it since day one.

Good climate, good soils and good operational practices.

Little wonder New Zealand emerges at the very top of the major 33 apple producing countries, according to the World Apple Report.

The recent fine summer and autumn have done for pipfruit what it did for the wine industry, and the job sector has certainly benefited.

We are only a little spot way down in the base of the world but boy, we can punch (make that 'grow') above our weight.

New Zealand and Hawke's Bay will not be pipped at the post.

We'll continue to produce the very finest apples and oh yes, we will achieve that billion-dollar figure.

Core!