When Angus Cowling and partner Rae Jefferies acquired 80 ha of a failed tagasaste farm in Ginginup back in 1998, they had a vision for what it could become under their stewardship. They had already decided that their new parcel of land, with its marginal soils and poor recent history, would be home to their clearly visualised olive grove. They knew they had their work cut out for them but planting of the new olive grove was completed by the year 2000 and their dream was underway.
They named their property Guinea Grove Farm in honour of the hard working, and often quite zany, guinea fowls that they employ to keep on top of pest populations.
Rae, an engineer, and Angus, a windsurfing business proprietor and instructor, were both new to olive growing and the learning curve was steep. Angus drew heavily on his general horticultural knowledge gained through earlier study and, combined with Rae’s engineering discipline, they formed a strong business team.
After initially having their olives processed at York Olive Oil, Angus and Rae established their own processing plant in 2011. Since that major capital investment they haven’t looked back and last season had a bumper year, producing 100 tonnes of olives which were processed into 13,000 litres of high quality extra virgin olive oil (EVOO).
Despite the general upward trend in production, Angus doesn’t expect this season to deliver anywhere near the same volume as last year. ‘A funny thing about olives is that they tend to have a good season followed by an ordinary season on a regular basis.’ he stated. ‘I devote a lot of brain-power and effort to trying
to mitigate this biennial tendency of our trees.’
Today, with 2,600 olive trees comprising several varieties, Angus and Rae operate what is considered a small olive farm, by general standards. For these pioneers, however, it has always been about looking after their land in a responsible manner as much as about the quality of their product. To this end, they chose to adopt
organic and biodynamic methodologies, to the extent that Guinea Grove Farm has been certified Biodynamic for more than 10 years. ‘Biodynamics just makes
sense.’ claims Angus. ‘I’ve seen the results for myself and the trees are so much more resilient.’ Angus believes that the condition of his trees gives them a distinct advantage when it comes to coping with otherwise devastating afflictions such as olive anthracnose, a fungal infection, the risk of which is ever-present in the soil.
Something else in the trees’ favour is the ever improving condition of the soil from the regular addition of organic compost and biodynamic preparations. Other
paddocks on the property benefit from thinly spreading the olive oil extraction
