A little sweet, a little tangy, it’s little wonder raspberries have long been popular in baking. We caught up with Richard Clark from Westerway Raspberry Farm to find out more about these little gems.

Can you tell us a bit about Westerway Raspberry Farm

The Westerway Berry Farm is run by the Clark Family and is located in the Derwent Valley in Southern Tasmania.

The Clark family have lived in this part of Tasmania since the 1840s, but it was my parents, Sandra and Robert Clark, who first purchased 50 acres of land in 1977.

With mechanical harvesting in mind for the local juice market, in 1992 they planted their first blackcurrants, and raspberries followed in 1996.

I now run the berry side of the farm. I started selling raspberries at age 15 to a handful of green grocers around Hobart in 1998 and at the farm gate in Westerway.

The Westerway Raspberry Farm now grows over 200,000kg of berries each year and supplies fresh berries across Tasmania through IGAs, farmers markets and through PYO and a farm café. We also buy berries from other Tasmanian farmers and process these, along with our own farm grown fruit, into frozen berries ingredients to supply over 100 Australian businesses across the country who are making quality jams, ice creams, gins etc from 100 per cent Australian ingredients.

And it is no longer just raspberries and blackcurrants either. Westerway Berry Farm now also grows and processes blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, red currants, apricots and even some quite unique berries such as tayberries, josterberries, silvanberries and boysenberries (although these stranger sounding berries are really just available for customers who visit the farm and are looking for a PYO experience.

Unpicked raspberries

What goes into the growing, harvesting and processing of raspberries?

The short answer is “lots”. But the more complete answer, as with all questions of farmers, is quite a bit longer.

Westerway Berry Farm grows all its berries with the aim of machine harvesting them for the processing or frozen market. Raspberries and blackberries fruit on second year wood and so take 18 months from planting to produce fruit.

Blackcurrants and blueberries take longer to establish while strawberries can be planted and harvested in the same year.

All plants are planted while in a dormant state in Tasmania’s cold winter months. Winter is also the time for pruning old wood from the rows and trellising next seasons fruit bearing canes in a system similar to what you might find in a grape vineyard.

Spring is when irrigation starts. We hold our breath that late frosts don’t damage our delicate fruit flowers and is an opportunity to control weeds and molds/botrytis. Winter/spring is generally completed with around 10 staff. Summer is when things heat up both in terms of temperature and action on the farm.

A team of up to 80 hand pickers are carefully selecting the ripest and freshest berries to be sold at the Farm Gate Shop and IGAs/farmers market around Tasmania. A smaller autumn harvest keeps the fruit rolling out the door through until the first frosts arrive at the end of May.

Work on the farm

Can you share a bit about the farm with us? How big is it? Why was the location chosen? What does a growing season normally involve from beginning to end?

Our family farm has grown from 50 acres in 1977 to over 3000 acres across four locations in the Derwent Valley in 2024.

The four locations stretch 40km with altitudes ranging from 0 to 400m above sea level, giving us quite a bit of geographic diversification. We run a mixed farm with not just berries but 200 Angus cows, 1500 meat sheep and a nursery which grows up to 1 million open rooted pine seedlings each year.

Many more crops have been grown over the years. Berry harvesting and hay production are the activities that keep us very busy over the summer months while pines, pruning and planting are the winter jobs which keep the farm ticking over with a smaller crew.

The Derwent Valley is great climatically for berry production in particular as it has cold winters, which are required for berries that originate out of the northern latitudes of Europe and North America (blackcurrants, for example, require over 800 hours of winter chilling – or periods below 5°C – in order to flower and fruit).

But mainly we are located where we are because of family. Uncles, aunties, grandparents, cousins, nieces and nephews all live in our little town and all contribute in some way each summer to the harvest by driving harvesters, manning farmers market stalls or cooking jam. It is family which really has build our farm and which makes it a wonderful place to work

How large does a typical raspberry harvest look like? Do you know roughly how many raspberries that equates to?

We typically grow around 120,000kg of raspberries and these days around 80,000kg of other berries.
The varieties of berries we grow tend to be heritage varieties which are smaller, softer and juicer than newer varieties which are better suited for sale in supermarkets where a longer supply chain is required. So given that our berries are so small, maybe on average 5g each, we could produce 240 million individual raspberries (add in other varieties and the berries we save from other farms, the number is likely closer to 1 billion berries)

Bringing in the harvest

Raspberries are such a favourite with the baking industry. Why do you think this is?

There is a lot to love about raspberries and the berry category more broadly. So much research is coming out about the health properties of berries. They are packed with vitamins, antioxidants and anthocyanins. They also freeze really well and are easy to add to a range of recipes. But the real reason they are a favourite in the baking industry is the same as in the fresh market – berries are bright in colour and are packed with juice and flavour and make people happy when they eat them

What’s something about raspberries (the fruit themselves or the production process) that may come as a surprise to our readers?

A funny fact that is little known is that each individual ball that makes up a raspberry is called a “druplet”.
Raspberries require a lot of water in the summer during fruiting but in the winter, when in a state of dormancy or hibernation, too much water lying around the roots of raspberries can cause the plants to die from root related diseases.

Westerway Raspberry Farm

What ethos is at the centre of your business?

We are a family business that is rooted in the small community of Westerway.

We love to provide customers with really ripe, sweet and juicy heritage berries and encourage them to pick their own fruit and experience the freshness first hand by picking the berries themselves.

In terms of our frozen processing berries, we are keen to provide Australian manufacturers of incredible food products clean, bright and tasty Tasmanian-grown berry option to replace the need for imported frozen fruit and to minimise the amount of food waste that can occur from high supermarket cosmetic standards. And lastly, we love to be contribute positively to the community and world around us, by using compostable packaging where possible, revegetating the local river with native species, hiring young people and people from disadvantaged backgrounds and looking after our beneficial bugs.