DON'T be fooled by the name, or disappointed if you can't get them.

Cherries, that is.

    AT A GLANCE
  • Who: Shane and Ann Blundy
  • What: organic meat
  • Why: farm gate to shop front
  • Where: Tarwin Lower
  • Report: ANDREW MOLE

Because Cherry Tree Organics at Beaconsfield is all about red meat. Organic red meat.

Plus a few organic chooks plucked from another producer to provide some protein variety.

And a peck of pork or two from other farmers to complete the meat profile.

But the focus is on the beef and lamb, produced at Cherry Tree Downs, the Tarwin Lower home of Shane and Ann Blundy and named after the native cherry tree.

After an epiphany turned them and their property organic in the early 1990s, the Blundys have gone from battling price takers to vertically-integrated marketers.

Which, Shane admits with a laugh, has simply moved his headaches from on-farm to off-farm as he wrestles with a new world of customer relations and employing retail staff.

The organic revelation came when realised what was missing in his life and his farm.

Birds.

Growing up on a property at Clyde, just outside Cranbourne, he always remembered the birds flocking behind his father's tractor to get at the worms.

"It might sound a bit corny, but as a kid I always wanted my own beef cattle property," Shane said.

"We did a lot of horticulture and Dad would buy in cattle, fatten them and then they were gone. I was not that interested in spuds, I wanted cattle.

"But when I did get them it did not turn out to be the happy times I remembered."

Shane said his cattle business revolved around drenching, grass tetany, scouring, pinkeye. The list was endless.

So was the disenchantment.

Until he finally noticed the birds, or lack of them.

"I suddenly realised we were killing it all, the land, the livestock, the lifestyle," Shane said.

So out went the chemicals and in came the lime, the rock dust and coal dust, and liberal doses of seaweed and fish emulsion to encourage biological activity.

It all seemed so logical. And Shane never looked back.

Even the poorest paddock boasted a dense layer of healthy pasture, while there was no sign of the acid mat which had plagued most of the property a decade earlier.

Just as fast, out went the Simmentals and Euro-cross cattle and in came the Angus.

"It did not take me long to realise yield is no substitute for meat quality and I could not get the Angus in fast enough," Shane said.

"Before you had feedback only from processors, but now I was producing organic meat and I was talking to retailers and getting consumer feedback and it was a different story."

Marketing his new product as Cherry Tree Organics, Shane slowly but surely built demand for his boxed and branded product at shops, restaurants and butchers in Victoria, NSW and Western Australia.

So good was the demand he decided to take the plunge and plough into retail himself.

And six months ago he opened Cherry Tree Organics.

Shane's cattle and sheep (mostly Poll Dorsets with a sprinkling of Southdowns and Suffolks) are killed at Radford's abattoir at Warragul and the carcasses are boned and packed in his Beaconsfield store for distribution as chilled meat and with Meat Standards Australia grading, to further guarantee quality and tenderness.

The shop turns over four to five cattle and 20 sheep a week.

"Cherry Tree Organics is not in the main shopping area, so people have had to find us," Shane said.

"We have not done any advertising at this stage, but word of mouth seems to be doing the trick because more and more people are coming through the door."

While the decision in the early 1990s to go organic solved one set of problems, the growing demand for Cherry Tree Organics prompted another - year round supply.

While Shane "kind of" has four joinings a year, he sees it more as a staggered calving and lambing program stretching from February-March through to August.

His sheepmeat supply is also supplemented by product from other organic producers, mostly in the Western District and Wimmera-Mallee.

Today the Blundys can run 1000 Angus cattle and as many as 2500 sheep on their 472ha farm.

Their Beaconsfield store produces everything from chilled to vacuum-packed meat, complete with labelling, pricing and barcodes, through to fresh product in trays on the retail shelves.

And those birds? Well they are doing OK too.

So don't be surprised if that is not the next Cherry Tree venture. An organic worm farm.