A time to blossom
It takes several mouthfuls to get a taste for feijoas. "The first one always tastes like soap," Manjimup grower Robert Taylor said. "You need to eat three or four, then you just can't stop. They grow on you and are wonderful on ice-cream. You can eat the flowers too - and they're magnificent. They've got a sweet, honey flavour and I'm told the leaves make a good tea, though I haven't tried it."
A cross between pineapple, strawberry, passionfruit and guava on the palate, the feijoa is native to South America and looks like a stunted avocado.
Mr Taylor, an electrical contractor, has been growing them on his apple orchard for 12 years and giving them away to friends because nobody knew what they were. He'd always wanted to farm and bought the run-down orchard in the 90s so he could follow his heart, then took out a couple of mates in the know and asked them what he should do. One told him to bulldoze the apple trees; the other suggested cutting off the tips and watering them so they would grow. Luckily, that worked.
Feijoas - sometimes called pineapple guavas, though they're neither - went in later, again on advice from one of the mates, a Kiwi agricultural consultant, who said they were popular in New Zealand.
"I had no idea what feijoas were," Mr Taylor said. "It took about five years to get the first crop but nobody seemed to want to buy them. I hung on and kept watering them and giving them to friends . . . until last year one of the other growers in the area told me he'd just sold some for a good price and that they were chasing them.
"Unfortunately, mine were earlier than his, so I was at the end of my run. But since then I've had people coming to me and saying 'we'll buy everything off ya'."
He can't account for the turnaround but it's given him the confidence to keep growing the fruit, which was introduced to Australia in the early 1900s and is sometimes used as an ornamental hedging plant and windbreak.
There are many varieties of fruit. Mr Taylor, one of about three growers in Manjimup, planted 98 Duffy bushes, which he's let grow into trees. And they're in season now.
"This one is a little bit sweeter and has a crinkly skin," he said. "Just remember, it's from the guava family so you get all these other flavours. A lot of people don't like them at first. Even my grandkids told me not to eat them because they tasted like soap but they love them now."
Cut them in half and eat them like a kiwifruit, minus skin. "A lot of people make jam from them; in New Zealand they make wine, too."
Best of all, feijoas are the quintessential tree-ripened fruit because they're almost ready to eat when they fall to the ground. "Supermarkets are buying the fruit now, so it looks like their time has finally come."
