Waikato, New Zealand
The orchard
Bellberry Estate is a small certified organic orchard in the Waikato. Kiwiberries are the main crop — most of the harvest is packed for export, and what stays behind is sold here and at the Hamilton Farmers Market.
A kiwiberry is a kiwifruit's smaller cousin: smooth skinned, about the size of a grape, and eaten whole like a berry. They're picked ripe rather than stored, which is why the season is short and why we won't sell them outside it.
Around the kiwiberries we grow the fruit that suits this piece of land — feijoas, citrus, blueberries, raspberries in three colours, and a block of white heritage peaches that are far too soft to send anywhere.
What grows here
- Freeze dried black raspberries
- Freeze dried feijoa
- Freeze Dried Raspberries - Red
- Freeze dried red kiwiberries
- Freeze dried white peaches
- Freeze Dried White Raspberries
- Kiwiberries
- Feijoas
- Citrus
- Blueberries
- Red raspberries
- White raspberries
- Black raspberries
- White heritage peaches
- Freeze dried vanilla ice cream
- Freeze dried chocolate ice cream
Certification
BioGro certified organic
Every block at Bellberry is certified organic by BioGro New Zealand. No synthetic pesticides, no synthetic fertilisers, no shortcuts in the season when it would be convenient.
Certification is not a logo you buy. It means an independent auditor inspects the orchard, reads the spray and input records for every block, and verifies that what we say we did is what we did. Export markets require that level of proof, and we apply the same standard to the fruit we sell locally.
It also means the fruit you get has the shortest possible list of things done to it: grown, picked, packed, sent.
Certified by BioGro New Zealand
Certificate details available on request.
Where the fruit goes
The bulk of the kiwiberry crop is graded and packed for export. What doesn’t meet export grade is not lesser fruit — it’s usually fruit that’s a gram under, or a shade off on shape, and it’s the same fruit we eat ourselves.
That’s what you’re buying when you order here or find us at the market. It’s also why quantities are limited and why the season is genuinely finite.