Local machinery operator Cameron Young clearing silt from a Puketapu orchard on Friday before the rain set in. Photo: RNZ / Maja Burry
Hawke's Bay orchardists working to clear silt from their properties have gone from fighting the dust to fighting the mud, with rain now hampering clean-up efforts.
On Brydon Nisbet's Puketapu apple orchard, rain over the last 48 hours has turned dried out deserts of silt back into muddy bogs.
Nisbet said the bad weather was a set-back, as orchardists only had about a three week window to remove silt that was suffocating trees and vines.
"It's just gonna hold the work up ... once everything turns the mud again it just makes makes the whole job a lot harder ... you can't back trucks in, to load the trucks up to take the silt away, because they'll get stuck."
Silt turning back to sludge after rain in Puketapu in Hawke's Bay. Photo: RNZ / Maja Burry
Nisbet said while one block on his property was damaged beyond repair, he was determined to save another block of about 9000 trees.
"I'm trying to encourage other growers if they can, if you can save the trees, just get in there and try and do it."
Local machinery operator Cameron Young has been shifting silt on the Puketapu orchard and said it was a huge job, not helped by the bad weather that had set in.
"We're just doing clean-up work in this orchard, getting all the silt out between the trees here, they need to breathe... We'll do our best... but especially with this weather it's an uphill battle," he said.
Brydon Nisbet on his Puketapu apple orchard on Friday. Photo: RNZ / Maja Burry
Food safety assessments underway on orchards
For apple and kiwifruit growers in flood impacted areas that were still planning on picking fruit this season, food safety inspections have been taking place on orchards.
Brydon Nisbet, who is also the president of the Hawke's Bay Fruit Growers Association, said any fruit that has had direct contact with flood water would not be harvested.
Fruit marketers were being hugely diligent to ensure that only top quality export fruit would be sent overseas, he said.
"There's been a disaster and people have lost crops, but they won't alter the integrity of what they want in the [packing] shed."
The Ministry for Primary Industries' (MPI) co-ordinator in Hawke's Bay, Steve Ham, said orchard assessments were being industry led and would help provide assurances to both export markets and local consumers.
MPI had 21 staff in Hawke's Bay working on the cyclone response, and it would continue to meet with primary sector groups to find out what support farmers and growers need, Ham said.