Located in a beautiful setting in a luscious green valley, with views over the valley towards Mount Arthur with snow in winter.
This is a rare opportunity to purchase a small hobby farm with a fabulous income without all the hard work.
Crestview Blueberry farm offers a 3 bedroom brick home built in 1986, with internal garage, and an aluminium shed with large cool room, used as the shop area for selling the blue berries, and plant and equipment.
This property is on the market for 1.2 Million dollars, with a gross income of around $100k per year for the sale of the blue berries, this year netting approx. $60k profit, it does not take long for the property to pay for itself.
Due to Covid this year in 2022, and a rust outbreak in 2021, pickers have now been employed on a casual basis. There is about 30-40% of the total income outlaid to wages.
Next season, the property can hopefully go back to the original operation of “pick your own berries”, as this reduces the cost of employing the pickers, so the outlay per year is reduced to a mere $6k including rates if you do some of the maintenance yourself.
The current prices of the berries are $12kg frozen and $18kg fresh.
This year instead of picking their own, the buyers come to the property to purchase from the cool store, as it has a long standing clientele, and through word of mouth and face book advertising, has become very busy.
For production, one of the best years has yielded 22 tonne of fruit and this year is approx. 16 tonne.
There are around 2300 bushes and room for expansion for another 750 plants if the new owner is interested to expand. 100-120 bushes per row and 22 rows in total.
The soil is acidic ph5.
The owner, who has been operating the Blue berry farm since 1992, prunes the plants every second year, and stands in whilst the picking season is on, carrying out the customer sale and purchase of the fruit with eftpos facilities. The rest of the year is pretty much free to do as you please.
The plants are around 35 years old and have around 20 years of life left. So there is plenty of time to enjoy a viable income from the established bushes as well as by planting out some young ones for the future.
Watering of the plants is conducted by a recently installed blue tooth electronic system, this pumps water from the spring fed dam twice per day in the summer season. There is an abundance of water, around 3 Million litres in the dam, which is constantly full, and the area has a good rainfall.
As the land is 2.4 hectares, (6 acres) there is not a lot of maintenance to do. There is ample room for 50-60 cars to be parked on the land, if advertising “pick your own”.
Access is via a separate right of way and does not intrude into the private home area.
The property is to be sold with all plant and equipment needed for the ongoing business including a Zenoh 12.5 hp tractor 1992. ( 4 wheel drive diesel)
An important aspect to point out, is that this property need not be necessarily sold as an ongoing concern, so if the buyer is not interested in maintaining the business side, there is no obligation to keep on doing so.
Access to the property is safe and easy from a newly upgraded bitumen highway. The property is only 5 minutes from the Lilydale township and school facilities. Around 25 minutes to Launceston CBD.
Extra points to note:
Good fencing, interior fencing is 10 years old.
House has new guttering and fascia. Heat pump (reverse cycle air conditioner ) 2 years old.
NBN installed, separate second toilet in the garage for customers.
2 water tanks. 15,000 litres and 5,000 litres. Ongoing water supply from spring fed dam.
3 water pumps.
Berry storeroom has had a recent upgrade to stainless steel benches @ around $4,000.
For the opportunity to view this wonderful property, please call Sharon to arrange a private inspection.