My Story, Our Dream
When I was expecting my first child, I suffered from bad nausea and threw up most of the food consumed throughout my pregnancy. The consolation was that I only craved for durians which then became an important diet for me.
My baby was born strong and tough. This is in line with the belief that durian is a tonic because of its high nutritional value, e.g. vitamins, essential minerals, amino acids, high dietary fibre, etc.
However, something very disturbing was observed: the newborn baby’s scalp was covered with boils and scabs in the first full month. Could durian truly be so “heaty” as most people think?
I really had no clue until many years later when my husband and I bought a small durian farm in Johor and started growing our very own fruits as a hobby.
We began to realize how the commercial growers boost their harvest through intensive application of pesticides, insecticides, stimulants, etc:
- Harmful chemicals and pesticides are sprayed over and over the trees and fruits;
- They are mixed into the soil for absorption through roots; and
- They are spread/sprayed onto the ‘polished’ trunks for fast absorption into the trees.
These treatments could effectively protect the fruits from pests, insects and worms etc and are often used on durians due to its high economic value, and more so on the premium species.
My newborn was a victim of indirect exposure to pesticides and harmful chemicals. We are therefore adamant as to what we want our fruits to be.
The bottom line is nothing else but the Quality of our fruits.
Quality fruits have to come from strong, mature and healthy trees of the premium species. They have to be free from harmful chemicals and safe for consumption for toddlers, infants and are even good for the foetus in the mother’s womb.
Our main concern is always quality instead of quantity of the harvest. To preserve the goodness and quality of the fruits, netting is installed upon harvest to prevent them from hitting the ground from a great height.
mature-mao-san-wang-tree
A mature Mao San Wang tree
staff
Our staff
zaobao-cover
Zaobao cover
12841301_939526626165513_8217675938228319422_o
Mao San Wang from our farm
It was a pleasant surprise that our home-grown durians were featured in a Chinese article entitled “等着榴梿从树上坠落”by 余云 in Lian He Zao Bao (联合早报-四方八面) and My Paper (我报-观点) on 19 Dec 2013. The writer clearly appreciates the need to wait for the natural harvest of these special fruits which are cultivated with loving tender care of our management staff at the farm.
Our green farm story was again featured in 早报新期天周刊 titled 22Jun14 Pg 1-3 by 黄向京 on 22 June 2014.
We are proud to have kept our faith and persevered against all odds in doing all that is necessary and doing them right. It is truly a joy seeing our dream garden taking shape according to our hearts’ desire and we have more exciting plans in the making.
The Humble Beginning
Due to our love of durians, we visited many durian plantations in Johor and Penang in the early ’90s seeking out the various award-winning durians. Full of passion yet inexperienced, we plunged into this expensive and long-suffering hobby in growing our choice durians.
Being Singaporeans, we faced an uphill task in running the plantation and underestimated the problems that were coming our way. We started off by engaging a durian farm owner as manager together with his workers to care for the farm.
What followed was the beginning of a nightmare. Were it a business concern, it would have long been closed down. Nevertheless, we bit the bullet and held fast to our hope to cultivate our choice species of the King of Fruits. From harvest to harvest, we repeated the cycle of tasting, reviewing, replacing & re-grafting our durian plants of more than 20 premium species.
In the early decade during each harvest, we rushed to the farm daily after work to collect the fruits and personally distributed them to our relatives, friends and colleague often late into the night for their sampling. It was sheer hard work, perpetually overloading our car with the fruits to do house-to-house delivery.
The suspension of our car gave way quickly whilst our physical strength drained. Yet we were often chided for giving away fruits with scary big durian worms! The feedback and comments acquired over these years did help us to narrow down the species to retain and to re-graft.
Grafting trees
A Dream Coming True
Due to the great variety of species and the different genes of the trees, we have in all taken two decades to attain the fine quality of fruits and are able to raise our expectation for each new harvest.
As part of our on-going quality improvement regime, we will continue to bring down trees that produce fruits that are not up to our standard.
These fruits by themselves are pretty good as they are all branded and award-winning species; however, we personally consider them not good enough to be eaten together with our top species as we are both “perfectionists”.
Why add on the extra calories if they are not the best?
More Information
Reservations
You can contact us by SMS/WhatsApp at +6598347626 or email allaboutdurians@yahoo.com.sg to place your orders (Singapore only). We will then arrange and confirm your collection on the scheduled day when fruits are available.
We do not entertain enquiries from traders or suppliers.
You are welcome to give us your feedback at allaboutdurians@yahoo.com.sg
Storage
The flesh of fruit is to be boxed and refrigerated if not being consumed immediately.
Observe hygiene and handle the fruits with spoon and knife instead of our own hands. Do not cover up the box when sending the fruits into the fridge.
Let the fruits and container completely turn cold before covering it to avoid massive condensation of the warm air that trapped within the box that will in turn wet the fruits.
Varieties
We have cultivated a large variety of durians on our farm, the more popular ones being: Mao Shan Wang, D17, Ang Hae and D101.
Apart from these, we also have other varieties such as 'Jin Feng' 金凤, 'Jiang Hai' 江海, 'Mao Yan' 猫眼, 'Zhu Jiao' 竹脚, 'Tai Yuan' 太源, D24, D88, etc.
We will post updates on the 'Harvest of the Day' on our Facebook page.
