The Rugged Times

Lancefield Fruit Shed

When I think of sheds, I picture blokes planning and puzzling over manly projects—typically involving lots of hammering, cutting, fitting and swearing—in the cool, earthy solitude of a space in which they can unleash their creative powers. Sheds are places in which things evolve and grow, but not without a generous amount of loving toil. And that is exactly what happens at Lancefield Fruit Shed, in the beautiful Victorian town of the same name, just north-east of popular tourist destination Woodend.

Tucked away in Victoria’s Mount Macedon region, Lancefield Fruit Shed has built a formidable reputation for its fresh produce straight from the local farmer’s market and a deli range that rivals anything you might find in inner-city Melbourne.

But who said sheds were only for men? Owner Kitty Schembri’s passion for quality home-grown produce has seen her own business—and the farmers she supports—evolve and mature, from the ground up.In fact, customer demand has been so strong that she opened a second store in the neighbouring town of Romsey.

You don’t need to be a farmer to have access to wholesome organic food, and at the Lancefield Fruit Shed, you can rest assured that Kitty has sourced the best of the local talent.

As many of us, especially those living in major metropolitan areas, are so accustomed to getting our fruit and veg from the big supermarket chains, we seem to have forgotten its origins—that this neatly packaged and standardised stuff is not necessarily of nature. Anyone who’s bought farmer’s market produce directly delights in the fact that the apples you’ve just dropped in your hessian paper bag don’t all look the same and don’t have that cosmetic waxy sheen. And if the well-worn phrase ‘You Are What You Eat’ has any grain of truth to it, perhaps we have also forgotten ourselves.

It may sound quaint or sentimental, but there is a raw honesty to the food one finds in the Lancefield Fruit Shed that seems somehow missing from the big chains. For one thing, Kitty’s mission to get the best comestibles for her customers is far more personal and friendly. Within minutes of greeting our staff from the head office who took a trip out to Lancefield to meet her, Kitty gave them a tour, where they clapped eyes on a beautifully restored fruit truck in the yard and encouraged to drop by on Thursdays. Why? Well, that’s when the organic sourdough is delivered each week. And there’s the community-building aspect too— Kitty’s customers are predominantly local residents who not only seek quality and variety but also want to support local producers.

An unattributed adage from popular wisdom has it that ‘We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden’. In Australia, this has a special sort of resonance. We live in a land where gardens and sheds have more in common than we might think. Where else does one keep one’s gardening tools, except in a shed?

Australian men pride themselves on their sheds, and historically—well, since colonisation—we have also built a national economy, not to mention identity, on agriculture and the wide open spaces of the rugged land we have come to know well as an enduring part of our cultural legacy.

Gardens and sheds represent creative toil and the authenticity of life connected to the cultivation of the land that nurtures it. The Lancefield Fruit Shed combines both. Lancefield is a beautiful Victorian town and worth the visit any time, but the Fruit Shed makes Lancefield one of our favourites.

Lancefield Fruit Shed
42 High Street, Lancefield
VIC 3435 Australia
Telephone: +61 (03) 5429 1969

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