The Apple Tree

In case you’ve ever wondered what helps shape my advice model, here’s a clue or two.

And its more than just the cows.

On my desk is a stunning aerial shot of two farms separated by Sawyers Creek in Kangaroo Valley.

On the right side of the creek is my parents farm and on the left side is my grandparents farm.

The photo was a gift from Mum and Dad in 2012 and I absolutely love it. There are still days, especially in autumn and spring, when I long to be there.

And it seems the apple didn’t fall far from the tree either.

Like Pop, Dad grew the most amazing corn, oats, peas, sorghum, ryegrass and red clover. It was that good you could fatten a fence post on it.

He still grows the nicest lemons I’ve ever tasted but nothing could ever beat the milk that came off ‘Oakleigh Farm’. It was something else!

Dad was just a very good farmer born with milk in his veins.

However there was one box ‘Oakleigh Farm’ didn’t tick. It didn’t have an apple tree!

But it didn’t need one because across the creek on ‘Glen View’, Nanna had a large orchard full of apple trees just down from the house, next to the pig paddock.

The pigs, like every other animal on the farm, were treated like royalty. And to feed them, there was a purpose-built train line and cart that ran from the dairy down to the pig paddock carrying milk and whey and some days it was back loaded with fruit and veg.

It was poetry in motion.

But this is where Nanna aced it witht the apples and what made her a genuine paddock to plate genius.

No one was allowed to pick the apples until they were exposed to the first frost because that made them sweeter.

And these apples were to die for!

Pretty clever hey!

And then she’d turn them into the most delicious apple pies, stew or sauce served with cream straight from the dairy.

That farm blew ‘organic’ off the charts. It was heaven on a stick.

Apples and Lemons

In the markets, they often talk about having a portfolio that’s ‘negatively correlated’ or ‘uncorrelated’.

Meaning, your portfolio should have assets that go up (or at least hold their value) when others go down. i.e they’re uncorrelated.

For example, shares and gold. Normally, when the stock market goes down, the price of gold goes up because its seen as a safe haven. It has an inverse relationship.

And that’s why I love apples and lemons. They ying and yang each other perfectly.

Apples make the nicest deserts, but they need a really cold climate with extreme winter temperatures to do well. Hence the reason they thrived in the valley.

Equally, the summers in the valley could be extremely hot too. And if there wasn’t a faint breeze whistling through the Casuarina trees along the river, it was brutal.

But lemons love the heat which is why they did well in the valley.

The markets are the same.

Economic winters are inevitable which means every investment portfolio needs a balance of apples and lemons so it bears fruit regaredless of the season.

Remember what Nanna said about the first frost!

Have a great weekend!

Adam