There’s always next year for optimistic producers

The formula for success for any scientific experiment, or perhaps even for the invention of a better mousetrap, is to follow the same steps for each experiment until those steps produce the same satisfactory result time after time. A Grunthal area berry producer found out this year that formula doesn’t apply to farming, especially when it comes to growing saskatoons.

Harvey and Karen Enns are at a loss to explain why their crop of saskatoons this year did not live up to expectations. The berries certainly were of good quality, Harvey says. There just weren’t enough of them.

In fact, regular pickers who look forward to visiting Rock Creek Saskatoons every year were just as disappointed as Harvey and Karen. The couple did not open their farm as a U-pick this year, as they had picked all the available berries themselves during two weeks in July.

The couple says they did everything the same as ever, and the weather was good, but the bumper crop they enjoyed last year just didn’t materialize. Although they are disappointed, Harvey and Karen are looking forward to a better crop next year.

And the Grunthal fruit growers are certainly not alone, and by the second week in July, they had heard of other producers who didn’t have sufficient saskatoons to open a U-pick this year.

One of the larger producers at Gross Isle shut down their U-pick for the first time in 12 years this season.

There certainly have been ups and downs for Harvey and Karen since they planted 3,000 saskatoon bushes back in 2011, but this year’s poor crop came as a complete surprise.

When the couple decided to make a three-acre orchard part of their Grunthal farm, they chose Smokies and Northline varieties, in anticipation of an extended picking season. Smokies tend to produce fruit a week earlier than Northline, Harvey explains, and that means an extra week of picking. Except for this year, he added ruefully.

The Northline is a sweeter berry and most customers prefer to pick it, after sampling both. Customers go back and forth to sample the two varieties and some stay with the Smokies, wanting that more tart flavour for jam. When Harvey picks, he says he goes from one side to the other and mixes the two kinds of saskatoons in his basket. If Rock Creek Saskatoons were to plant replacements in their berry patch in the future, he would stick to Northline Harvey says.

And while they have no plans for expansion, the Ennses agree they may just put off retirement for a while yet.

While they shifted their efforts to growing fruit in 2011, Harvey enjoys a long history with the Grunthal farm. They have lived on the yard since 2005, and Harvey grew up on the family farm half a mile south, where they had hogs and cattle.

Harvey says he bought this farm as a young man while living in Winnipeg and working for Canadian National Railways, until 2010. Karen grew up in Winnipeg, but also comes from a family with a farm background.

His family were hog farming and had beef cattle on 320 acres until 2004, when they sold half the land and the barns. Harvey continued to raise beef cattle, buying animals in spring, pasturing them all summer and selling them in fall.

Now he grows hay as a cash crop and a neighbor rents the pasture for cattle. Harvey says it’s kind of nice having the cattle around just to see them, without having to do any work.

When the couple started the berry patch they decided to go with a size that could be handled by two people, and that is still their plan.

There are, of course, the U-pick customers who do a lot of the picking for them (except for this year) but Harvey is still out there every day picking for the pre-picked supply so many customers ask for.

Last year’s bumper crop encouraged Rock Creek Saskatoons to try a hand at marketing their berries with off-farm sales. In spite of a disastrous trip to the Steinbach Farmers Market, Karen was looking forward to a return there this year. This year’s crop just wasn’t big enough.

They thought they would try the farmers’ market for the first time last year and Karen set out for Steinbach with a dozen baskets of saskatoons in the trunk of their car.

They had just set up a table and canopy because of a threat of rain, when a torrential downpour washed out their plans, and ruined the day for the rest of the farmers’ market crowd as well.

Karen couldn’t get the berries back into the trunk fast enough and soon she was as soaked as her saskatoons. To make things more difficult, the trunk didn’t close properly and Karen had to get out of the car to attend to that. By the time the storm passed, there were canopies blown down all over the place and the farmers’ market was cancelled.

But the day was not a total loss, as Karen met Eva, a regular at the Steinbach market who bought 10 baskets of saskatoons and ordered another 10 baskets to be delivered later.

Karen expected Eva was going to be a good customer again this year, but along with the host of regular pickers, she was to be disappointed this year.

And if misery loves company, there was plenty of that to go around for Manitoba Saskatoon growers this year. Just one example is the July 20th media update from a major grower who headed the bad news “Defeated, depressed, stressed and sad.”

“We gave it our all, but Mother Nature defeated us. We ran our harvester Thursday, July 18 and Friday, July 19 and were getting very few saskatoons and low quality. To put it into perspective, the (Manitoba Saskatoons) orchard typically produces an average of 15,000 pounds. This year we took off 3,400 pounds and approximately 1,500 pounds were low quality. It was just a poor, poor season.”

While the quantity of saskatoons may also have been a disappointment for the Grunthal fruit growers, at Rock Creek Saskatoons, the cherry trees on their yard flourished and produced a bumper crop. Until this year, the Ennses were themselves able to use all the cherries the trees produced, but this year the abundant crop allowed them to put sour cherries on the market along with saskatoons for the first time.

There are four sour cherry trees on the Enns farmyard and the fruit is great for making jams, pies or platz, which is his favorite. A couple from Iran, who visited the farm and bought a basket, told Harvey they liked to eat sour cherries with salt.

The cherries need to be pitted, though, and that is another task added to the picking, but even with that, it is worth the effort, Harvey says.

“Put on some good music, grab a pail of cherries and away you go. It’s a great way to spend an afternoon.”

Harvey says he also doesn’t mind picking saskatoons. He actually finds it therapeutic to be in the berry patch, when the birds are singing and the baskets are being filled with really nice berries.

A lot of saskatoon pickers, who spend their time collecting wild berries every summer would agree.

The Rock Creek Saskatoons field is indeed a pleasant place to be and has become a popular alternative for many who like to pick wild saskatoons on road allowances in the Southeast.

Rock Creek Saskatoons is just a half mile off a paved road, four miles south of Grunthal, and is very accessible for pickers from Winnipeg to St Malo. And it’s certainly more fun than going out in the bush to pick wild berries, Harvey adds.

The Ennses are most thankful for all the help they have been getting from the Prairie Fruit Growers Association over the years. Their website is invaluable in providing information to growers, as well as promoting their products, and perhaps the PFGA will be able to shed some light as to what happened to this year’s crop of saskatoons, Harvey says.