Solstice Berry Farm has new owners! It is our pleasure to introduce:
Sarah and Jesse Bydevaate
On April 30, 2026 the farm was was sold to this energetic young couple from Calgary. Sarah and Jesse (and their two girls Jenessa and Elsie) are the new owners and they will begin to put their stamp on Solstice Berry Farm in the years to come. The first step is re-opening the upick in the summer of 2026, which is great news for all of the customers who have been coming to the farm for many years to pick delicious saskatoon berries.
Both Sarah and Jesse were raised on large farms in Alberta and have plenty of practical on-farm experience between the two of them. Rick & Marsha with their wealth of knowledge on growing, harvesting and marketing saskatoon berries will be helping Sarah and Jesse with knowledge transfer and mentoring over the next year to make the transistion easier.
Rick & Marsha Gelowitz are the original owners who purchased the quarter section of farmland that makes up Solstice Berry Farm back in 1994. Initially they started out growing hay for the export market and raising lamb. Solstice Berry Farm was actually created a few years later in 2003 when they switched a part of their big hayfield into growing saskatoon berries. It started by planting 5 acres that year, and then every successive year, they planted a few more acres until they reached 40 acres of saskatoons. That’s over 40,000 bushes!
In 2007 the U-pick was opened to the public for the first time. Over the years, as the business and berry harvest volumes increased, they modified an old cattle barn and turned it into a berry cleaning facility. A couple years later they had a new on-farm store built and moved in. A few years after that they bought an office trailer and converted it into a commercial kitchen to produce a variety of value-added products. In their final years, they had grown the business to the point where they became a CFIA inspected facility and were marketing their frozen berries to most of the major grocery chains in Calgary and Alberta.
The decision to retire was not an easy one, but it was one they happily made as they determined it was the right time to “pass on the torch” to the next generation.