Back in 1994 we were an enterprising young couple born and raised in Calgary, who had been looking for 5 years for the perfect place in the country to call home.  We finally came across this gorgeous quarter section of land in the Dogpound area SE of Cremona and fell in love. The land offered beautiful views, a mix of farmland, pasture, and a few trees, as well as fabulous soil, livestock facilities and plenty of space for our Greyhounds and Whippet to run around. Thus began our dream of having our own farm and the exciting journey into the Money Pit!

Shortly after moving in, our first big purchase was a flock of 100 commercial ewes. We love animals and the original dream was to have some sheep, raise some lamb, and continue to grow the hay that was established on the farm. With the gentle guidance of new friends, we learned how to make a decent bale of hay and we mustered our ewes and lambed out 250 lambs.  It was blissful chaos!

After a number of successful years in the export hay business, we were looking to expand our hay operation, but the cost of buying additional land in our area was not feasible nor was there any available farmland close by for rent either. So, we decided we needed a change of direction for the farm. After a number of weeks of contemplation as to what the next phase would look like, at some point we noticed the 3 saskatoon bushes we planted in our garden a couple of years back were really thriving and producing lots of fruit. That was the eureka moment when we got out of the hay business and into the Saskatoon berry business. This is a photo of us seeding the rows to grass after planting our first saskatoon bushes you see as little sticks in the ground covered by mulch. This photo is of our U-pick field closest to the entrance.

As our production of berries grew, we needed more space for equipment and most importantly, saskatoon berries! Our old cattle barn with a dirt floor got a complete makeover into our new packing building. We thought we add oodles of room! However, we added a walk-in cooler and freezer and a couple pieces of new cleaning and sorting equipment and discovered we had filled up the space a lot quicker than we had imagined. Oh well, it’s a step in the right direction.

After years of struggling to clean and sort an increasing volume of berries by hand, we had to find a faster/better way.  That way finally arrived when “Lucy” our optical sorter was delivered on July 4th, 2011.  After the initial commissioning by the manufacturer, we used her that season for sorting.  The sorter uses a color camera, 4 different kinds of lasers and compressed air to remove unwanted berries and other foreign material from the incoming stream of fruit.  OMG, what a massive improvement!  It really blew our minds.  If you have ever seen the Chocolate Factory episode from the 1950’s series “I Love Lucy”, then you’ll understand why we lovingly call her “Lucy”.  If you’ve never seen it, Click here to view it.  It is a hilarious classic!  The berries came at us far faster than we had anticipated and initially we couldn’t keep up with her.  Now that we have adjusted to the increased speed, it has helped us to increase the volume of berries we can handle as well as greatly increase the quality of the fruit we produce.  We were the one of the first, if not the first saskatoon berry farm in Western Canada to employ this kind of technology back then.