KILLARNEY, Man. – Consider it his field of dreams.
For more than a decade, Grant Rigby has been finding innovative ways to make the most of a 40-acre orchard of raspberries here. He counts juice nectar, salad dressings, wine kits and dessert toppings in his product portfolio.
His latest endeavor continues the tradition of extracting new uses from a plant that lives in gardens across the Prairies. He is bottling a semi-dry red wine which he hopes to have on store shelves before Christmas.
“It’s good with poultry for sure,” said Rigby. “We like to say it goes with anything.”
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Rigby farms with his parents Helen and Gerald Rigby of Killarney. The raspberry products add diversity to the grain farm, which has been in the Rigby family for more than a century.
Finding ways to add value to a raspberry crop is no easy task. Grant figures it took him an average of two years to develop each of his products. It also took countless hours of research and leg work to get those products onto store shelves, mainly health food stores and grocers carrying specialty foods.
Other Manitobans have also tapped into the potential of growing and processing small fruits. There are seven small-scale ventures in Manitoba set up to process those fruits commercially, said Grant Bartlett of Manitoba Agriculture.
“I think it’s still a fairly new idea,” said Bartlett, a small-fruit specialist. “Most of our orchards are still quite young.”
There are 160 acres of raspberries grown commercially in Manitoba. The province has about 700 commercial acres of strawberries, with much of that crop serving the U-pick market. Saskatoon berries and chokecherries are counted among the other small-fruit orchards that dot the province’s landscape.
Manitoba’s small-fruit industry is driven mainly by farmers looking for a way to diversify their land. The industry saw sales of $2.8 million last year, said Bartlett. That included receipts from fresh and processed fruit.
Bartlett expects the industry to expand, mainly through saskatoons and chokecherries. He hopes that growth may one day lead to the establishment of a large fruit processor in Manitoba.
However, a farmer near Carman advises people to do their homework before planting an orchard. Allen Graham said part of that homework should include research into potential markets.
Graham grows 25 acres of saskatoons and a smattering of other small fruits. Part of his saskatoon crop gets converted into pies, commercial pie fillings and a saskatoon beverage. Graham also runs a U-pick operation and sells a portion of his berry harvest to other processors.
“Right now marketing is the problem,” he said, noting that it’s “really tough” to find consistent, big buyers.
Diseases, insects and weeds can also be a menace to orchards in Manitoba. In the case of saskatoons, “a very limited” supply of pesticides are available to contend with those problems, Allen said.
In Saskatchewan, farmers have also diversified with small-fruit orchards. Producers there deal with the same challenges as their counterparts in Manitoba, said Richard St-Pierre, who oversees the native fruit development program at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. It’s a struggle finding markets, St-Pierre said, and there’s a lack of processing facilities.
The provincial government is helping promote expansion of the industry through extension programs and research into plant varieties. St-Pierre sees room for that expansion, especially with saskatoon berries. Despite the challenges facing producers, he noted a saskatoon orchard can yield 5,000 pounds per acre, with berries fetching over $2 per pound on the fresh fruit market.
“The value per acre is far higher than it is for wheat and oilseed crops. That’s one thing that I think needs to be driven home.”
