GRANDE PRAIRIE, Alta. – When Paulette and Earl Langenecker moved from Teepee Creek to Grande Prairie, they took the usual boxes of clothes, books and toys. But they also dug up and moved 4,500 saskatoon bushes.
The northern Alberta farm couple didn’t feel the new buyer was offering enough for their farmland so they took their five acres of berry bushes with them.
The couple had tried grain farming, chickens and pigs but saskatoons felt like the right fit.
“It’s what we’ve stuck with the longest,” said Paulette Langenecker from the farm home west of Grande Prairie.
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The couple planted saskatoons on their Teepee Creek farm in 1985, moved them in 1990 and has since planted another five acres of saskatoon bushes to fill the demand for the native prairie fruit.
“It’s been very, very good to us. That’s why we’re here.”
From a federally inspected packaging facility in their yard, they supply 20,000 pounds of saskatoons in 300-gram packages to the 15 Alberta IGA grocery stores and supply 20,000 lb. of berries to Western Bakery for its ready-bake saskatoon pies.
Langenecker’s dogged determination put their Berry Fields Saskatoons in the grocery stores. She kept pushing her product until the stores agreed to carry the berries.
“We just kept going and going to whoever would listen,” she said.
As part of her deal, Langenecker has in-store demonstrations to get consumers to buy saskatoons. In the first demonstration she sold 81 bags.
As an added incentive she offered the customers a chance to win a three-metre spruce tree from her 44-acre farm. It’s up to them if they want it moved or cut down for Christmas.
In December, she will offer a homemade Christmas reindeer to the consumers who stop at her in-store demonstration.
Next month the local Grande Prairie Holiday Inn will feature Langenecker saskatoon berries on its restaurant menu. It’s all part of getting people to pick up a package of saskatoons from the store when they buy their weekly groceries.
“A lot of people are happy to see Alberta’s fruit going into stores,” said Langenecker.
Many people grew up picking the berries along farm fields and ditches, often with mixed results.
“We want them to know there’s a better quality fruit,” said Langenecker, who spends the summer pruning, watering and babying the berries to produce a uniform quality fruit.
“We want to try and change people’s idea of saskatoons.”
Earl, a millwright, built a special table to sort the berries in harvest. Paulette spends the rest of the fall and winter packaging and promoting.
In the past she experimented with jams and jellies, but felt selling frozen berries was the best way to increase the demand.
This year they harvested 10,000 lb. off the five acres of orchard that are now producing berries. To fill their orders they bought berries from other Peace River area growers.
Langenecker hopes to soon supply all the Garden Market IGA grocery stores across the province with saskatoons.
“We want to get our name known.”
