David Ernst is an accidental farmer, someone whose hobby got out of control.
“When I started planting cranberries, I thought this would be a part-time job and I’d go down once a year to reap them,” says the 42-year-old Nova Scotian.
“Well, I soon learned they don’t grow by themselves and they certainly don’t process or sell themselves.”
It was only 10 years ago that David and his wife, Evelyn, planted their first cranberries on a 30-acre peat bog near Lunenburg.
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Today, Terra Betta Cranberry Farm’s juice, dried fruit and gourmet preserves are sold across Atlantic Canada and in a few stores in Ontario and British Columbia.
It also exports more than $5 million worth of frozen berries to Europe. Most of those berries are grown on other farms.
The farm has 16 year-round employees, which earns it a nod as one of Atlantic Canada’s fastest-growing companies.
Obviously, this is one energetic and smart couple.
However, the secret to their success lies elsewhere: a willingness to constantly move out of their comfort zone and an acceptance there will be missteps as they move up the learning curve.
One of the first big stumbles came in 2002.
Ernst had loaded up his first crop, just a few thousand pounds, and delivered it to the customer. However, when he got to the buyer’s place he discovered the window for selling wet-harvested cranberries was a short one, and it had just closed for the season.
Ernst was ready to throw out the entire lot until his father-in-law, who had travelled with him, suggested this was an opportunity in disguise: why not process the berries himself?
Where others would have laughed off the suggestion, Ernst, who is a mechanical engineer, was intrigued.
He jerry-rigged his own processing line to clean and freeze the berries, half of which Evelyn made into gourmet preserves, such as cranberry mincemeat.
They sold them at craft shows.
However, it was soon apparent this was a limited market, and the couple was unsure what to do next. So they asked their customers.
“We would not only ask people what they thought of our stuff, but also ask, ‘what would you like us to do?’ ” Ernst says.
The result was more outlandish suggestions. How about pure unsweetened juice? How about selling the preserves in grocery stores so they would be more convenient to buy?
Both were complex undertakings.
Virtually no one sells pure cranberry juice because the market is dominated by cranberry cocktails made from heavily sweetened concentrate.
Going retail meant having a commercial kitchen that would meet Canadian Food Inspection Agency standards, not to mention the near-impossible task of getting on grocery store shelves.
However, they not only developed a pure juice line but also a dried cranberry product to go with their preserves. And through dogged effort, they got their products into stores.
Growing sales meant their farm could no longer supply enough berries, so they started their own co-op with growers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Every one of those endeavours was new territory and the phrase “we had no idea when we started” keeps popping up as Ernst tells his story.
That was especially true of their latest venture, which arose out of a chance meeting at a trade show four years ago.
“We were there to promote our product to grocers but it turns out these shows attract brokers, who walk the aisles looking for producers of product that they could work with,” Ernst says.
“I honestly didn’t think it would work out, but sure enough it did.”
It’s a revealing statement – the Ernsts thought it wouldn’t work but were still game to try.
Exports that first year totalled $850,000, all sold at high prices. Better yet, two brokers taught them about key export issues such as letters of credit, delivery logistics and packaging requirements.
When prices went into freefall the next year, they had the knowledge to ramp up sales and make a profit through volume.
Did they make mistakes?
Sure, he says, you always do when trying something new, but that’s no reason to hold back.
“I’ve learned there’s no right answer and no wrong answer. It’s just trying to generally go more in the right direction than the wrong direction. That’s a big part of the fun.”
That’s another revealing comment. For most of us, the fear factor is huge. But trying something new, even knowing you’ll inevitably get some things wrong, can be fun. And profitable, too.
Archived columns from this series can be found at www.fcc-fac.ca/learning. Farm Credit Canada enables business management skill development through resources such as this column, and information and learning events available across Canada.
