Poor weather conditions taking a toll on local U-pick farms

With summer in the rearview mirror, two local U-pick produce farms are hoping that next year’s season will be more fruitful for their small businesses.

A dry spring and winter fell heavily on Saskatchewan producers this year, and not for the first time.

As Vicki Derksen noted, this is the third year in a row that she has seen a dry start to the summer season, which forced her U-pick just outside of Caronport, Grandpa’s Garden, to remain closed to the public. “It’s really hard when you want to do something in terms of offerings this to people, and not being able to do it just because of the weather,” said Derksen. Derksen admitted this was the third year she has seen crop failure in her strawberries, and the difficult weather actually caused her to lose about 40 per cent of her raspberry crop.

Although raspberries and strawberries aren’t the only fruit the Garden has available to pick, the loss is still a blow to the business. Nor-Be-Ann Cherry Orchard, a U-pick just east of Moose Jaw, was also closed for the season this summer. The Moose Jaw Express was unable to reach Nor-BeAnn’s for comment, although a post to their Facebook page attributed the closure to “a late frost and other factors.” Bend in the River Berries, located south of Moose Jaw, also saw a poor growing year for sour cherries, plums and raspberries and a late ripening of haskap berries this season as well.

Although Derksen has other branches of her business to supplement the Garden’s closure, the abysmal growing season was still disheartening to see. She hopes that conditions will improve for next year, both for herself and her clientele. “We’d love to be able to continue doing it, but we’ll see what happens next year,” said Derksen. “We’ve seen so many extremes with the weather [lately], which are not great for fruit. They don’t like it.” U-picks have a unique kind of draw, said Derksen, because they offer an experience that so many people may otherwise never get to have — especially those in an urban environment without garden space. She expressed concern for the future of U-picks as a business structure because although people come in and do their own leg work, maintaining the crops is still a lot of work. And for Derksen, the poor weather isn’t helping with that workload. “I wonder if the whole U-pick thing really has a kind of a limited lifespan, just because it takes so much time, effort, energy on the part of the people who own it,” said Derksen. “Tough weather conditions don’t make it any easier.”

For now, time will only tell if this fall’s moisture will be enough to revive local fruit crops to their usual glory. Local U-pick Grandpa’s Garden had a poor season for berries this year, which left them to rely on their other ventures for revenue.