Harvesting of Saskatoons occurs every year in July. Picking begins early in the morning (6 AM) so that the berries and the pickers can stay cool. Keeping the fruit cool until it is frozen is an important part of maintaining the quality of the berries. Once the picker is assigned to their row they pick only the ripe berries into the bucket that hangs from their belt, then emptying into a larger container for weighing and transporting to the sorting building. The field supervisor checks each pickers' product for fruit quality and consistency of colour making sure that berries are free from twigs and leaves. Picker records show the cumulative number of pounds picked each day as the picker is paid based on what they pick.

Grading berries. Our mechanical and hand sorting steps remove a number of berries that are under ripe, blemished or scarred. This photo shows the range of berries that can come across the sorting table in a day. Since the crop ripens unevenly some of the unripened berries will fall off when we hand pick the ripened fruit that resides in the same cluster. For this we have a mechanical sizer to remove the smallest berries, then hand inspect all the fruit on the white belt shown in the following photo. Hand sorting in the cooler. The fragile fruit must be handled carefully after harvest. The best way to ensure quality is to cool the fruit quickly and hold it at 5C for all of the processes like sorting, grading and packaging.

We enjoy the help of enthusiastic pickers of all ages. They come to our farm from the city of Saskatoon and surrounding area. As the photos show we also have the enthusiastic support of several Hutterite Colonies.

Once picked the berries are transported to the sorting room where they are hand-sorted to remove damaged fruit, stems, leaves, etc. Then they are packed into 30 pound bags and boxed. The boxes on the pallet are separated by spacers to allow the blast freezer to do its job efficiently and get the berries frozen at their flavour peak. The berries are then taken out of frozen storage as required and turned into spreads, syrups and beverages throughout the year.

Pickers line up to have their berries inspected and weighed. Time out for a drink and back to the orchard. Our fastest pickers can pick 100 pounds a day at the peak of harvest.

 

Grace in our winter wonderland. Saskatoons are very hardy by fruit standards. these bushes covered in frost will withstand -40C and lower temperatures during their dormant winter period.

 

Resting. Rows of Saskatoon berry bushes in a thick blanket of frost.

 

Hand packing pints of fresh Saskatoon Berries for delivery across western canada.