Usha Saini
Usha Saini with one of her tractors.
If you've ever spend a July day driving through the verdant vineyards and orchards on Elliott Road in Westbank, BC, you’ll almost certainly see a cluster of cars and people lined up at one farm in particular.
They’re there to pick up the monstrous, plum-sized cherries that have been grown on this 9.5 acre family orchard by Usha Saini since 1987.
“Every summer, for many, many years, we sell the cherries in July, we put up a bit of a shade, and when they see it the people from around here all come by to get Usha’s cherries,” she says. “Last year we finished in 12 days and sold it all, and people were so happy. The cherries are massive, they grow like a plum! Ask people here and they know my name, and they’ll tell you, Usha’s cherries are awesome. We also have a bit of peaches and blueberries, and for me, it’s just great to see people happy with the food we grow.”
But cherries aren’t really the family business. Rather, Usha has primarily been an apple grower for most of her life, after immigrating to Canada from her native Punjab in the 1970s, and is known among orchardists for her dedication to regenerative farming.
While regenerative farming is all the buzz today, for Saini it was something she did naturally, having come from a culture where fertilizers were made on the farm, and protecting the soil was a centuries old tradition.
“For all the time I’ve farmed here, I’ve always tried to put life back into the soil,” Saini said. “From the beginning, I would take all the branches from pruning, we would cut them, and put them in between the rows. I remember my brother would complain and say the bugs will get in there over the winter and attack again in the spring, but that didn’t happen. So, I keep all my summer pruning as a fertilizer for the trees and put it back into the soil to keep it healthy.”
Working on a small farm surrounded by other non-organic farms, Saini realized that organic certification would be difficult or impossible, since at least some spray would cross over onto her land.
However, she tries to be “as organic as possible.”
“We really wanted to keep it organic when we bought this property, but unless all your neighbours are organic too, it is very difficult,” Saini explains. “What I try to do is keep the land healthy, because if the land is healthy, the food you grow will be healthy too. I don’t use a lot of spray, just a little when it’s really needed, and I don’t use a lot of fertilizer either.”
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Photo by Gary Symons
Saini Orchard
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Fresh Cherries
Saini’s approach seems to work, as she and her farm were recently featured in a 2017 video about apple growers by Ambrosia Apples.
Strangely enough, Usha originally didn’t want to be a farmer, even though she came from a family of orchardists, but after arriving in West Kelowna she quickly discovered that while you can take the girl out of the farm, you can’t take the farm out of the girl.
“It’s funny,” says Saini, while enjoying a rare moment of relaxation in the orchard where she lives. “When I was young I never even wanted to marry a farmer, and I don’t know exactly what happened, but when I came to Canada I saw all the orchards here, and I absolutely loved it.”
Rather than marry a farmer, Saini married an electrical engineer named Ram, and the couple moved to England where Ram finished his degree. When a cousin told them about Canada, Ram travelled to the Okanagan Valley to check it out, and Usha soon followed.
In the beginning, the couple lived in a tiny house while Ram worked as an engineer and Saini worked at the local packing house, and occasionally worked on other people’s farms.
And that’s when she regained her love of farming. When Saini saw the 9.5 acre parcel come up, already planted and with a spectacular view of Okanagan Lake, she became determined to buy the land.
“My husband really, really did not want to be a farmer, so we had a huge argument,” Saini laughs now. “Ram said, ‘I’m not a farmer, don’t push me to do that!’, but I said, ‘Don’t you worry, I’ll do everything, just say yes to buying it.
“But Ram had just had open heart surgery, and he felt so weak and frustrated, so he said, I don’t think we can do it. I said, well, if you don’t want to do this, give me my 50 per cent, and I’ll do it myself!”
Needless to say, Saini won that argument, and the couple happily farmed the land for the next three decades until Ram passed away.
In the beginning, however, it wasn’t easy. The trees planted on the land were not profitable, and the couple went through two replants. The first, using Summer Macs, didn’t work out, but then the Sainis planted Galas.
“Ram went to visit another farmer one day,” Saini recalls. “And that man was pruning his trees that day and said, you know, take as much as you want, you’re welcome to it. So Ram took the truck and came back with all these branches, and we grafted those and it came out very nicely."
The Saini Family
Usha Saini, son Parm, and grandson Noah enjoy a spring day on the farm in West Kelowna.
Saini still runs the farm today, but has added Ambrosias to the orchard in a half and half mix with Galas, with pockets of the farm used to grow cherries, blueberries and a variety of field crops that they either eat or sell through their fruit stand.
But farming alone is difficult, and after Ram’s passing Saini wondered if she could keep the farm going, before help arrived from the friends they’d made in their community.
One friend named Madou comes by almost every day to help out, and Saini’s adult children make it a point to come back to the homestead every summer to work the land and help harvest the fruit.
“I’ve been very fortunate, as some very good people came into my life after my husband passed away, and they have given me a hand working on the farm,” Saini says. “I was alone, wishing I had some help, but I wasn’t asking for it, and then they just came. My friend Mahdu comes twice a day and helps out, and we’ve become real buddies. She’s now my best friend, and so I never really feel alone.”