Young Agrarian Mentorship for Elderberry Grove

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A diverse set of interests have led Salmon Arm farming couple Jed Wiebe and Louise Lecouffe to a unique crop – elderberries. Jed likes to experiment with horticulture, (at over 200 varieties of fruits, nuts, and berries, he admits to being ‘a bit obsessive”). Louise is interested in medicinal plants and their chemistry and the two of them have been working on home canning techniques for a while.

“We had been harvesting our local wild elderberry and making a shrub or oxymel,” says Louise, referring to a tart vinegar tonic for drinking. “It’s a 2500-year-old recipe from Hippocrates: One-third elderberry juice, one-third apple cider vinegar and one-third honey.” Taking the shrub as a daily tonic was keeping their winter colds at bay, Louise adds. The couple made up some syrup from the wild elder and sold it at the Enderby seed swap. “I knew that would be our target audience,” says Louise.

At the same time they had been thinking about a commercial crop for their family farm. “My parents were encouraging me to do something with our land, but I would joke that I only wanted to grow something unusual like stinging nettles, dandelions or elderberry,” says Jed. “When I found out that you can grow it commercially, it was no longer a joke.”

“We both agreed that if we were going to farm it wasn’t going to be a market garden like our friends,” says Louise. “It was going to be something medicinal, about helping people.”

Jed had first heard of elderberry while travelling in Europe, where there are around 32,000 acres of commercial production. North America has about 600 acres with one commercial operation in Quebec, but the majority are centered in Missouri.  That’s where the couple got their first cuttings in 2016, just to try.

“Elder is a really easy plant to grow,” explains Jed. “You stick it in the ground and it sprouts like a willow.”

Louise adds, “We had these amazing little cuttings and the plants grew six feet tall and six feet wide.”

The couple got serious and ordered 1,000 cuttings for the spring of 2017.  “We got around 10 lbs of berries per plant in those first years,” Jed recalls. “That’s comparable to commercial US growers.”  

Jed went to an elderberry conference in Missouri and Louise to an herb growing and marketing conference in Washington. They took their own cuttings and planted out the rest of their 1.6 acre field and Elderberry Grove was officially launched. Their plants are grown as shrubs in the US style, as opposed to the single trees that are favoured in Europe. “Growing them in a hedge gives a much higher yield per acre,” notes Jed.

They sell some of the late blooming spring flowers to distilleries and kombucha makers, and dry some to make a tea, but most of the value is in the berries. The couple note that when the hardy plants are growing through the summer, they are able to tend to their own extensive garden. The berries are harvested in the late fall and they process their products through the winter, stretching the work load well past the growing season.

Elderberry is a well-known plant in Europe. My Yugoslavian neighbour has confessed to snitching flowers off the tree in my front yard for an early summer cordial, but the majority of elder’s well documented anti-oxidant properties come from the juice.

Elderberries are mildly toxic when raw, so the seeds are removed, and the juice must be cooked. Jed has built his own destemming machine and they use an old cider press to extract the juice, which is then frozen. Louise has set up a fully inspected commercial kitchen in the Salmon Arm Elks Hall where they prepare and bottle juice, syrup and the shrub. The couple has plans to build their own mobile commercial kitchen this fall and are eyeing a wine press for the juice.

“Last year our sales were online, at farmers’ markets in Salmon Arm and Enderby, and in select health food stores,” says Louise. “Some people are buying it by the case to take as a daily immune booster.” The recent health scare pushed sales skyward, and Elderberry Grove was sold out by the middle of March.

Elderberry Grove’s product is certified organic. They are the only producers in Canada using fresh berries (not dried) and they are able to sell at a competitive price point, Louise says. “We sold 4500 bottles of our products this year,” she says. “People are familiar with the Quebec brand that is sold in health food stores and when they see ours they are happy to switch to a local product. “

Elderberry is known as an immune system support and an excellent source of vitamins B and C. “Some people take it as a daily supplement either to prevent or ease cold and flu symptoms.” says Louise. “Or like Jed does, as an anti-inflammatory.” The tasty syrup can be mixed with soda water, added to smoothies, cocktails, and poured on ice cream.

Jed says the growers in Missouri calculate he is at the northern limit of the successful growing range. “Our fruit is harvested very late, but that is a good thing,” he notes. “We think it helps us avoid spotted wing drosophila damage, which is hard to control organically.” Jed has launched his own trials to see if there are other varietals that would be better suited to his location.

“Yeah, my obsessiveness kicked in,” he chuckles. “I have hunted down every commercially grown elderberry I can get in North America. I have 27 varieties now, including four from Denmark and at least one from Romania.”

The couple tapped the Young Agrarians mentorship program which they say has given them lots of support, and their expansion this spring has been made possible with a lease agreement arranged with the help of the YA’s land matching program. “We are really positive about the value-added potential for elder as a crop for small scale farmers,” says Jed. “That is part of the reason we are so keen to sell cuttings to others, and we are really interested in learning from their experiences.”

Friendly neighbours had been looking to make better use of their extra land as they down-sized from boarding horses and Jed and Louise wanted to expand their plantings.  Tessa Wetherill, the Okanagan land matcher with Young Agrarians, helped both sides draw up a lease agreement. “She just had so many points that she brought up that made the whole process much better,” says Jed. They ended up with a 10-year lease and have planted another 1.6 acres.

“This new field is completely different from our home farm, so it will be excellent to compare the two growing environments,” says Jed. “The wife of the couple is from Switzerland and loves elderberry. She says she can’t wait to have an elderberry farm on her land.”