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Photo by Tom Walker
IFTA Tour
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Photo by Tom Walker
Packing LIne
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Photo by Tom Walker
Computer Packing LIne
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Photo by Tom Walker
Coral Farms
The cherry industry in the Okanagan is evolving and Coral Beach Farms, the largest cherry grower in the Okanagan, and indeed in Canada, is an example of that evolution.
Coral Beach was a feature on the International Fruit Tree Association’s summer tour in Kelowna in July. Delegates got to tour several of the farm’s blocks led by company horticulturists and Orchard and Vine followed up with an interview with company president David Geen.
“Things have changed a lot since my great grandfather began fruit farming at Carr’s Landing/Lake Country in 1903,” says Geen. “For one, the center of gravity has moved north.”
No one planted cherries in Lake Country back in the day, says Geen, let alone in Vernon. Yet today, Coral Beach only farms from Kelowna north and they are just breaking ground on a new orchard site at Pritchard, 40 kilometres east of Kamloops along the South Thompson River. When the Pritchard property is in production by 2023, that will increase Coral Beach Farms total cherry plantings to 1080 acres, with the most northerly site in North America.
Coral Beach began expanding out of Carr’s Landing in 2013 to several blocks in the Lavington/Coldstream area east of Vernon and a site on the northwest side of Okanagan Lake, known as Cholla Hills, in 2017. Other recent properties include two sites in Winfield. The first, which fronts on Hwy 97 is also the location of a new packing facility. And if you cast your gaze to the east and up to some 2500 feet above sea level, you’ll spot the 100 acre Eldorado blocks perched up on the west-facing slopes above Winfield. Another recent acquisition is adjacent to Layer Cake Mountain in East Kelowna, where the farm has a nursery plot as well as production plantings.
This spring, the purchase of another family farm with a long Okanagan history links the Geens to the Dendys, growers who Geen credits with leading this new wave of the Okanagan industry. “Hugh Dendy was one of the first growers to plant the newer (Agriculture Agri Foods Canada) Summerland developed varieties in the 1980’s,” Geen recounts. The Okanagan cherry industry had pretty much died in the 1970s, Geen says. “Several years of heavy June rains wiped out the crop. The older varieties were not tolerant to rain splits,”
The Lapins variety developed by Summerland was less prone to cracking and it matured later in the season when the June monsoon in the Okanagan was usually over. “This was the beginning of a new industry targeting a later market for cherries,” Geen points out. “Back when my great-uncle Percy grew cherries in the mid 1900’s the season began in late June and was done by July 20th. “
Geen says that with his northern and higher elevation plantings in some years he may be harvesting fruit into the first week of September. The northwest US is a juggernaut to compete with, says Geen. “But their industry is winding down by the first week of August and we will be picking through to August 25th this year” Geen explains. ‘I thought it would have been later, but this summer’s heat has really sped up and compressed the ripening season.”
“The Dendy farm has their own packing plant,” Geen adds. “That allows us to acquire more capacity without stretching our own packing line. There are roughly 85 acres of bearing cherry orchard on a combination of owned and leased properties.” Coral Beach has a variety of leased properties of their own, and Geen says the cost of land in the Okanagan was one of the factors driving him north into Kamloops cattle country.
A mix of plantings across their multiple sites allows Coral Beach to diversify. “We plant mostly Summerland varieties with a focus on the later ones,’ horticulturist Gayle Krahn explains. “We have Staccato, Sovereign and Sentennial, and Sweetheart does particularly well in the North Okanagan. But we also have significant acreage of Regina, a variety from Germany, and Kordia, a Czechoslovakian variety.”
“We also have some of the new numbered varieties from Summerland on order and we will get some test trees to experiment with next spring,” Krahn adds.
“Our standard planting is central leader on Mazzard root stock.,” says Krahn. ‘It works well for us. We find it is easy to train our pruning staff to pull out the older wood and it consistently turns out six to eight tonnes per acre for us.”
Krahn was giving an overview of the Lavington plantings. The sixty-five acre south sloping site showcases a number of Coral Beach best practices. Custom-built worker accommodation trailers as well as tree shaded camping sites, house staff. Wind-break plantings help to mitigate noise and dust and reduce spray drift. A laser beam pans over the orchard to keep birds out and eliminates the need for propane cannons and Voen rain covers are being trialed in an adjacent block to protect high value Reginas from summer storms.
When the tour stopped at Winfield, horticulturist Craig Dalgliesh gave an overview of their higher elevation and latitude plantings. The Eldorado blocks range from 2150 ft to 2650, notes Dalgliesh. “We couldn’t get in to prune till April this year because of the snow pack,” he says. “But it will be our latest ripening site which will be good for our marketing.”
The climate at the 200-acre Pritchard site on a south-facing bench above the river looks promising, says Dalgliesh. “Part of our reason for buying Pritchard apart from the more reasonable cost was to diversify our weather exposure. That site is dryer than the Okanagan and quite warm. I expect that we will see ripening times similar to our home farm in Carr’s Landing.”
The new packing facility in Winfield will support the expanded production with a new Unitech packing line capable of 18 tons per hour, cold storage and modern shipping bays. The original Carr’s Landing plant was built in 1995 before optical sorting existed Geen points out. “We have been adding onto the plant at Carr’s Landing as we have grown, and everything is sandwiched in tight,” Geen comments. “We are running double shifts in the plant to maximize the 7 ton per hour capacity, and it is quite a challenge to squeeze reefer trucks up and down the narrow roads.,”
The Winfield plant is close to the Kelowna airport. “We have some early shipments going in to export markets by air,” says Geen but the majority of our US shipments (30%) go by truck. Another 30% go to Asia with another 30% to Europe mostly by container. Having exposure to the variety of markets allows us to direct fruit of different sizes and keeping ability to different markets.” A three-day truck ride is quite a bit different than three weeks on a boat, he points out.
Being on a bus route making it easier for local staff to commute to the plant. Year round, Coral Beach employs 15 full time salaried staff. During the shoulder seasons of February through May and September to November that goes to 75-80 and by summer the work force is up to 1000.
“When all the new plantings come on stream by 2023 that will be all the expansion for a while,” says Geen. “It will be time to consolidate, get our infrastructure in line with our production base and expand our management team to get ahead of the curve.” ■
