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The farm is a bustling place at this time of year. Everyone in every department is going one hundred different directions. The farmers are busy daily in the orchards and fields: thinning the apples, weeding the vegetables, checking the crops, harvesting the early produce, monitoring the irrigation. The market team is running stocking shelves, rearranging the displays, bringing in new products and refilling the coolers with more apple juice! The foodservice teams start as early as 4:30am baking pies, scones and bread, making sandwiches and soup, processing fruit from the fields, and even making Lemonade and Steeped Peach Iced Tea. All of this takes a lot of coordination and good planning, but our teams are dedicated and hard working; they are up to the task. Many quality ingredients go into the food we make. So what happens when our predictions are off and we have leftovers in the field, in the kitchen or in the Bakery? Let me answer that question for you!
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There are two kinds of possible waste coming from the farm - produce that is left out in the field, and produce and other products that are left unsold in the market. There is no doubt about it - It is hard to see food left out on the vine or in the orchard rows. We often get asked why there are peppers or apples laying on the ground. Firstly I’d like to point out that things are not always what they seem. If you see tomatoes and peppers laying between the rows it looks like waste, but in reality the vast majority of them were rotten on the plant, usually from sunburn, and have been picked and dropped for the health of the plant. If apples are on the ground it is usually from farmers thinning the trees, again for their health, or because of a windstorm. Once on the ground we cannot use the produce because of the risk of disease. And what about the surplus of good vegetables left on the plants? Is this food waste? These are tough questions, but Lance, my brother and our farmer, has explained to me why it’s not. Fruits and vegetables that are left in the field, whether on the vine or dropped, eventually decompose. This process helps build the soil back up with necessary nutrients and organic matter. As Lance would say, “From dust it came, and to dust it returns.” The food came from the soil and there it returns, giving back in the process. And so I have come to realize that what I perceived as waste, is not that at all.
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What about the produce that is picked, sometimes even packed, but does not sell? The truth is this is a reality for all farms, grocery stores, and restaurants. Sometimes this happens because we grew too much, because we baked too much or because of variables out of our
control. Sometimes this can be related to weather, community and world events, or just human behavior. What happens then? Our answer to this unavoidable problem is unique and goes back to the fact that we are going a lot of different directions all at once. Davison Orchards is not just a farm, not just a bakery, not just a cannery, not just a market; we are each of those things! When it comes to food waste, this is a serious advantage! When our fields and orchards produce too much we have a kitchen (and a willing team) that help dramatically decrease our food waste by processing the extras. We turn what would have been wasted into some of the most delicious foods we sell! Take strawberries as an example. This year alone, the cannery team processed 100's of pounds of strawberries that we could not sell because they were too ripe, too small, or just because we had too many. They transformed what would have been waste into ruby red, extra sweet, Strawberry Syrup. Consider our apple crop as another example. The perfect apples go to the market to be put in a bag or box for you. But honestly that’s only a small percentage of the whole crop. What happens to the rest? At our farm the small apples go to the apple peeler to be turned into Deep Dish Apples Pies. The oversized, the oddly shaped, the sunburned, the hail damaged, the over-ripe and the under-ripe all go to the juice room to be pressed into our Pure Apple Juice. And we don’t stop there. Even the apple pulp is given to the rancher up the road for his livestock to enjoy. Not one single part of the apple is wasted; we use it ALL up!
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 What about when we have leftovers in the Farmhouse Café or Bakery that didn’t sell? Even all of that is used up and enjoyed by our staff at the break table and by donation. We have the privilege of being in partnership with many organizations in our community to whom we
give baked goods and produce for those in need that they are working with. We have distributed boxes and boxes of goodies to North Okanagan Gleaners, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Interact Ministries in Kamloops and the Women’s Transition House in Vernon. What a privilege to be a small part of the good work they are doing. I’ll be honest and say that all of this takes a lot of hard work and coordination. But I am so proud of all of our products and how they are made, what they are made of, and of the hardworking team that makes it all happen. Thank you for being a part of decreasing food waste by supporting our farm. You too are an integral part of making this happen.
Laura,
For the Family |
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Did you know the "Amazing Race Canada" made a visit to the farm?
Tune in to an all-new episode, airing Tuesday, Aug. 9 at 9 pm ET/PT
on @CTV, CTV.ca & the CTV app
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Learn to make Chocolate Zucchini Loaf with Laura!
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