The road to a successful, second revenue stream was a circuitous one for Sharon Judd and her family at Meadow Lynn Farms, at Simcoe, Ontario.
Fred and Sharon Judd and family have been steam-extracting juice from strawberry seconds for several years. Their biggest challenge was developing a market for their product.
Successful strawberry growers, the family wanted to add value to their seconds. Judd said it was her mom who came up with the process — steam extraction — to make juice.
“Our motivation was that we had fruit going to waste.”
The family began with a stovetop steamer-juicer intended for home use. It worked well but the volumes that could be processed through the one-batch-at-a-time process were small.
Still, it was enough to get started and, besides, the Judd family also needed to identity the right market for their product. Strawberries are sweet to the taste but when juiced their acidic nature, a pH of about 3.5, Judd said, comes through.
“It was soon becoming clear to us that we needed to experiment with it,” Judd said.
A number of products were developed: jelly, sweetened syrup and strawberry-lemonade that proved a hit among the customers coming to their eight-acre, pick-your-own business.
The strawberry lemonade, mixed with a shot of vodka, also proved a winner although that type of approach could only be enjoyed by members of the family and friends in the beginning.
That changed when Judd began working with The Blue Elephant Craft Brew House in Simcoe. It turned out that the strawberry juice being extracted was a welcome additive for brewing beer.
The idea took off as additional microbreweries, wineries cideries came on board but a larger steamer-juicer was need to meet the demand.
“What surprised us was the markets that were available. I hadn’t visualized making beer with our juice but that’s our biggest customer right now,” Judd said.
Judd diligently searched the Internet for commercial-scale equipment but came up empty. Through the combined efforts of a local, stainless-steel fabricator and Judd’s husband Fred, who designed the heat source, a prototype was built and put into use.
“I had worked three seasons with the first prototype and so I could see there were problems we needed to overcome,” Judd said.
The family enlisted support through the Walker Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre, part of Niagara College’s Research and Innovation Centre. Along with technical support the college helped Judd and her family access funding through the federal government.
The larger steam-juicer unit along with its heating source, again designed by Fred,
In the absence of any other commercial options, this large-capacity steamer unit was designed and fabricated in Simcoe for Meadow Lynn Farms. The Judd family needed greater capacity to help meet with the demand for strawberry juice from microbreweries, wineries and cidermakers in Ontario
has been put together and will be ready for the 2019 strawberry season. It’s similar, in some respects, to the evaporating pan systems for maple syrup, Judd said.
It has a capacity of close to 40 kilograms of fruit, triple that of the first prototype. It can be operated by a single person, includes an automated water control and with its four-tray design allows for a continuous flow of final product.
Judd likes the steamer-juicer method which produces a clean, sterile product without a lot of the fuss compared to the cold-press method used to extract juice from fruit.
They’ve even found a home for the mash — the family’s herd of Jerseys managed by Sharon and Fred’s son Thomas. Though happenstance, a few of the animals accessed a wheelbarrow full of the mash and licked it clean. Now, throughout strawberry season at least, the mash is a component of their cow’s total-mixed-ration.
Judd sees the steam-juicer approach as an opportunity for smaller farming operations. She’s already rented out the smaller unit to other farmers to extract juice from peaches and blueberries and plans to do the same with the new unit, if there’s a demand.
Judd was part of a panel discussion at the annual Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Convention in Niagara Falls.
Also participating were Paul Harber with Ravine Estate Vineyard Winery, Kevin Martin of Martin’s
Paul Harber said adding a second stream of revenue came easily for his family’s Ravine Estate Vineyard Winery, thanks to the current popularity of cider
Family Fruit Farm and Donya Litowitz with Can-Am Peppers.
Kevin Martin says his family’s apple chips are a healthy alternative to many other snack choices but they can also be dressed up for added sweetness
Harber said his family estate winery is relatively small with just 34 acres of grapes at St. Davids, just a few miles from Niagara Falls. Unlike the Judd family, he said the development of a second stream of revenue came easily.
The family had already invested heavily to build their business as a tourist destination. They saw an opportunity to add hard cider production to the mix which could be produced with the equipment they already had in place.
They focused on the production of cider containing little in the way of residual sugar. It is a segment of the market they’ve been able to penetrate. It’s now being sold on a seasonal basis as a premium product by a large grocery retailer who approached them; usually it’s the other way around.
“Our cider idea went fast because we got very lucky,” Harber said.
Can-Am Peppers and Martin’s Fruit Farms are much larger operations although the Martin family maintains a certain small-farm charm through their on-line marketing effort for its secondary revenue stream — apple chips.
The Martins family has 100 acres apple production at the family’s home farm in Wellington and another 600 near Port Burwell along Lake Erie’s north shore.
“Ultimately, it was a leap faith . . . our number one mission was to bring more value into the business,” Martin said.
“You need to know your mission and what you’re looking to accomplish. We’re still looking for money in the pocket but we are bringing money back to the industry.”
Initially, the product was sold at a farmers’ market where an evaluation of consumer response was conducted. By year four, the volume of sales had picked up and there are now four different apple chip choices — the original apples-alone version and three flavoured offerings.
“One of the things we’re learning is once you go down this road you have to come up with another idea, then another and then another. You have to keep it fresh,” Martin said.
— Jeffrey Carter