Wilmot Orchards bests the blueberry odds with continued expansion

Nestled between Bowmanville and Newcastle on the Oak Ridges Moraine, Wilmot Orchards is not the traditional location for a blueberry operation.

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Charles Stevens bought Wilmot Orchards in 1975, a year before he graduated from the University of Guelph with a Bachelor of Science, when he planned a future of apple growing.

When he and his wife, Judi, considered cultivating blueberries, a government soil test said it was impossible. That spurred them to prove it wrong.

Why it matters: Wilmot Orchards is on track to be Ontario’s largest blueberry grower, with 37 acres of blueberries by 2024.

“There were nine or 10 different varieties when I started that were somewhat adaptable to this climate,” said Stevens. “We were not perfect, but we adapted our methods of doing it so that we were actually economical.”

In 1979, Stevens planted the first acre and a half, and four years later, Wilmot Orchard opened pick-your-own blueberries to the public. Now, 11 varieties are available to meet demand and market as products in the on-farm Appleberries Café.

“This summer season, we saw 30,000 guests come through here to pick blueberries and enjoy our café,” said Stevens’s daughter, Courtney. “Thirty-thousand people pick a lot of blueberries in about a month.”

She oversees the café and social media marketing for Wilmot Orchards and said consumer demographics and needs have changed significantly in her lifetime.

Initially, older Eastern Europeans dominated sales. Now, they cater primarily to young Asian families who want larger berries.

“The bigger, the better,” Courtney said with a laugh. “But each variety has slightly different flavours, different ripening times, and slightly different sizes.”

Generally speaking, early berries are more tart and late varieties are sweeter but can also be smaller and less appealing to the modern-day consumer.

The operation is slowly transitioning out of Jersey, a late-season variety with a small berry, in favour of newer types like Valour and Bonus, with a larger berry.

“(Jerseys) is our smallest variety, and we have people that flatly refuse to pick them,” said Courtney.

“(Valour and Bonus) are the same time frame but much bigger. People have been thrilled with them. One of their berries is over an inch.”

Demand for blueberries continues to grow, she said. Being touted in mainstream media as a “superfood” created a distinct increase in sales, prompting the farm to expand Appleberries Café and incorporate the falconry bird-hazing program into an agri-tourism draw.

Judi launched the farm stand-style cafe in 1994, baking all the products in their kitchen. In 2003, it opened as a brick-and-mortar shop snuggled between blueberry patches and expanded to include ice cream and an assortment of jams, sauces and blueberry coffee.

“The volume of people has really changed and pushed us to keep expanding,” said Courtney.

In 2022, it added an indoor dining facility, which expanded Wilmot Orchard’s ability to provide seasonal customers with a place to enjoy cafe purchases and host special events, including a Farm and Food Care Ontario tour in early October.

“We’re breaking into events like this, as well as supper clubs where we bring in chefs from downtown Toronto and do a multi-course dinner,” Courtney told FFCO tour participants.

“The only requirement for them is they must use our blueberries or blueberry products in each course.”

The first supper club ran in May with fantastic uptake and response, so they added another in early October.

Stevens said an unexpected 10-minute hailstorm on Sept. 18 caused significant damage to the 150-acre apple orchard.

“We had roughly eight per cent of our crop harvested by that time,” he said. “The rest of it got 87 per cent damage from hail, which has never ever happened at that time of year. Ever.”

In 45 years, Stevens has lost four crops to hail, but never this late in the year. He said hackers shut down the Weather Network the day before. A too-tight timeline to fire up the hail cannon contributed to losses.
Still, events like this drive home the importance of diversification.

“If we didn’t have blueberries, we really would be in a pickle,” said Stevens, adding it won’t cover the apple losses, but it helps. “That’s being self-insured with diversification.”