home property.
During much of his career, William was a major apricot grower. In 1958, William Jr. took over the property and ran it until the early 1970s, when he became ill. In 1974, Bryan dropped out of university to help the family and married Deb.
With a young family to support the couple lost their entire fruit crop in a 1986 hail storm.
Subsequently, Deb, who had been working on the farm, earned university degrees in social work and counselling. She is currently the Community Services Manager for the Ministry of Children and Family Development in the South Okanagan and Similkameen. “Deb has supported the farm big time,” said Bryan.
He quickly recognized the
opportunities presented by new apple varieties and in 1989 he planted a nursery of 10,000 Royal Gala trees. Throughout the next several years he replaced most of his Red Delicious apples and Lambert and Van cherries with plantings of Fuji, Braeburn and Royal Galas.
“We did well through the 1990s
because we were the first growers to be almost totally in new varieties. “Then the bandwagon caught up with us.”
With characteristic foresight Bryan bought a five-acre orchard which he converted to a vineyard. Soon he had a contract with CedarCreek Winery for his grapes. “We then made the decision to go into grapes fulltime, so I sold those two hectares to finance the conversion of the home place,”Bryan said. The conversion process was timed such that no more than 20 per cent of the land was out of production at one time.
Bryan explained that conversion cost a total of approximately $22,000 per acre for the three years he was out of production--$15,000 for infrastructure such as posts, wire and plants and another $10,000 for water and labour. “And that doesn’t include our lost income.”
The Hardmans lost their contract with CedarCreek when it was bought out by Mission Hill in early 2014. “I saw this decrease in demand for grapes from independent growers coming for years. Fortunately our
winery was built and we could move quickly into production ourselves,”Bryan said.
Currently, half of the Hardman grapes are made into wine and half are sold to other wineries. “In five years we want to be using all of our own grapes, which would bring our total wine production to around 5,500 cases.”
Going from growing apples to grapes was “a snap”for Bryan.
However, it hasn’t all been clear sailing.
Fourteen years ago bears ate the entire crop of grapes in a four acre planting.
An electric fence cost him $15,000 which he more than recouped the following year when the same block produced a $16,000 harvest. In November 2013, an early freeze killed the Hardmans' plantings of Merlot and Chardonnay.
Bryan considers the freeze a blessing in disguise because he didn’t have the room to process the entire harvest. Reflecting on the family’s venture into grapes, Bryan said, “I’d have started the winery five years earlier.”
26
British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Summer 2015
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