MAY 2019 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC


Surplus, cull fruit finds new purpose


as tasty snacks Innovative entrepreneur turns potential waste into handy food


by RONDA PAYNE


WINFIELD – Canada is among the world’s leaders when it comes to food waste according to a study for Toronto-based Second Harvest by consulting firm Value Chain Management International.


But a business in Lake


Country is doing its part to address the problem – preserving food rather than pitching it. “I was a city girl in Toronto,


Regina and Vancouver and then moved to the Rockies and then I moved here in 2006,” says Paula Diakiw, founder of Lake Country Harvest in Winfield, north of Kelowna. “I really wanted to be doing something with the food or the farmers in this area.”


While travelling the


Okanagan to stock up on fresh fruit, through conversation with growers and seeing waste piles, she noticed that more than half the local crop wasn’t making it market. It was slightly imperfect or the wrong size or colour, other regions had cornered the market first, or there was a lack of harvest labour, among other reasons. “I began to wonder what


we could do with the rest of their product,” Diakiw says. “I started with cherries. I wanted to see how many I could process and see if I could make a difference.” In 2008, she started buying fruit that wasn’t selling and


drying it. By the second year, she was renting a commercial kitchen and putting the Lake Country Harvest label on the dried fruits and jams making their way into the community. Diakiw regularly works with about nine growers and orchardists within 10 minutes of her home-based commercial kitchen on her property in Lake Country. She also sources blueberries from a grower in the Fraser Valley. A relationship with Hold It


Orchards was in place before Diakiw moved to Lake Country.


“I began dealing with Alma


Fochler back in the 90s when I came to the area for fruit,” she says. “Alma was a no- nonsense farm wife who taught me about fruit as we visited, and now I deal with her son Ron and Serena, her granddaughter.” Hold It has grown table


grapes, apples, pears and stone fruit as well as other crops on its nine-acre property since 1944. Lake Country Harvest buys its entire crop of Golden Delicious apples, or about 3,200 pounds of fruit. “From cherry season


through apple season, we are just running flat out,” says Diakiw. “People will call me [when they have extra fruit]. I am not going to dictate the price; you tell me the price and if I can afford it, I’ll pay it.” Hold It also sells peaches and plums to Diakiw. “It means I have more


room in the cooler to keep


45


Paula Diakiw saw opportunity where others saw unmarketable fruit and has created a thriving business turning seconds into value-added fruit snacks and condiments. RONDA PAYNE PHOTO


products longer,” Serena Fochler says. “She went from being just somebody who came and bought our fruit to actually being a friend. It’s quite a good relationship. She’s been buying from us since before my grandmother passed away.” Hold It sells its fruit direct to consumers, either at the farm gate or farmers’ markets. Without Diakiw, fruit that didn’t sell to customers would “probably be going to a friend for animal feed,” Fochler says. If it’s something Diakiw can


use, she will. “If they had perfect


apricots, say 10 boxes, they wouldn’t be able to keep them fresh [long enough to] take them to Kamloops and sell,” she says. “I’d buy them and dry them.” Alternatively, it may not


make sense to pay someone to staff the farm stand or farmers’ market. There are no additives in


Lake Country Harvest products. “All we add is air and love,”


says Diakiw, quoting the company’s slogan.


The product line varies based on what local orchards supply. Diakiw processed about 8,000 pounds of cherries one year, and another year handled 16,000 pounds of apples. Packaged products have been sold to Overwaitea Food Group as well as local wineries. “It does feel good that it’s


actually going for human consumption after all the work and effort that you’ve put in to grow it,” says Fochler.


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