Okanagan Fruit Grown with Love By Gary Symons If you've ever spend a July day driving through the verdant vineyards and orchards on Elliott Road in Westbank, BC, you’ll almost certainly see a cluster of cars and people lined up at one farm in particular. They’re there to pick up the monstrous, plum-sized cherries that have been grown on this 9.5 acre family orchard by Usha Saini since 1987. “Every summer, for many, many years, we sell the cherries in July, we put up a bit of a shade, and when they see it the people from around here all come by to get Usha’s cherries,” she says. “Last year we finished in 12 days and sold it all, and people were so happy. The cherries are massive, they grow like a plum! Ask people here and they know my name, and they’ll tell you, Usha’s cherries are awesome. We also have a bit of peaches and blueberries, and for me, it’s just great to see people happy with the food we grow.”
While regenerative farming is all the buzz today, for Saini it was something she did naturally, having come from a culture where fertilizers were made on the farm, and protecting the soil was a centuries old tradition. “For all the time I’ve farmed here, I’ve always tried to put life back into the soil,” Saini said. “From the beginning, I would take all the branches from pruning, we would cut them, and put them in between the rows. I remember my brother would complain and say the bugs will get in there over the winter and attack again in the spring, but that didn’t happen. So, I keep all my summer pruning as a fertilizer for the trees and put it back into the soil to keep it healthy.” Working on a small farm surrounded by other non-organic farms, Saini realized that organic certification would be dif
Photo by Gary Symons
But cherries aren’t really the family business. Rather, Usha has primarily been an apple grower for most of her life, after immigrating to Canada from her native Punjab in the 1970s, and is known among orchardists for her dedication to regenerative farming.
Usha Saini, son Parm, and grandson Noah enjoy a spring day on the farm in West Kelowna.
ficult or impossible, since at least some spray would cross over onto her land. However, she tries to be “as organic as possible.” “We really wanted to keep it organic when we bought this property, but unless all your neighbours are organic too, it is very difficult,” Saini explains. “What I try to do is keep the land healthy, because if the land is healthy, the food you grow will be healthy too. I don’t use a lot of spray, just a little when it’s really needed, and I don’t use a lot of fertilizer either.” Saini’s approach seems to work, as she and her farm were recently featured in a 2017 video about apple growers by Ambrosia Apples.
Strangely enough, Usha originally didn’t want to be a farmer, even though she came from a family of orchardists, but after arriving in West Kelowna she quickly discovered that while you can take the girl out of the farm, you can’t take the farm out of the girl. “It’s funny,” says Saini, while enjoying a rare moment of relaxation in the orchard where she lives. “When I was young I never even wanted to marry a farmer, and I don’t know exactly what happened, but when I came to Canada I saw all the orchards here, and I absolutely loved it.” Rather than marry a farmer, Saini married an electrical engineer named Ram, and the couple moved to England where Ram finished his degree. When a cousin Innovation 2021 31
