The Core of the Problem
We walk past the first few trees, their trunks the diameter of dinner plates. Looking closer at their gnarled bark, we see tufts of moss growing in the knots, cracks and crevices. The branches fan out into dense canopies overhead that cool the air and cover the grass and shrubs below in shade. Robins dash around and pick at the soil. When I close my eyes, this apple orchard sounds, feels and even smells like a forest. But there’s a problem: “We’re having a hard time holding onto it,” says owner Jennifer Deol of There & Back Again Farms. “It just doesn’t make any money.”
A tree fruit growers’ tale
Jennifer Deol and her husband, Guri Gill, have owned this orchard for seven years. The four acres of McIntosh apple trees that stand here today were planted over 40 years ago by the previous owner, Ken Harvie. The Harvies were one of the original orcharding families in southeast Kelowna, which is in the unceded and ancestral territory of the Syilx (Okanagan) People.
Deol and Gill both grew up in the Okanagan Valley on family farms and come from multigenerational farming families. Originally farmers in India, Deol’s parents immigrated to Canada in the 1970s on a migrant farm worker program. Her parents eventually acquired their own orchards. “Our farm grew a bit of everything,” Deol recalls. “Every fruit you could find in the Okanagan, my parents grew it,” including apples.
“Farming is very hard work,” Deol adds. “My parents obviously didn’t want that for their children. They came to Canada with hopes that their kids could get out of the farming cycle.” So Deol was encouraged to pursue an education and career in Vancouver. That’s where she met Gill. While working their 9-to-5 jobs, the couple found themselves thinking about the Okanagan Valley.
They knew the landscape was changing. They were hearing from old neighbours with smaller-scale, multi-crop, family-run farms, including their own parents, that they were “feeling that crunch of selling” as they approached retirement. Given the rising cost of land in the Okanagan Valley, “the highest bidder” was often corporations looking to replant. “The only way to make money is if you are big and selling the commodity that makes the most money, which right now is cherry and wine grapes,” Deol says.
“For us, it was really important to preserve diversity in farming,” she explains. “That’s why we wanted to get back into farming. We wanted to farm local, a bit of everything, and sell what we farm directly to our local community.” So after a decade in Vancouver, Deol and Gill returned to their roots in the Okanagan Valley to grow food and their family.
They chose the name There & Back Again Farms to tell this story of returning home, and as a nod to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. “Hobbits remind me of the joys of [a] simple life of farming, eating, merriment and cheer (community), hence why we always say [we are] ‘growing for our community,’" Deol says.
Deol and Gill sell their McIntosh apples, along with other produce they grow on 40 acres of land they rent or lease, directly to the community. This is the way Deol’s parents had done it: displaying produce picked that day on folding tables, set up at their farm stand or at the farmers’ market.
(Apple) core values
But during the 2023 wildfire season, Kelowna farmers’ markets were forced to shut down at the height of harvest. “Tourists were told ‘don’t come to the Okanagan,’ which really hurt a lot of small businesses that do the markets,” says Frances Callaghan, executive director of the Kelowna Farmers’ and Crafters’ Market.
“[Deol] reached out and said, ‘I have a venue where you can put some of your products that can reach people.’” The farm stand at There & Back Again Farms became a hub for other local businesses and farmers to sell their products when there were few other options. Deol also worked with local organizations to distribute produce to those who needed it most and to co-ordinate other wildfire relief efforts.
Last year, There & Back Again Farms donated over $25,000 in produce through partnerships with organizations such as Foodit-Forward Okanagan Association, Central Okanagan Food Bank, Mamas for Mamas and Second Harvest. Their important role in the community has been recognized through various awards, including the B.C. Farmers’ Market award for vendor having the most outstanding community impact in 2023.
“[Deol’s] got a heart of gold when it comes to the community,” Callaghan says. “The [B.C. Farmers’ Market] award is to recognize a farmer that goes above and beyond being a farmer… how much they’re involved in the community around them and how much they provide to the community.”
Deol feels pride in feeding people. “I still actually get that high, that’s why we do farm stands and farmers’ markets… You get this feeling of ‘I grew this for your family to enjoy.”
Young people, old apple trees
Deol remembers when she saw the McIntosh orchard for the first time. “We just kind of fell in love with it because of the older trees… It reminded me of home.” She adds, “It reminded me so much of my parents and how they farmed: they never replanted anything.”
What can visitors to the McIntosh orchard at There & Back Again Farms expect? “You’re going to feel and see a thriving ecosystem,” Deol explains.
As we walk down the alleys between the rows of trees, she points to the grasses at our feet. While they might look like weeds to some, they are actually flowers and the first food sources for bees.
“Anytime I see a giant mason bee, I’m so excited because those are the natural bees. Those are not bees we’ve had to hire to pollinate for us. These are natural populations that are [saying], ‘I can eat here. There’s food for me.’”
There’s also a lot going on beneath the surface. “If the trees and soil are healthy, you’ll see mushrooms and different fungi popping up,” Deol says. B.C. tree fruit specialists that Deol has brought in to test the soil quality at the McIntosh orchard have complimented the soil for its high organic matter.
In her 2020 master’s thesis in the environmental science program at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, Theresa Loewen looked at the benefits of processes such as soil production and pollination on farms and surrounding landscapes in the Okanagan Valley. These benefits are referred to in the literature as “ecosystem services.”
By treating farms as ecosystems (or “agroecosystems”), farmers or land managers can adopt management practices that promote ecosystem services and rely less on inputs that can be harmful to the environment. As Deol has observed, “If the soil is healthy and undisturbed, you’ve set up the natural elements to grow food without too much involvement.”
Deol farms this way to honour her family roots. At the same time, she is also taking what she learned in the classroom and applying it to the orchard. Deol studied and worked as a climate organizer and environmental youth advocate at United Nations climate conventions for a decade.
“It shifted my perspective on success,” Deol says about her time at university. She recalls how her parents would say, “We never amounted to much. We were humble, we paid our bills, we got you through school… so go to school and do things beyond anything we could ever dream for ourselves.” After studying ecology, Deol now sees other forms of success: “People like my parents knew, ‘If we allow nature to thrive, our orchards thrive without too much involvement from us.’”
Deol aims to manage the orchard as passively as possible, but some interventions are still needed. Annual management on the orchard involves winter pruning, apple thinning, raking leaves for circulation and cutting grass around the base of the trees for safety purposes. But this is just the beginning for her: “There are so many more things we want to do to be less intensive,” she says.
From “forests” to fruiting walls
Orchards such as the McIntosh orchard at There & Back Again Farms, what some call traditional, heritage or old growth orchards, are becoming increasingly rare in the Okanagan Valley
There is no universal definition of a traditional orchard. “Probably what you're referring to when you use the term traditional orchard is standard rootstocks producing really big trees. They’re at a larger spacing, maybe 20 feet by 20 feet… with grass cover underneath,” says Molly Thurston. “They have maybe a more pastoral aspect to them.”
Thurston was born in Kelowna and has been working in the tree fruit industry for nearly two decades. She consults with tree fruit growers as a horticulturist at Pearl Agricultural Consulting and is a grower herself.
The style of orchard that now dominates the Okanagan Valley evolved over many years, with rapid changes in the last five decades. New rootstock (used in apple propagation) was brought to market in the late ’70s and ’80s that produced smaller (semidwarf) trees. Growers found they could plant these smaller trees closer together — say 15 by 10 feet apart. In the ’90s and 2000s, new rootstock produced even smaller (dwarf) trees that could be planted as few as 2 by 10 feet apart.
Planted at this higher density, the trees create a “fruiting wall.”
Despite this general shift to higher density plantings, not all modern orchards look or function the same way. As Thurston says, “On our farm, we would use what right now is being called regenerative practices like incorporating manure prior to planting, using cover cropping, maintaining a grass cover that reduces erosion of soil.” She works with growers or land owners to understand their objectives and determine the best way to achieve them.
Carl Withler observed this transition to higher density orchards while working for the B.C. ministry of agriculture for 17 years. For the last five years of his career, Withler was the B.C. tree fruit and grape specialist.
“There’s been a pretty significant intensification of the orchard industry in the province of B.C.,” Withler says. “I call it the ‘compact industry.’ We’ve moved from 300 or 400 trees per acre to 2,100 trees per acre.”
Drivers for the shift to higher density orchards include labour or harvestability, reduced time from planting to the first viable crop, fruit colour and size, water efficiency and higher yields.
More trees per acre means more apples. “If you go from 35 bins per acre to 70 to 80 bins per acre, in theory that’s a doubling of your revenue,” Withler says. “The more bins you put in the packing house, the better the pay check [potentially].”
Growers also replant to keep up with the demand for new varieties. “Who buys Red Delicious apples anymore? Nobody does,” Withler says. “Everybody has to be right on the leading edge, you know for the next new apple variety, for various reasons.”
One reason is significant competition in the apple industry. The number of packing houses in the Okanagan Valley has grown over the years, while the number of retailers they sell to has shrunk to only a few grocery giants, which drives up competition for limited space in the apple bins of their produce sections. B.C. apples are also in direct competition with Washington apples and are losing an ever greater share of the B.C. market.
Deol sold her McIntosh apples to a packing house one year, but it wasn’t worth the effort. “We made three cents a pound, which is nothing. That doesn’t even cover our costs,” she says. “We might as well let the apples rot on the trees… that’s why farmers rip them out.”
Many growers did exactly that using funding from the tree fruit replant program. Launched 10 years ago by the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture, the program was intended to provide $10.6 million over seven years to “encourage producers to remove older, low-value varieties in low-density plantings and replant with modern high-value varieties in high-density plantings,” according to a report prepared for the ministry in 2022. Over its lifespan, the tree fruit program provided funding for approximately 1.32 million apple trees.
“If we were to have [successfully applied to the program], we would have [received] $30,000 in our pockets to replant,” Deol says. We were very, very tempted. But we [decided we were] going to stick it out.”
Family trees
This year, There & Back Again Farms will be opening up the McIntosh orchard for U-pick. “From an agri-tourism perspective, how cool is it to harvest apples from a tree?” Deol asks. “You’re going to experience what it’s like interacting with a tree… climbing up a ladder, picking an apple. It will give people that experience with the way apples used to be grown and can still be grown.”
As Loewen notes, “Esthetics are an ecosystem service, too.”
Deol has had many visitors to the McIntosh orchard admire its beauty. “We’ve had photography groups and people who teach photography come in and just spend so much time on this property because they’re amazed.”
Deol plans to do more farm tours and farm-to-table dinners. These sorts of agri-tourism experiences provide a means to hold onto the McIntosh orchard. “It’s a way to make enough to allow us to continue to farm this way,” she explains.
Experiences that bring people into the orchard are also an educational tool. Through the Kelowna Farmers’ and Crafters’ Market, Callaghan is familiar with the value of connecting people with where their food comes from. “It’s getting people into eating local and seeing what’s grown in their backyard,” she says.
For Deol, the McIntosh orchard not only connects her to her community and to nature, it’s also a connection to family.
Growing up on her family farm, Deol used to be afraid of bees. Her grandfather would explain: “The reason you have an apple or we have a peach or we have grapes is because of that bee. It’s not anything to be scared of; it’s here to help.” She now passes these lessons on to her son.
She remembers a day observing her grandfather tending to the family’s fruit trees. “This [sparrow] would come sit on a branch, and then it would flutter and it would sit on his turban.” As soon as Deol approached, the bird would fly away.
“We grew up farming trees that looked like this, so it matters to us that we also farm trees that look like this because we’ve seen the other values they provide... We feel very privileged that we inherited this land. We feel like land stewards. We want to leave it better than we found it, regardless of whether we get to keep doing this or not.”
“We’re going to keep finding pathways and avenues to farm the way we want to and this feels good to us.”
There & Back Again Farms
3309 McCulloch Road, Kelowna
tabafarms.com | @taba.farms
