South Island Saskatoons

By Danielle Steiner / Photography By Janis Jean | June 30, 2023

I grew up in the Saskatchewan prairies, and as a kid I spent hours upon hours picking Saskatoon berries with my mom. If I'm being honest, I didn’t particularly enjoy the task itself; there were always mosquitoes, my fingers would be sticky and stained and I hated sweating under the blazing prairie sunshine. But despite my complaints, it was always worth the sweet desserts produced in the end—and to this day, I believe there is nothing that compares to a warm Saskatoon berry pie.

However, here in B.C., there’s only one orchard that grows the sweet berries, according to Sharon Vanhouwe, who owns and operates South Island Saskatoons with her husband Monty and her parents, Carol and Dan Teichrob. Sharon understands my nostalgia for the berry. “We have learned that Saskatoon berry picking, in many cases, is something our customers can remember doing as they grew up,” she says. “It became a tradition in many families—we have dubbed them 'the heritage prairie berry' because of this!”

Heralding from Saskatchewan themselves, Sharon, Monty, Carol and Dan came from a farming background—commercial turkey farming, to be specific, where they raised 250,000 kilograms of turkeys each year. They also had a cow/calf herd of 80. But when friends of theirs moved to Vancouver Island in 2011 and told them about a Saskatoon berry farm for sale in 2013, they couldn’t help their curiosity. Dan and Carol flew out to look at the property, followed soon after by Sharon and Monty. The beautiful land featured two modern homes, an established berry orchard and was conveniently close to Duncan. They determined that if they both sold their Saskatchewan farms, they could purchase the Island property together. Fate intervened with quick sales on both their farms and an accepted offer on the berry farm, and by fall of 2013, all four of them had moved to Cobble Hill.

However, none of them had orchard experience, so they waited apprehensively for the first season, watching the trees bloom and the berries begin to form. They found they were surprised at how well the Saskatoons grew here. “Although we see them growing wild all over the Island, we rarely see the wild ones loaded with berries—but these domestic ones sure seem to thrive,” says Sharon. And then their phones began to ring incessantly with customers asking when the U-pick would be open. They found themselves bombarded with hundreds of customers, trying desperately to keep up with making baked items, jam and jelly in the commercial kitchen on the farm. But with challenges comes learning—“we are now much better prepared when the U-pick season starts!”—growth and opportunity.

The now full-time business keeps the family busy, and while they’ve ironed out a lot of kinks in the process, they’re still figuring things out as they go, including how to best sort the berries when they’re fresh off the field. “When we bought the property, there was some sorting equipment on site, which we looked at with much curiosity,” laughs Sharon. “Now we understand how important that equipment is!” They’ve hired help at times to help them get enough fresh berries on the shelves to meet demand and purchased an optical berry sorter (the latter of which unfortunately hasn’t been quite the solution they hoped it would be). “We have sold fresh berries to Thrifty’s as well, but it’s a huge demand on our resources trying to get 1,000 pounds out the door all at once as fresh as possible!”

South Island Saskatoons is currently open daily year-round from 9am–5pm. They always have frozen berries, ready-to-bake Saskatoon berry pies, Saskatoon/rhubarb crumb top pies and fresh baking for sale, as well as jams, jellies and syrups. Their pastry itself is so popular that they also just sell the pie bottom and tops frozen. If they have an excess of Saskatoon berry juice, you might just find Saskatoon berry bubbly and Saskatoon berry juice popsicles, too.

While they love the sweet berry, it’s the customers that are their favourite part of running the business. Most of them are from the Prairie provinces, the people who grew up with and are very familiar with Saskatoon berries. “I love meeting them,” says Sharon. “They give us the energy on some of the longest days to keep going when we are really exhausted!”

I, for one, can’t wait for my next trip down Island so I can pick up a Saskatoon berry pie and indulge in the sweet, sweet taste of my childhood memories.

Bottom two photos of berries provided by Sharon Vanhouwe.