Our Story
The story of our farm really begins on the second coldest day in the Winter of 2012 (the coldest being the day P was born)! We had sold our house in town and were on the search for our dream home. We awoke to find about 10 missed calls from Amber’s dad, with a message he had heard of a place we needed to check out. So we loaded up our two month old son and drove out to find a quaint house on an amazing piece of land. Long story short we moved in May of that year and have not looked back since.
That first summer we decided that we needed to find a good use for all of this amazing land, and by mid winter we had 2000 saskatoons and a few hundred raspberries on order. The following spring we organized a huge planting bee with a number of friends and family, and in the matter of a Saturday morning we were able to plant all our trees. Luckily for us the trees all took off, and since then we have planted strawberries, rhubarb, cherries, and haskaps on our farm as well. Each spring we have also planted another patch of strawberries and set up a drip irrigation system in the strawberries to help berry yields in dry weather. We expect our strawberries, saskatoons, raspberries, and rhubarb to yield fruit for picking this year. We had a bad frost in June which affected the strawberry plants and so we will have a smaller yield of strawberries than we had hoped. Our haskap trees are starting to mature as well. If they are not ready for picking yet this year, we’re hoping maybe next summer! Our cherry trees are still young and not ready for picking quite yet.
Tim has lived and breathed farming his whole life. He grew up on a farm, worked on and operated his family farm, studied agriculture in university, made a career out of researching everything from potatoes to canola. So it only makes sense that when we moved onto an acreage Tim would find a way to make it into … you guessed it, a farm. All kidding aside Tim is passionate about our berries and loves to talk about our farm and farming in general. If you see him in the patch, take a minute to ask him about what all goes into growing such amazing berries.
Amber is a local girl (she grew up not even a mile from where we live now), who grew up loving life in the country with plenty of room to run around and lots of animals to play with. Amber is the newbie plant farmer at Big Rock Berry Farm, but don’t let that fool you. Her hard work, passion, and ability to learn quickly means that she has been able to master all the skills needed on the farm, and has quickly become a berry master in her own right! Off the farm Amber is no slouch either, she has a Doctorate in Audiology and works as an Educational Audiologist!
P and L are our two oldest boys and this July our twin boys, C and D will turn 7. They’ve grown up a lot since the photos posted above. Hired hands by birth, they enjoy picking and eating our berries. There is nothing our boys love more than being outside. Their specialty is running through the patch! We love that we get to share our journey and our farm with our boys.
Mario is our black cat who also loves attention and is often underfoot. He responds more to “Here, Kitty Kitty” than his own name. He loves to be pet but does not like to be picked up. We also have a few chickens. We also have 2 miniature goats who live in the pen in the dugout to help keep the grass and tree growth down there. The boys love trying to train the goats and making them friendly.