Business been berry berry good
Location - and tinkering with the product line - have made a winner of Whittamore's FarmBY CHRISTINA SELBY
In real estate, the key to success is location, location, location. The same can be said of Whittamore's Farm, just north of the Metropolitan Toronto Zoo, where the extensive pick-your-own strawberries and on-site market get plenty of drive-by traffic."We're in Markham, but across the road is the city of Toronto," says Dave Whittamore, who runs the farm with brothers Mike and Frank, and Frank's wife Suzanne, who does the books. He admits their location can also be a curse: Traffic on Steeles Avenue, a major east-west commuter route, can be hazardous.
But ever-sprawling suburbs are bringing a steady stream of customers to Whittamore's front door for the 50 acres of strawberries - about 65 per cent of which are pick-your-own - plus 30 acres of raspberries and 80 acres of vegetables: asparagus, new potatoes, green beans, yellow beans, green peas, snow peas, tomatoes, peppers and pumpkins.
The on-farm market is open from Mother's Day until Halloween and brings in about 50 per cent of the operation's annual gross of $1.2 million. The Whittamores also wholesale to independent grocers such as the Beaches IGA in downtown Toronto and the Village Grocery in Unionville. During strawberry season, they take advantage of the commuter traffic with temporary retail locations - one in Pickering and two in Markham.
Dave says his father, Gilbert, started one of the first pick-your-own operations in Ontario back in 1956 after picking up the idea at a conference in Ohio. The three brothers expanded the strawberry acreage in the 1980s, recently added pick-your-own raspberries, and are growing small amounts of rhubarb, red currants, black currants and gooseberries. They're also expanding into pick-your-own asparagus, tomatoes and peppers on a limited scale.
In the fall, the focus of the operation is on "entertainment farming," says Dave, with pumpkins as the centrepiece. There are wagon rides and mazes.
The farm is also a popular spot for school tours. Last year's teachers' strike cost the Whittamores about 4,000 school tour kids, says Dave, and they've since adopted a no-reservation policy. Activities they used to offer only on weekends are now available all week.
The majority of employees on the farm are high school and university students: about 30 in pick-your-own and 30 to 40 in the farm market. There's a more permanent staff of a dozen or so farm workers; 80 pickers come in just for berries. After last year's early start, Dave says they'll try to hire more university students this year to have staff available sooner.
The Whittamores believe in getting their name out to potential customers. They have Ministry of Transportation road signs and run some radio ads, "but one of the key promotions that works for us is advertising in ethnic newspapers," says Dave. He estimates they advertise in about 20 community papers in and around Toronto, including Italian, Estonian, Lithuanian and Greek publications. Add that to having a float in the Markham Santa Claus parade and sponsoring area sports teams, and the Whittamores are kept hopping year-round.
Dave says the habits of the picking public have changed over the
years.
These days, people are coming out and getting just enough to eat
for a few
days, then coming back for more. "People used to come out and
pick 50
pounds," he says, but making jams and pies is not as common
anymore. He
estimates about 50 per cent of the berries they sell are consumed
fresh.
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Trial recommendations
Dr. Andrew Jamieson, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Kentville,
N.S. -
the birthplace of industry standards Kent and Cavendish -
presented his
recommendations for new berry variety trialing at last month's
Ontario
Horticultural Crops Conference.
Strawberries
Brunswick: An early-mid from AAFC Kentville, it ripens with Honeoye and produces medium firm berries that are larger than Honeoye but smaller than Cavendish. Has performed well in northerly tests, so may have good winter-hardiness. Flavour is more like Honeoye than Cavendish. The variety is resistant to red stele.Evangeline: An early-season Kentville variety that ripens just after Veestar but before Annapolis. Has firmer berries and medium yields of medium to large berries. Flowers earlier than Annapolis and may be more sensitive to frost injury. Berries are darker than Annapolis, and produced on stiff, erect stalks. Not expected to be resistant to red stele rot.
Mira: A late mid-season variety that ripens two or three days after Kent, with high yields when grown in matted rows. Average berry size is equal to Kent, but more uniform in shape. Vigorous and healthy plants are resistant to common leaf diseases and red stele. The variety retained quality well in post-harvest tests.
Northeaster: An early-mid variety from USDA Beltsville, MD. In preliminary trials, produced variable yields of medium to large firm fruit. Flavour has been described as like strawberry candy, which could lead to a niche market. Susceptible to green petal disease, but resistant to red stele. Doubtful it could match the productivity and adaptability of Honeoye.
Primetime: A mid-season variety from USDA Beltsville. Produced high yields and large firm fruit with good flavour in preliminary trials. Leaves and berries are highly susceptible to powdery mildew, but resistant to red stele.
Raspberries
Encore: Cornell University variety that fruits in the late season; berries are very large and firm. Fruit quality has been rated high. Said to tolerate phytophthora root rot.Lauren: The product of a U.S. breeding program, this early- to mid-season variety produces mild-flavoured, sweet berries. Fruit is slightly larger than Titan and has been winter-hardy on the east coast, although there's been no "test winter" lately.
Fall Rasberries
Pam Fisher, berry crops specialist, OMAFRA, has a fall raspberry variety recommendation for trialing.
Autumn Britten: This English variety has excellent fruit quality
and is
approximately 10 days earlier than Heritage. Lower yields than
Autumn Bliss
but fruit shape is more regular and less crumbly. Last year, the
variety
was ready by August 1, says Fisher.
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Green and red rig
The one-armed bandit at the Windsor Casino and the depth control
lever on
the soybean seeder have a lot in common for Clinton cash cropper
Don Nott.
Only with the one, you're dealing with Lady Luck, and with the
other,
Mother Nature.
Nott Farms in Clinton heads into its third year air seeding 3,000 acres - owned and custom - of soybeans, white beans and wheat with a Case IH 2000 air cart blowing seed to a 30-foot 1850 John Deere drill.
Farming in a 20-mile radius of Clinton, Nott and equipment operator Wayne Layton like the speed of a large, centrally filled tank holding 4.5 tonnes of seed. They can run 300 acres a day, with only two seed stops. "The air cart is a big factor in the speed, because you can carry such a large amount of seed with you," says Nott, president of Nott Farms, which is also in the oat processing business.
With a wide range of soil types and micro climates, however, Nott is having trouble pushing the no-till principle across all the acreage. With some spring ground untouched, and other fully cultivated, Nott learned after Year One of air seeding that running seeding units designed for no-till at a relatively shallow depth of 1.5 inches doesn't necessarily work well in more conventional conditions - especially if Ma Nature turns off the tap for a month as she did the past two years.
Nott says the closing wheel on the no-till openers is designed to run at an angle to close the V trench in hard no-till ground; but on softer ground, a trench is left beside the seed, allowing sun and wind to dry out the seed trench.
The flip side, as there always is in farming, is the danger of planting too deep, "and then you get a pounding rain, and your plant takes more energy to get it up through the soil," says Nott. "You don't like to plant any deeper than you have to. It's a tough call, because you can't judge the weather."
In Year Two of air seeding, 1998, "we caught on to planting a little deeper [2 to 2.5 inches] to make sure we had coverage," says Nott. "You have to go deeper to stay in moisture. In general, soybean planting went reasonably well."
Nott, an equipment innovator who runs tracked Caterpillar tractors and a self-propelled John Deere sprayer, says he wanted a drill to sow no-till wheat, soybeans and white beans. Total investment in the air cart and drill was $104,000, and it has seeded 6,000 acres over the past two years.
In general, "we are satisfied," says Nott. The Case IH air cart, built at the company's Concord plant in North Dakota, is simple to work with and meters seed accurately, he says.
Why a green drill pulling a red cart? Nott says at the time Case could supply a cart trailed behind the drill, with four wheels to match 120-inch tramlines for spraying Reglone in his white beans. Including the tractor, the cart and drill make a 70-foot train, requiring a 90-foot headland to turn. But with the cart behind the drill, the operator can monitor the drill for any trash plugging and sliding wheels from faulty bearings, which are starting to show some wear; it also affords the operator better rear visibility during road travel.
Hooking the Case air pipes and hoses to the Deere drill took some modifications. Plugging of airlines is rare, but Nott says a row monitor is essential. Converting from 48-row wheat on 7.5 inches to 24-row soybeans on 15 inches is a matter of plugging up extra seed lines with shotgun shells filled with silicone.
A hydraulically driven fan at 3,300 to 4,000 rpm blows seed down a central pipeline to a ground-driven meter, which drops it into the air stream. Seed is then distributed to a primary tower, which divides it into six smaller pipes going to six secondary towers, each feeding eight rows. Nott says the rig takes 200hp to run well.
The cart's split tank is useful for variety changes in the field, he says.
While Nott says it would be nice to have one machine to plant all crops, he dabbled with air seeding corn and found the stand was too uneven. For now, he'll stick with his corn workhorse: a 1977 12-row John Deere Max Emerge that did 1,500 acres last year "and never had one stop."
No seeding equipment changes are planned on Nott Farms for '99, but Nott says "we're definitely going to be more conscious of depth in the conventional fields," perhaps rolling ground with a packer after planting.
No-till philosophy, followed for a decade, is also under severe scrutiny. Strip trials showing definite advantages to conventional soybeans versus soybeans into corn stalks have prompted Nott to get out the plow for heavier clay loam soil. With spotty rains, Nott Farms soybeans averaged 34 bushels an acre, below the crop insurance average of 44. Wheat, he says, is the only crop "we're 100-per cent happy with no-till.
"The last two years we have had difficulty with no-till in meeting our conventional in terms of yield.
"When it comes to making dollars and cents in this environment, you have to have every ounce of crop you can get off a piece of ground."
As for the closing wheel conundrum - that's a challenge he'll leave to the equipment companies: "It's a design problem that they have to deal with if we're going to be able to do both conventional and no-till."
Furthermore, with seven full-time employees, 4,000 acres of cash
crops,
1,500 acres of custom farming, and a booming racehorse-quality
whole oat
steam crimped processing and pelleting business, this busy farmer
says he
"has too many irons in the fire" to do his own R & D. "We prefer
to buy it
ready to go."
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UNDER THE HOOD
By Keith Berglind
When duct tape doesn't cut it...
A plastic welding primerI can suggest taking a quick inventory of all the plastic parts on your farm machinery, but I bet it'll take a while. No doubt you'll find plastic tractor hoods and fenders, plastic water and chemical tanks on the sprayers, plastic fuel tanks, plastic grain hoppers and a lot of plastic pipes and lines.
And I'll bet another thing - duct tape isn't the permanent repair you're looking for to fix damage to these items.
Most of us learned metal welding watching dad on the farm. As an adult, I found it tough to figure out how to repair plastic pieces, let alone try to build anything with sheets of plastic. There are just too many kinds of plastic in use.
Like most people, I started using the crazy-glue type chemicals to fix plastic pieces. At best I fixed a few kids' toys. Nothing lasted, if it stuck at all. I was always looking for something better. And, being busy in business all these years, I didn'thave time to take a proper plastic welding program.
I won't bore you with tales of my failures trying to weld plastic with large hot air guns, small hot air guns, propane torches, soldering guns, fluxes and strange plastic welding rods. These all work - to some degree and in some special cases - but they're not for the average farm repair shop.
Here's what does work and what you need to know.
The basics
There are three elements to a plastic weld repair:
* Knowing what kind or type of plastic you're about to weldFor example, if you identify that the plastic fender from your four-wheeler is ABS plastic, and you select the ABS welding rod, then when you heat the fender and feed the ABS welding rod through the welder you will have a secure repair. ABS is a thermoplastic that may be heated and reshaped with heat. It's hard to do it wrong if these three steps come together at the same time in a welded repair.* Having the correct plastic welding rod or wire
* Having the best plastic-weld tool (welder)
However, if the fender is thermoset-plastic (which cannot be softened and reshaped with heat, or heat-welded) then you will need to select the correct external bond/patch repair method to glue it together, or bond a fiberglass reinforcement strip over the break to form a secure repair.
Identifying the plastic
The first step is to identify the general group or chemical range the broken part falls into. There are several common tests for type of plastic. The Society of Plastics Industry of Canada recommends this sequence of tests:
1) Check appearance and textureThese steps may seem complicated, so let's take a few short cuts.2) Check density
3) Perform flame test
4) Check melting temperature in oven
5) Perform solubility test
6) Send to test lab for analysis
An easy step is to look for two or three letters embossed on the back of the part. You may see the letters ABS, PP or PE or something similar. These are the common and easy-to-weld plastics.
With some practice under your belt, you may want to try a burn or flame test. Take a slice or hidden part of the piece and burn it with a small open flame. Start a note book of your observations.
For example, if you have a small plastic part kicking around, and it says PP or ABS on the back, when you burn a sample of this note the colour of the flame, colour of the smoke (if it smokes), whether it burns alone, drips, if the drips burn, and what is the smell of the burning.
Here are some observations I've made:
* PE (polyethylene) burns with no smoke, smells "waxy" and has bluish flame* PP (polypropylene) burns with no smoke, smells acrid and has orange flame
* PVC (polyvinyl chloride) will not burn when flame is removed
* TPU (polyurethane) burns with black smoke and a "sputtery flame"
* ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) has very carbon-like or sooty smoke that smells slightly sweet
You probably recognize ABS, PVC and PP as letters on common plastic piping. This is a great way to practise, as the plastic identification is very obvious. Practice by burning and welding some cheap ABS sewer pipe. Be sure to write down what you see.
Northwest Polymers' Robert Decloedt - designer and builder of the welder I use - usually tells me to try a sample test weld on an out-of-the-way section.
For example, if you try a PP welding rod on ABS, once the weld cools it will pull off easily with pliers. I have had a couple of repairs that I couldn't identify, so I tried several pieces of welding rod until one stuck perfectly.
Test strips
When I first got serious about welding plastic, I wanted some "official" tests that I could rely on. After a little research I discovered the Society of Plastics Industry of Canada (905) 678-7748. I bought one of their plastic identification kits (about $50), which included a booklet with charts on identifying plastics and a set of 12 labeled six-inch long plastic strips. These are for test burning. When I'm not sure what burning ABS looks like, I select the ABS strip and burn the end a bit. Very little is lost each time.
Welder kit
The plastic welder I use is manufactured and distributed by Northwest Polymers Inc. The basic kit includes a variable temperature hot-tip welder, a large selection of the various plastic welding wires or rods and several chemical adhesive repair compounds. NWP has been supplying these products to auto body shops and bumper repair shops for years.In the meantime, for information on the plastic welder, you can contact Northwest at 1-800-361-3002. Next column, I'll demonstrate, in detail, how to use this tool.
Keith Berglind is a licensed heavy-duty mechanic and all-round fix-it expert
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Equipment dealers cautiously optimistic
Many say the predicted doom and gloom has yet to hit the retail market
By JOHN MUGGERIDGE
"Strange." In a word, New Holland dealer Jerry Beernink describes the vibes out on the showroom floor at his New Holland dealership, Arkona Machine Shop, between London and Sarnia."You'd expect no activity, but we're not finding it that way. There's lots of pricing activity. Where there's smoke, there's fire."
Like any sales forecast, the current cloudy forecast for 1999 Canadian farm equipment sales risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Big Four iron makers love to predict tractor sales down to the last tire lug, but out in the Ontario dealership trenches things aren't quite as cut and dried heading into the spring planting season, according to an informal Farm & Country survey at the annual dealers' powwow in Niagara Falls last month.
"If you talk about it [downturn], it will be there," eastern Ontario Case IH dealer John VanBridger, of J.R. Brisson Equipment in Winchester, said at the Ontario Retail Farm Equipment Dealers Association (ORFEDA) convention. Ag equipment sales at his dealership so far are up five to 10 per cent above projections.
"We have to keep cautious optimism working for us," said Anne Vandenbrink, a Case IH dealer in Sparta, south of London. "Everybody's talking doom and gloom. Guys that are buying have some money, and are better organized, and getting it early....We're busier than we expected to be."
From the manufacturers' side, AGCO North American vice-president of sales Jack Murdoch called for a decline in iron sales of 10 to 20 per cent this year, with the key drivers being export demand and commodity prices. Historically, the trends bear him out: According to a Paine Weber study presented at the ORFEDA annual meeting, John Deere stock follows corn price in lock step, see Corn Stocks.
Lindsay Case IH dealer Greg Snodden of Hub International said decent '98 corn yields in his area prompted some early-season equipment buying: "It's a reasonable start so far. They're cautious but we haven't seen the downturn everybody's talking about."
Down in heavy cash crop country in western Ontario, however, dealers are feeling the commodity pinch. "Nineteen ninety-nine will be the challenge of the combines," said Chatham John Deere dealer Paul McGrail, referring to a glut of used combines on the market. While '99 sales are on par so far, the 70:30 new-used split has flopped, and McGrail is selling mainly used thus far this year.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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