Erickson’s Just-A-Mere Organic Farm, currently in the second year of a transition to becoming certified organic, is donating a portion of its cherry sales to the Creston Valley Gleaners Society food bank.
The farm, owned by Danny and Miranda Turner, grows three kinds of cherries — Skeena, Rainer and Sweetheart — and $5 from the sale of each $45 11-pound box of Sweethearts will go to the food bank. The couple recently offered the same deal, as well as donating fresh cherries, to raise money for the Edmonton Food Bank.
“They’re very much into acquainting people with their food sources,” said farm manger Margaret Devantier. “In the process of doing so, they make sure growers, distributors and consumer get the most out of it.”
The Turners also own the Organic Box, an Edmonton-based produce delivery service, which sources mainly Canadian organic produce, some from the Creston Valley, including Kootenay Meadows cheese and garlic from Don Kepke and Sons Farm.
Devantier — whose parents bought the Erickson farm in 1970, and sold it to the Turners in 2011 — said that a spring freeze resulted in a light cherry crop, which was picked in less than two weeks.
For more information or to pick up a box of cherries ($45 each) visit Just-A-Mere Organic Farm at 2916 Erickson Rd. (go to “the new house, not the blue house,” said Devantier) or call 250-254-1549.