The Bee & Thistle Winery will be using produce from Collin’s Ravensfield Farm. Here’s our story of growing Ravensfield.

Cherries

The Bee & Thistle Winery will expand its offerings to include Cherry wine and liqueur, among other products. All of the Cherries are grown on Collin’s Ravensfield Farm, located just down the road from the Bee & Thistle Winery and Orchards. To learn more about the type of Cherries Collin produces, please click on the link to the Cherry blog.

In May, 2018, one thousand Cherry trees were purchased from a local distributor in Prince Albert, Haskap Central Sales Ltd., and planted in a nursery on the Bee & Thistle Orchard property. The trees flourished in the summer of 2018, however, the following winter was extremely cold and harsh, resulting in the majority of the trees dying. Thus, the realities of farming have proven that nature is stronger than man. However, this setback will be overcome.

To protect the Cherry and other fruit orchard from wildlife, Collin and the team erected an 8 foot high fence covering 5 acres of field.

The Cherry trees were purchased frozen and needed to be thawed for 24 hours before planting.

Collin planted the 1,000th Cherry tree. The nursery looked great and the plants thrived through the summer. Winter came and the plants fell into expected dormancy. In the spring, some plants had good roots. However, the majority failed to live due to the harsh climate in the winter of 2018-2019.

Poplar trees that will act as a windbreak at Ravensfield were planted in the Bee & Thistle Orchard nursery in May 2019. They remained there until August, 2019 when they were transplanted to Ravensfield. They have taken hold and are looking good.

Black Currants

The Bee & Thistle Winery will also be producing Black Currant wine. Collin has several hundred plants at Ravensfield whose berries will be used for wine production. To learn more about the type of Black Currants Collin produces, please click on the link to the Black Currant blog.

Our original goal was to have four rows of 88 Black Currant plants, but we’ve expanded to five and a half rows of 88-100 plants per row. Two rows were planted in 2019, with the additional rows planted in May, 2020 from 100 plants recently purchased (as well as numerous cuttings from both 2019 and 2020’s plants.) Twelve plants at the end of row 2 are Black Currant of an unknown variety (from the home garden cuttings), although they are suspected to be Ben Nevis.

The 2019 plants are doing great. We expect to be able to pick enough berries this summer to use in our test batches. Then next year, consumer wine production will begin. Ideally, a productive Black Currant bush will supply the winery with 5-10 lbs of berries by its 4th year.

The weather was favourable for planting in the newly tilled orchard. Hard work during the Covid 19 pandemic with social distancing being well-adhered to.

To grow the orchard, we took cuttings from the new 2020 plants. Here’s how it was done.