Ontario cherries beat U.S. cherries in flavour, says Blenheim farmer

Despite Ontario cherry production being in full swing, cherries from the United States still get all the love in supermarket flyers.

Hector Delanghe, owner of Delhaven Orchards in Blenheim, Ont. said cherries in Washington state cost about "$2 [a pound], because it's a loss leader for the supermarkets."

"We can't compete against that. We can't get our labour for what they're getting their labour," he said. He runs his farm with his wife Marilyn, and son, Mark.

While smaller than cherry growers in Niagara, Delhaven Orchards is one of the largest growers of the red fruit in southwestern Ontario.

They have 30 acres of sour cherries and 13 acres of sweet cherries, which turn into 150 tonnes and 40 tonnes of product respectively by the time the season wraps up at the end of this week.

For every dollar earned, 41 cents goes to labour at the farm. Students in the area tend to work in the store and in the grading part of the operation, while migrant workers, usually from Jamaica, tend to work in the fields.

Can't see the GIF of workers gathering cherries at Delhaven Orchards? Click here.

"We can't get Canadians to work out in the fields. If it wasn't for our offshore workers I don't know if we could be farming or not," he said. "If Canadians want to eat Canadian food, we gotta have this."

Delange said that for every migrant worker he brings in, two and a half more jobs are created for Canadians.

"You don't have to make any cartons if we're not growing anything, you don't have to make plastic containers," he said. "It's the old snowball effect."

Shut out of most major grocery stores due to higher cost, Delange says his cherries are sold at farm markets across the region, including his own on Talbot Trail.

Tart cherries are pitted and chilled for use in baking or juice, and some are frozen for use all year round.

Key to flavour is time on trees

The climate in the U.S. Pacific northwest also gives their cherries an advantage at the grocery store, according to Delange, because cherries grown there are often bigger than those from Ontario.

But despite a pricing and size advantage, the 79-year-old farmer says his cherries have an edge where it counts: flavour.

Because local fruit has a much shorter distance to travel to the consumer, it's allowed to stay on the the tree longer, which increases the amount of sugar in the fruit.

"[Our cherries are] a lot more tree-ripened. You can't ship something 3,000 miles and pick it at proper maturity at the other end," he said.

"I don't care what people say. When it comes to strawberries, or cherries, or peaches, you can't [beat] something that's been picked yesterday and you're eating it today."

Delhaven Orchards is located at 8182 Talbot Trail in Blenheim, a community of Chatham-Kent.