Cazes Fruit stand not opening this year in Medicine Hat

“We’ve literally served generations of families. It’s always heartbreaking when you have to give something up,” Cazes said.

“But for my health and for my family’s sake, we just made the decision that fruit season is over after 45 years.”

Cazes feels the decision to retire from fruit sales couldn’t have come at a better time, as the pitted fruit from B-C they would normally depend on isn’t available.

The trees started budding in B-C before the frost hit this year and were destroyed, with them needing a dormant stage and producing only once a year, it left for lack of supply.

Cazes said he knows the issues well as he still has family that sells fruit in other communities.

Struggling to find product and searching broader areas.

“(Getting) peaches (and apricots) from Georgia,” Cazes said.

“Even Washington was brutally damaged this last winter, you know, compared to B.C.,” he added.

“It’s been more struggles this year. I’m very glad I’m not having to do them struggles. I guess it was a blessing for that.”

Cazes said there is hope that the fruit trees in B.C. will regenerate for next year.

“Otherwise they’ve got to do a tear out, and that could take two to three years to even get anything to produce on them,” Cazes said.

“It’s very challenging, especially throughout the Okanagan, now that there’s the diversity of the fruit market there has really changed over the course of 45 years that I’ve witnessed,” he added.

“We’ve gone a lot from big family farms down to wineries. So wineries have really taken over. Instead of having peach crops, everybody’s got wine or grape crops.”

Cazes said this has really changed the dynamics.

“Usually Osoyoos, Vernon, Penticton, Kelowna, they’re diversified. If one area has a problem, usually the other area picks it up. But we’re not seeing that anymore,” Cazes said.

“There’s so many people that have either tore out the orchard parts, the soft fruits, and put in wineries, grapes. It’s really changing. And that’s some of the problems that we’re having down there.”

Statistics Canada shows that fruit tree farms in British Columbia have declined significantly over the last 60 plus years.

The province had almost 4400 farms in 1961, that dropped to just under 2100 as of the 2021 census.

Cazes said that a lot of these have shifted to vineyards to produce wine, where there is less work and risk, but even those grape crops have suffered this year.

He encorages people to support their local farmers

“There’s lots of folks here growing blueberries, strawberries, saskatoons, even wineries, you have grapes. If you can support a local business, it helps if we diversify more,” Cazes said.

“Encouraging people to grow products closer to home is always a better thing, and that’s what I would encourage people to do is if you can grow strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, do so, these are expensive fruits to bring in. If you’re able to grow them locally, which I know you can, it’s definitely an advantage,” he added.

“We’ve really shunned away from self-gardens and self-inhabiting our own food. We don’t really do that anymore. We think everything comes from the grocery store, but the grocery store’s got to get it from somewhere.”

by Jesse Gill

Cazes Fruit stand not opening this year in Medicine Hat

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