Services

There are a number of Saskatoon Berry growers across Western Canada, many of which operate U-Pick businesses When the U-Pick season comes to an end, growers often find themselves with acres of unpicked Saskatoons. The question then becomes what to do with these ripe and ready treasures.

Prairie Berries has a solution. With our experience, equipment and facilities, we can harvest, handle and process your Saskatoons.

Custom Harvest

Prairie Berries understands the care required to harvest Saskatoon Berries because we have our own 10 acre orchards from which we harvest berries every season. These are the very same berries we use to make our award-winning Saskatoon Berry products, which is testament to the quality of our harvest and cleaning process.

We harvest using an over the row mechanical harvesters. Once the berries are picked, they are placed in plastic berry trays, which allow for the best cooling and freezing. This is our preferred method because using enclosed pails causes physical damage to the berries such as crushing and over heating of the berries at the bottom of the pail.

The berries are moved off the harvestor directly into a reefer unit to help remove the field heat from the berries. Cooling slows respiration; any detrimental enzyme activity; and inhibits spoilage organisms.

Temperature is an important factor during the harvest. We’ve come to understand how temperature affects the quality of the berry during and after harvest. We adhere to a set of standard guidelines in order to ensure your berries remain at their optimal form throughout harvest and through to the primary handling process.

Primary Handling

Once a shipment of berries arrives at Prairie Berries Federally Registered primary handling facility the berries are stored in a large cooler with a forced air system to help move field heat out of the berries and bring them to a temperature of 1 to 4 o celsius . From there the berries are moved to the cleaning/ grading line

Cleaning & Grading

Berries must be cleaned and graded in a Federally Inspected Primary Processing Plant if they are to be exported outside your provincial borders or if trying to sell into large processors or manufacturing companies. Prairie Berries plant registration number is 304. All fruit handled in our facilities are graded to the Canada Grading Standards for Saskatoon Berries. These can be found on CFIA's web site.

The quality of Saskatoon Berries is defined in terms of chemical, physical and sensory characteristics, mainly sight, smell and feel. Prairies Berries checks saskatoons for visible growth of molds or bacterial rot. Physical analysis includes size, texture, viscosity, colour, fresh smell and firmness before and after storage.

Saskatoons are brought from our cooler and put onto a stainless conveyor chain and passed over a blower, which removes leaves, stems and other small debris. Berries coming from off the end of the line are put into clean trays and stacked for transfer to the freezing unit. Each tray is marked with the name of the orchard the berries came from, the lot number and the date. It is, therefore, possible to trace each tray back to the grower’s orchard.

As in any federally registered plant, food safety in handling products destine for the consumer market must meet the standards as outlined in CFIA's processed product regulations. Prairie Berries primary handling plant, has food safety, GMP,and HACCP systems which ensure the highest standards of food handling to meet the expectations of the consumer. We also boast of our systems ability to trace every pound of berry back to the grower's orchard.

Freezing & Packaging

Once the fruit is cleaned and graded it is transferred into the freezing unit. The trays are stacked in a fashion which allows for more air flow through the trays. The freezing process takes approximately 12 hours. The fruit is poured from the trays into a bag and box then weighed.

The label is registered with CFIA and meets the requirements as per the processed foods regulations and labeling standards.

Prairie Berries
Box 21
Keeler, SK Canada S0H 2E0
Phone: (306)788-2018
Fax: (306) 788-4811
Email: prairieberries@sasktel.net