Business at Creekside Blueberries grows ever sweeter

Christina Lake’s sunny climate creates the very best berries

Linda Southwick invites people to sample the sweetness of the berries at Creekside Blueberries in Christina Lake. — Photo courtesy Sue Finnigan, Rolltop Editorial Solutions

Turn off the adjective machine. Trash the thesaurus. Deny description or comparison of any sort. Taste this: a single berry from a field of a thousand bushes at Creekside Blueberries.

Maybe it’s the gentle fog rolling in from Christina Lake, 300 metres down and two kilometres away, that bathes the fruit at the perfect time of year. Perhaps it’s the heat of August consolidating the sugars and sharpening the zing, or that the plants themselves appreciate that their field was pasture to Linda and Bob Southwick’s horses for years.

Whatever it is, it’s worked magic.

“We have former customers, mostly Albertans, calling us as early as June,  wanting to know when the berries will be ready so they can plan their holiday around it,” said Linda. “U-pick has definitely become a progressively larger part of the Creekside operation.”

Linda, who’s also into breeding and boarding standard poodles, added that she foresees a time when she won’t have to do much picking at all. For now, Linda says, she tells her friends they can visit her in the field, and they do.

Ever with an eye to the future, the Southwicks are considering the addition of earlier-ripening Haskap bushes.

“That would extend our harvest season considerably,” said Linda.