22 • The Columbia Valley Pioneer
May 17, 2013
Berry business becomes sweet tradition
By Steve Hubrecht
Pioneer Staff
Great grandfather Jim Taylor and his son Walter prepare
for early season farming, despite some snow.
Sanda Taylor, age 3, clutches her
father’s hunting rifle and field
glasses. Sanda grew up in a backcountry cabin near where Nipika
resort now sits.
Tanner, Faith and
Gordon Saunders get
the fields ready for the
upcoming strawberry
season.
Tanner Saunders was born to grow strawberries and
make jam. His family has been at itin the valley for four
generations, after all.
His great-grandfather, Jim Taylor, first farmed
strawberries and potatoes in the valley in 1908. Tanner and his parents, Faith and Gordon, are still at it
more than a century later, running the Saunders Family
Farm in Windermere. The green leaves of several rows
of strawberries are already lining the field at their place.
“Farming’s in my blood and I intend to keep it that
way,” said Tanner.
Saunders Family Farm makes and sells jams, jellies
and pickled jalapenos in addition to managing a midsized farm. The family-run business just had its jam
kitchen federally certified and recently launched an online shop, so is poised to sell nationwide.
E-commerce wasn’t a sales avenue when great
grandfather Jim Taylor started farming (even commercial radio was still a decade and half away), but the crop
was still the same.
“Strawberries have always been the main staple of
our family’s farming history,” said Tanner.
Jim was a keen farmer, always raring to go and at
times pulled out the tractor when there was still snow
on the ground. Not surprisingly Jim’s son Joe Taylor got
into the strawberry business at a young age. When Joe
was not much more than a kid, Jim would pack an old
panel truck absolutely full to the brim with strawberries, stick Joe behind the wheel and make him drive all
the way over to the Banff Springs Hotel to sell them.
Joe piloted the creaky old vehicle through the
mountains and back, making sure he found a customer
for every last basket.
“My grandfather (Jim) always told my dad (Joe) that
he better not come home with any berries,” recalled Faith.
Tanner’s other maternal great-grandparents also
have a long history in the area. His great grandfather
Frank Richter came to Canada from Germany in the
1920s and ended up working as a guide and outfitter
throughout the central Canadian Rockies for Brewster’s
in Banff.
On one trip Frank came across a parcel of land in
the Cross River area so captivating that he used wedding
gift money sent from Germany to buy it. It is the same
land on which Nipika Mountain Resort now sits, a bit
south of Kootenay National Park. Frank and his wife
brought up their children in cabins there, surrounded
by Frank’s cougar and wolf skins, eating blueberries
from the forest and sitting on a big makeshift chair fashioned from spare rods and bear hide while listening to
an old Marconi radio.
Richter’s oldest child Sanda (Tanner’s grandmother)
was just 18 months old when the family got stranded in
a primitive cable car dangling 60 feet above a raging
section of the Kootenay River. Halfway across the wheel
cracked and got stuck on the cable, just as night fell.
Frank crawled across the rest of the cable hand-overhand and rushed through the bush to find somebody
to help.
Sanda and her mother sat terrified in the rickety
cable car bucket, which was nothing more than some
old boards haphazardly nailed together with a hip-high
edge railing. Sanda’s mother fought for hours to keep
her wiggly daughter still, singing to calm both her baby
and her nerves, petrified that both of them would slip
from their flimsy perch.
May 17, 2013
Fortunately Frank returned in time with a friend and makeshift rope-and-gunny sack slings to rescue his wife and daughter. Eventually Frank moved his family
to Invermere but one of the current cabins at Nipika is named after the Ricthers.
In Invermere Joe Taylor met Sanda, the two fell in love and got married, then
started Winderberry Farms in 1953. Naturally the farm had strawberries and Sanda
made her own strawberry and raspberry jams.
“My dad was just crazy about those jams,” said Faith.
Joe Taylor was adamant that jam had to be made a certain way, with whole berries. So even though Faith’s jams would go on to become the foundation of Saunders
Family Farm’s success, she always had to make a different jar for her dad.
Faith met Gordon while she was studying secretarial skills in Calgary and initially the couple seemed to have no farming inclination. Faith headed off to travel
immediately after finishing college. She was devastated to leave Gordon behind,
but a week into her trip Gordon, ever the romantic, called to say he had quit his oil
patch job and was flying out to meet her. The couple was out for a snorkeling trip
in Australia when Cyclone Kerry tore through. Their boat made it back to shore just
in the nick of time.
The couple married and had two sons before deciding they wanted their kids to
grow up in the Columbia Valley. So in 1986 they followed in the family tradition
and established Win Valley Gardens, which they ran for 16 years, farming fruits and
vegetables and raising the kids.
Faith and Gordon managed to narrowly avoid, by a matter of minutes, another major natural disaster — the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that killed more than
230,000 people and devastated countries surrounding the Indian Ocean.
The whole Saunders family, including the two sons and Tanner’s girlfriend at
the time, were on vacation in Thailand. They spent Christmas Day on the island of
Phi Phi. The boys wanted to stay and go snorkeling but Faith insisted they get up
early to catch the first ferry back to the mainland. The first of the tsunami’s several
massive waves passed right under the Saunders’ ferry — they were far enough away
from shore that the wave wasn’t cresting and they didn’t even notice it. As soon as
their boat docked they noticed panic and commotion, looked behind them and saw
the second large wave coming.
They grabbed their luggage, literally ran and jumped into a taxi, then raced
uphill to higher ground.
Much of Phi Phi island was destroyed and the hotel the Saunders had been staying in was swamped by the tsunami. Faith later was an 2010 Winter Olympic torch
runner and volunteered at the Games.
In 2009 the Saunders decided they weren’t finished with farming and set up
Saunders Family Farm. Business, particularly for the jams and jellies, has boomed,
more than doubling each year. Faith started small, making just a few jars here and
there in her own kitchen. By the second year the Saunders built a special jam-making kitchen in their basement and they now employ four people and produce more
than 50 cases of jam a week during the summer.
“I never expected the jam business to be what it is today,” said Faith. “The business has grown so much, we can’t handle it on its own. And Tanner’s a natural.”
Tanner currently helps operate Saunders Family Farm and will likely take it over
one day. Although Tanner continues to travel in Asia and other parts of the world,
he frequently ends up back at the family farm.
“I always keep returning to the farm,” he said. “The valley keeps calling me back.”
Seeing how people get by in far corners of the world has convinced Tanner of
the need for businesses to be charitable and so Saunders Family Farm donates five
per cent of its online profit to worthy causes.
More information on the Saunders family history, their charitable endeavors
and their products can be found on the farm’s website, www.saundersfamilyfarm.ca.
The Saunders’ best selling product is, of course, strawberry jam.
(MIDDLE RIGHT) Some of the Saunders’ 22 jams, jellies and pickled jalapenos are
display at Village Arts. (BOTTOM RIGHT)The Taylor family poses for a group shot
at the farm. Clockwise from top left; Jim Taylor, Sanda Taylor, Jimmy Tretheway, Joe
Taylor, Loyd Tretheway, Marg Tretheway, Ethel Taylor, John Taylor, Faith Taylor (now
Saunders), Lillie Taylor, Wayne Tretheway, Ann Taylor and Lori Tretheway.
The Columbia Valley Pioneer • 23
Faith, Gordon and
Tanner Saunders are
all grins in their
recently federally
certified jam-making
kitchen.