1. Vlasta Ulovec, 2960 Lake Road, Denman Island, BC, V0R-1T0, 250-335-0296  
  2. Anne DeCossan, 2831 East Road, Denman Island, BC, V0R-1T0, 250-335-2294 has a large selections of apple varieties and sell at Vancouver’s Granville Market.
  3. Neva Rolls, Hasting, Nebraska has a fantastic web page describing her orchard of about 200 apple varieties and 100 pear varieties. She has very good descriptions of these apple and pear varieties.
  4. The Fruit Shuttle (certified organic fruit and vegetables)
    Paul and Stephanie Meikle
    RR #1, (1 mile west of Keremeos on Highway 3)
    Keremeos, BC, V0X-1N0
    250-499-5392

Other Salt Spring Growers

Mary Mollet
250-538-1921
Salt Spring Island
Author of An Apple A Day Cookbook, The Collected Apple Recipes of 35 years. Now 83, she spent her whole life on Salt Spring Island, surrounded by apple trees of her parents. Apples are still an important part of her life. Now in it’s fourth edition, this book is a treasure.

Bob Twaites – Honey Bee Expert
Our loveable Salt Spring Island chicken man is also a local source of information on honey bees.

Sunshine Rock Farm
Henri/Tangachee Goebl
201 Bulman Road
Salt Spring Island BC
V8K 1X5
653-9573
thegoebls@saltspring.com
This small organic farm growing vegetables, fruits, berries, flowers and herbs. The jams, chutneys and vinegars contain organically grown home produce.

Fern Creek Farm
Craig Leitch
492 Isabella Point Rd
Salt Spring Island BC
V8K 1V4
250-653-9158 (phone/fax)
This unique organic heritage orchard, originally the Hamilton Estate was established 1897. It features 28 heritage apples, pears, plums, cherries, walnuts and hazelnuts.

Isabella Farm
Ian Franey
300 Holmes Rd.
Salt Spring Island
V8K 1T6
250-653-9634, 250-653-4485 (phone/fax)
Isabella Farm, traditionally a peach orchard from 1972 to 1985, has been transformed into a certified organic apple orchard on Isabella Point. It has 220 trees of 25 varieties including Jonafree, Jonagold, Rome Beauty, Cox Orange, Mutsu, Spartan and Northern Spy.

Other SSI Orchards

The Tsolum River Nursery
301 Mansell Road,
Salt Spring Island, V8K-1P9,
250-537-5269 is now managed by Stephan Pigeon.
A source of over 500 varieties of heritage fruit trees formerly owned by the Canadian Heritage Seed Foundation but now owned locally by Dan Jason.

Charlie Eagle
176 Tripp Road. 250-537-4319
A scionwood orchard for Tsolum River of at least 350 varieties of fruit trees.

Bob Weeden
140 Whims Road.
250-537-5403
An orchard of at least 100 heritage varieties owned by Bob Weeden, who is interested in old historical varieties.

Articles written:

  • ‘A Sampling of Salt Spring Orchards’, The Cider Press, Vol 9, Number 1, Winter 1996, The B. C. Fruit Testers Association
  • ‘Heritage Apples of Vancouver Island Area’, A project with the BCFTA to photograph and document about 125 of the existing heritage apples trees on Vancouver Island.

The Old Ruckle Farm
A beautiful 1200-acre- parcel of land on the southeast tip of Salt Spring, started in 1876. It had over 600 fruit trees. Some of the old trees still exist, but a very interesting thing has happened.

The Ruckle family has donated most of the farm (the non farming portion) to the province as a provincial park called Ruckle Park. The entrance is through a ridge of mature timber, then down into the valley which is the working farm, then up through another ridge of forest and through to the seashore.

It is unique since campers must park in the lot and walk about 50m through the forest to the clearing on the shoreline where tents are pitched anywhere. The spectacular view of the BC Ferries passing has the Canadian Gulf Island and the American San Juan Islands in the background. As long as the Ruckle family exists they can remain there and work the farm.

There have been suggestions that this would be a perfect location to create some new heritage orchards which could have a strong educational impact within the park.

The old Brown Orchard
Beaver Point Road
Salt Spring Island
Also one of the first on Salt Spring, this large original orchard, adjacent to the Ruckle farm, has trees approaching 100 years old. Managed by Mark Fettis
250-653-4411

Wayne Goodwill
350 Dukes Road,

The old England Orchard
664 Beddis Road
Salt Spring Island
Managed by Tom Roughsedge and Sam Sidneysmith
250-537-1007

Don MacDougal
2191 North End Road
Salt Spring Island
250-537-5123