But I was told a local family had turned their honey business around with some clever marketing of a premium, organic product. So I thought: why not?
Beekeeper and Honey Bunny co-founder Sharon Wolfe was hobbling around in a cast when I arrived, but was so energized she wouldn't sit down. Her husband and kids dropped by and left for a school event. Other relatives and friends kept arriving and leaving, then honey preparation workers walked in, chatted and returned to the plant area.
The place was like a happy country post office, but below the surface was the simple fact that this little business was a point of pride for the hamlet -- and was making money selling its honey across North America.
For years, the Wolfes were selling up to half a million kilograms of their honey in bulk each year to U.S. wholesalers and repackagers. The middlemen were making the money, while the producers were scraping by.
But the Wolfes got some good advice, took control of their marketing, devised a cute logo ( "Kids loved the bunny in our tests," said Wolfe) and found financing for a high-tech factory in 2007.
Next, they hit the road, won awards and got their product into Safeway and organic food chains. They are now Canada's largest organic honey producer.
The Peace region may have some of the world's best honey, but it is entrepreneurs such as the Wolfes who make it special. With a thriving family business that generates local jobs, they create the glue that holds rural economies together. They are no longer just beekeepers.
First published Sept. 28, 2010
Reaping more profit for growers after the harvest; Biodiesel project follows honey firm in move from supplier to processor
When canola farmer Stan Peacock trucked a shipment of off-grade seed to a distant elevator a few years ago and earned just $50 after paying the handling fees, he knew there had to be a better deal out there.
"It didn't come close to covering my fuel, let alone wear on the truck and my time," Peacock said. "The elevator companies make their money handling grain and seed, and there was nothing left for farmers."
The Peace region produces a lot of canola, and not all of it is good enough to be used for food. Some of it is just dumped in coulees.
But a growing demand for biodiesel, combined with potential carbon credits and an $8.5-million federal grant, has changed the landscape for local agriculture, Peacock said.
He founded All Peace Industries Inc., a fledgling firm that aims to dismantle a biodiesel refinery in Michigan and install it just outside High Prairie.
The $37-million project would produce up to 66 million litres of biodiesel each year of off-grade canola and pennycress -- also called stinkweed -- which resembles canola, but is considered a weed. About 120,000 acres of farmland would need to be planted in pennycress to supply the plant.
Peacock is already on second base with the project: The Michigan plant owner has agreed to trade his facility for a share of the new Alberta firm, and Peacock has already talked with Bay Street investors.
"We presented to four groups and one has already made a proposal, with one or two others expected soon," said Shane Pospisil of Nichols Applied Management, which has a contract from the province to help towns like High Prairie attract projects.
Pennycress has the ability to pull contaminants -- lead, zinc arsenic and aluminum -- from the soil and store them in the plant stem. In Detroit, small test plots are part of an attempt to reclaim the inner city for small vegetable farms, and Peacock thinks it might even have an application in oilsands and drilling pad reclamations.
Up the road from High Prairie, the hamlet of Guy has its own example of local innovation. With its long, sunny summer days, the Peace Region is known as Canada's honey capital. And the Wolfe family for many years were producing up to a million pounds a year of honey for the bulk market.
But U.S. wholesalers and repackagers were making the real money, Pospisil said.
"The Wolfes needed to add value and take control of their marketing. And they needed a brand."
So after some image testing, the Honey Bunny organic honey brand was born in 2007, complete with a cute rabbit logo designed to win young fans and a new high-tech plant.
The foil-packaged honey won the 2009 Canada Grand Prix for new products award. Distribution in organic markets, including the large Whole Foods chain, has expanded to include some Safeway stores in Canada. Honey Bunny is now Canada's largest organic-honey producer.
And recently, the family-owned firm bought the marketing rights to the established Zambezi honey brand to solidify its U.S. sales effort. That darker, more expensive honey is collected from large hives that hang from trees in southern Africa.
"We are designing a foil package for it as well that will maintain the colourful African look of the current label, with the yellow and orange colours, the large tree, elephant and giraffe," co-founder Sharon Wolfe said.
The key to organic honey is the health of the colonies, Wolfe said. Every fall she sends 7,200 colonies to spend the winter outdoors in southern B.C., thus avoiding pesticides needed to treat diseases found in bees kept in sheds here, or problems with continually importing new queens each year.
In the spring, she distributes her hives throughout the Peace region, placing them on farms and public lands.
"We are beekeepers, not farmers. We have to place them wherever we can, and then the bees just do their job," she said.
