A plan hatched several decades ago to turn field corn cobs into squirrel feeders has morphed into a significant revenue generator for Butters Farms, located on Quaker Road, adjacent to the St. Thomas Municipal Airport.
Brothers Christopher and Patrick Butters (seen in photo below) have grown their family business to become a major player in the Thanksgiving and Halloween market by expanding into ornamental pumpkins and gourds.
The crops only account for about 10 per cent of the farm’s production, however, they generate in the neighbourhood of 50 per cent of total farm revenue.
In total, the brothers farm about 5,500 acres, branching out about an hour in all directions from the home farm. Five hundred acres are dedicated to the ornamentals, with the remainder in a corn, beans, wheat rotation.
It’s a growing trend in Canadian agriculture, with more producers realizing the value in diversification.
A very profitable niche market, acknowledges Patrick.
He continues, “As far as the way we market it, it is Halloween and Thanksgiving for decorating your house, your front porch, table settings, that kind of thing there just to try to get everybody into the festive spirit.”
He explains the process of delivering from the field to the consumer at home.
Patrick he points out that they are dealing with more than one variety of ornamental pumpkin.
He adds, “So during the fall season here, and we are getting to the tail end of it now with the pumpkins and the ornamental corn, but we’ll kind of top out around 150 to 200 employees for that harvest season which starts the middle of August and runs here until a week or two before Halloween.”
“It’s a constant battle of of finding ways to stay competitive and profitable,” he stresses.
“I would say your prices were fairly flat. You knew where stuff was going to sit going into the season. And it sat that way for the whole year. You really don’t see that anymore. The fluctuations and everything from, well, when you see the swings that diesel fuel alone has taken. That really changes what we have to pay to truck our product across North America.
“So we’ve seen on average a 30 per cent increase in our trucking rates this year from what we paid last year at this time. That’s significant because you can’t just build that into what you’re going to charge for your product on the other end. So you’ve got to find other ways to to be more efficient or cut costs. It’s a constant battle of of finding ways to stay competitive and and profitable.”
He wraps up the conversation with, “A lot of people don’t realize what it takes to get it from the planning stages through to when they just pick it up there in the grocery store and take it home. There’s a lot of steps and a lot of work and planning and tweaks along the way to get that product there and the shape and the quality that everybody expects.”
You can read more about Butters Farms at https://buttersfarms.com/
Written by Ian McCallum
