Plurking at home

What is Plurk?

When Meghan was little we had horses. She loved her horse Frankie (the head honcho) and would go outside at the crack of dawn (or even before dawn in the winter) to feed, water, and sit with him every morning before going to school. That is when she came up with the word Plurk. It’s work that feels like play. It’s sweating for your dream. It’s smiling as you do the heavy lifting as it doesn’t feel so heavy. That is Plurk.

Our namesake:
We found this beauty when digging drainage ditches in the haskap field. Instead of just a table it became the name of the orchard.

Happy to INTRODUCE OURSELVES!

.5xsxsStonetable is located just outside the small town of Perth, Ontario. Our family-run haskap orchard is situated on 50 acres of beautiful wooded land with just the right amount of farmland for us to create a haskap orchard.

Troy is a financial advisor and definitely the brains and brawn behind the berries. I’m Trace, his wife, and I handle sales and marketing. And, then there is our daughter Meghan who is an ecological scientist. She was instrumental in helping especially at the beginning when we (Troy) needed extra hands and had to learn all the aspects of being a bee father in order to see the fruits of our (his) labour. In addition, she has been the chef extraordinaire behind many of the RECIPES you’ll find on our site. As my waistline will attest, there has been plenty of testing before going public. The haskap ice-cream is beyond creamy!

What this has allowed for is a fun farmgate-style venture where many of the details are covered by our areas of expertise.

The original dream started one weeknight in 2015 when Troy stumbled on an article on haskap berries and the research being done by Professor Bob Bors at the University of Saskatchewan. Intrigued he decided to attend that year’s Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Conference (OFVC) to find out more.

Troy brought the information home and we discussed and researched at length and then we bit the bullet. Our backfield, which had once been home to Meghan’s horses and now lay as a giant back yard was about to get a new life!

So we (Troy, and Meg–whenever she was from school) started cleaning, clearing, digging, and planting berry plants and I started creating the brand, packaging, and website.

It’s been 8 years since that first article crossed Troy’s iPad. 6.5 years since he went to visit the University of Saskatchewan to talk to the true haskap experts in Canada. 5.5 years since he planted the first berry bush. Troy has since acted as vice-president of the Haskap Canada Association and sat on and helped form the official Ontario Haskap Growers Association Board.

We now have 2300 bushes gracing our back “yard”, and are excited about new developments beyond our regular frozen haskaps this summer.

Not to be forgotten is the royalty helping us out with our orchard. We currently are back up to having 11 queens ruling thier hives. With the honey bees and plethora of bumble bees working their butts off we have been graced with so many berries  for summer 2023!

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Cheers,
Trace (the wife of the berry visionary)