Family uses United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals to guide decision making for their operation
By Tamara Botting
A number of Ontario’s farmers were honoured with Excellence in Agriculture Awards at the Royal Winter Fair in November 2024.
The recipient of the Farm Family Excellence Award (West) was Schooley Orchards Ltd. and Apple Hill Lavender in Windham Centre.
“It was very exciting,” said Jennifer Schooley, who – along with her sister, Melissa – is the fourth generation of the family to have a hand at the helm of the operations with their parents, Harold and Jan.
“It was the first time I’d been to the Royal Winter Fair in like 35 years … It was an especially nice reward at the end of a long, long year,” Schooley said.
Cycles are common in farming: the changing of the seasons; a seed that grows to a mature plant that produces more seeds for the next generation of plants. One such cycle has informed the operations of the Schooley family’s farm.
It started with the apples.
“We’ve got 36 acres of commercial apples. We’ve had apples on this farm since 1908,” Schooley said, quipping, “I call it the apple addiction that we have.”
Since the mid-1960s, the family has hired migrant farm workers from Jamaica to help with the operation.
“They come up at the beginning of April, because everything that we do on this farm is hand-harvested and labour intensive.”
From April to June, the workers would help with pruning and thinning the trees. Up until just over a decade ago, there wasn’t as much work to be done in July and August before things ramped up again in September and October during the apple harvest.
Then in 2010, Jan moved from her position as a ginseng and medicinal herb specialist for Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) into an on-farm food safety specialist, so she could grow larger quantities of lavender on the farm.
“When she retired in 2012, she told my dad that she would love to plant a bigger plot of lavender. And my dad – who’s a very big thinker – pulled out five acres, instead of a couple of lavender plants around the house like any other normal husband might do,” Schooley said with a laugh, adding that that year, her parents had spent their 40th wedding anniversary planting five acres of lavender.
Using the lavender they grew, Jan began making products, including soaps, which she in turn sold to family and friends. Word of mouth spread, and the customer base grew. There were also plenty of customers who found the farm while out and about.
“People would constantly stop to come and look at the lavender and they would take pictures. They wanted to come onto the property and walk around,” Schooley said.
Her parents decided to embrace this new business opportunity. They expanded their specialty crops; today growing around 30 different medicinal herbs. Early on in the venture, they updated the barn to make it into a storefront, and gave it a fresh coat of paint – purple, naturally.
“That was not my father’s decision, which he always likes to share, because no self-respecting farmer would paint their barn purple. My mother and my sister out-voted him, and it worked out perfectly, because it’s purple with this beautiful white trim, and it looks really nice with the lavender in the background. It’s the first thing you see when you drive into the farm,” Schooley said.
As this part of the farm’s operation began to take off, Melissa (who had been working as a master potter) became a business partner with her mom.
At the time, there were few farms growing lavender. Jan, working in partnership with another local lavender grower, was instrumental in the foundation of the Ontario Lavender Association, while Harold mentored new lavender growers.
Adding lavender and the other medicinal herbs completed the labour cycle for the farm, Schooley said. The apples made it necessary to bring in the migrant farm workers, which allowed them to help grow the lavender, which in turn helps to supplement the cost of growing the apples.
Apples, Schooley said, are “a really expensive crop to grow. It’s a very difficult crop to grow; and it’s challenging, especially as our climate changes.”
But now, with the two types of crops being grown, “It’s like this never-ending cycle that we have going on; never shall the two part.”
In 2021, Schooley decided to step away from her 20-year career in children’s mental health and join the management team of the farm, too.
Spending some time working off the farm after graduating school seems to be a common practice in the family; Schooley noted that her sister, her dad and her grandfather had done the same.
“Everybody leaves the farm, but then it pulls you back for some odd reason; I can’t explain it,” she said.
Since their return to the farm, both sisters have been working to expand the operations.
“We diversify as much as we can here,” Schooley said. Because their neighbours are farmers with their own active operations, there’s no options to expand outwards on their property, which is why they’ve had to take a vertical integration approach with their 50 acres.
“Every square inch of this land is used to help make our farm economically viable so we can keep going for generations to come,” Schooley said.
Their success to date isn’t something that happened by accident; the whole operation hinges on the mutual respect and partnership within the family management team, Schooley said. Intentional, scheduled communication helps to facilitate that – each week, there are team meetings with minutes and agendas to keep everyone on track.
More than that, “Everybody has input,” Schooley said. When an idea is brought forward, they look at how to make it happen, rather than why it wouldn’t work.
That said, as with any other business, they work to find the balance between taking calculated risks on new ideas, but also being willing to put things on pause when they don’t work out as hoped.
As an example, Schooley spoke about their recent intentions to start producing a sweet cider. After they’d started making the cider from a plot of Silken apple trees, they realized that the production costs to make the cider were prohibitive.
“It’s not the type of apple that can be sold in the grocery store because it bruises so easily, but it’s the best eating apple I have ever had in my life, so I don’t want to get rid of it either,” Schooley said.
So instead, they opted for a pivot into offering pick your own apples for the first time in autumn 2024. It was a huge hit.
It was another stream in their agritourism efforts; the farm, and Schooley specifically, has been involved in a lot of online education in classrooms.
“People are interested in knowing where their food comes from, how it grows, how to pick it,” she said.
With the education piece, Schooley is using the skills she developed in her previous career as she engages with families and especially children.
“I love that part of the job … part of my passion is educating people,” she said.
Later this year, if all goes according to plan, the farm will launch in-person farm tours for local schools.
Education is hugely important to the family; Jan and Harold are both plant pathologists, “So there’s a lot of knowledge in the agronomy that goes into the operations of these farms; they have this incredible input into what we’re doing,” Schooley said.
The family has also decided to make sustainability a main focus for their operations, specifically by following the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which include things like responsible consumption and production, social inclusion, and quality education.
“(We are) incorporating all 17 goals into every decision that we make on the farm,” Schooley said.
She noted that sustainability in agritourism is about a close relationship with the natural environment, the social and cultural factors of farming, and the relationships with other sectors in the community.
“It’s all working together for a common good.”
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