Fourth generation Norfolk farming family wins prestigious award

A Norfolk County farm now in operation by the family’s fourth generation has received a prestigious award.

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Melissa and Jennifer Schooley of Schooley Orchards Limited and Apple Hill Lavender were awarded the Farm Family Excellence Award for the province’s western region.

The provincial government’s Excellence in Agriculture Awards recognize people within Ontario’s agriculture and food industry whose innovative practices create a safe and stable food supply for what amounts to a $48.8 billion industry.

“Schooley Orchards Limited has been around since 1906,” said Jennifer Schooley. “My great-grandparents started this but, at the time, every farmer had apples, so it wasn’t a big deal. They started to focus on apples and had more orchards than most farmers.”

Like their father and grandfather before them, the sisters left the farm after university to pursue careers. Jennifer worked in children’s mental health for 20 years, while Melissa was a professional artist for the same period of time.

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“There’s just something about the farm that draws you back. When COVID hit my sister and I started to realize that my parents were not going to live forever,” Jennifer reflected. “Our eyes were opened to a fragility here that we should deal with before anything happens.

“We took it upon ourselves to invest our own time and brains into it. We both left our jobs and now work on the farm full-time beside my mom and dad to be able to take the farm and move it forward so there will be a fifth generation.”

Melissa and Jennifer’s mother Janice worked off-farm as a ginseng and medicinal herb specialist for the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. Upon her retirement in 2010 she told her husband Harold that she would love to have a garden of lavender. He obliged by pulling out five acres from the apple orchard to plant fields of lavender.

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Not originally intended to be open to the public, Janice used the lavender for products such as soap, hand and body creams that she would sell. The family found more and more people would stop and want to come onto the property to see the beautiful lavender fields, prompting the construction of an on-site farm boutique in the barn’s carriage house.

Today, Melissa is in charge of the business and research and development aspect, while Jennifer oversees the actual farming.

“It’s a great business partnership because agritourism is just as much a business as farming,” Jennifer noted. “You need to have two kinds of brains to do it.”

Jennifer says the two businesses could never part and often jokes that they have an apple addiction because they keep growing apples even though it’s one of the most expensive crops in the world to grow.

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“As production costs rise, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to continue to grow,” she explained. “The income from the lavender – both the agritourism and the products we sell – helps supplement the income from the apples sometimes. We are really fortunate to have that.”

In 1967 the farm began employing temporary farm workers from Jamaica who worked the orchard from April to the end of June, then turned their attention to the busiest time for lavender in July and August.

“We couldn’t do either of those businesses without the labor force,” she shared. “We only have 50 acres so we diversify a fair bit to make sure we can float our business and keep it going.”

Norfolk County, she explained, is fortunate to be able to grow any kind of crop which is a boon for agritourism.

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“People are looking for those experiences,” she said. “Especially since COVID, these outdoor agritourism experiences were some of the only places that people could go and visit because you could maintain that safe distance from people. We were able to take advantage of that and welcome the hordes of people coming out of the city to get to the countryside.”

Jennifer said winning the Farm Family Excellence Award has really hit home for them.

“We work really well as a family. We’re a small farm so we have to fight pretty hard to stay viable in this type of economy,” she explained. “The recognition of that from outside of our close circle of friends is such a huge honor.

“Family farming, especially small family farms are becoming fewer and further between, so we really hold that near and dear to our hearts, and we are really happy that we were recognized for that.”

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