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THE CENTRAL OKANAGAN Sports Hall Of Fame has named its latest group of new inductees.
THE STORY of some of the Okanagan First Nations first contact with Europeans has been set to music, to be performed by WFN elder Delphine Derickson and Astrolabe Musik Theatre artistic director Heather Pawsey at Quails’ Gate Winery in August.
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THE CAPITAL NEWS launches a new feature in today’s edition about the local real estate industry, leading off with a feature about the Wilden development’s efforts to enhance the natural environment of its Kelowna neighbourhood.
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THURSDAY June 19, 2014 The Central Okanagan’s Best-Read Newspaper www.kelownacapnews.com
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Hunt starts to create buskers’ festival
CHERRY farmer Sukhpal Bal, with Hillcrest Farm Market, is managing a construction site this summer to ensure he has the regulation packing and shipping facility required by the Chinese government at his farm in Rutland. He will assemble a machine which takes 10 to 15 pictures of the cherries to monitor their weight and colour for optimal quality before sending them down a conveyor to be washed, boxed and loaded on a truck without ever hitting the outside air.
Jennifer Smith STAFF REPORTER
The tester for Kelowna’s busker festival will likely come from the Victoria International Buskers Festival talent pool. Festivals Kelowna is gingerly wading into the street scene extravaganza with plans to speak with John Vickers, organizer of the Island tourism clincher, to see if an artist travelling east can be sent Kelowna’s way when their work in the provincial capital wraps up. “Whenever you do a festival, you want to make sure you do it right. Our community is very lucky, in my mind, and a bit spoiled, in a sense, in that we’ve had some amazing events to enjoy,” said Renata Mills, Festivals Kelowna executive director. “This also means we have some expectations to meet. You don’t want to come out of the gate when you are introducing a new event without a solid plan.” The hosts of a buskers festival enjoy some See Festival A14
JENNIFER SMITH/CAPITAL NEWS
Jennifer Smith STAFF REPORTER
With Monday’s announcement of a signed deal to see cherries shipped directly into China, growers are breathing a sigh of relief. Some 400 Canadian cherry growers—most in B.C.—already produce excess product. “Often the North American market will be glutted. Everything is ripening at once and, if there’s an over supply, the price can go in the tank,” said David Geen of Coral Beach Farms. “If you’ve got the option to
Cherry of a deal for growers Cherry growers willing to let Chinese deal ripen, rather than pursue low-lying fruit. export, you can roll with the punches a bit more and market your fruit where you have the best opportunity, as opposed to where have to.” Canadian cherries are high quality, with a following in the United Kingdom and South East Asia, but China is the golden egg, according to Geen, whose 500 acres between Vernon and Kelowna’s Rutland Bench
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make him one of the top growers. “The Chinese have a palate for the product. They value the high sugar and the colour—the deep red is seen as very lucky, and it’s the colour of your blood, so it’s presumed to be very good for your health,” he explained. Three-quarters of Chile’s cherry production already goes directly to the country and the
United States has long shipped to its ports. Canada’s niche is in the late hour of our fruit’s season, August and September as opposed to June and July, and the quality of our science. In addition to producing many of the world’s top varietals at Pacific Agri-Food Research Centre in Summerland, the sector has developed a brown-sugar test to prove
the crops are pest free. Added to our spray protocols, it was enough to secure a two-year pilot project to see if Canadian cherries couldn’t skip the usual two week cold storage quarantine demands. “Their quarantine pest is the western cherry fruit fly,” explained Sukhpal Bal, president of the B.C. Cherry Association. “That’s really what this deal is all about. In our ne-
gotiations…they wanted cold storage, but we’ve found a systems approach of doing the brown sugar test, as well as our integrated pest management.” Growers essentially mash up a bunch of cherries in a bucket then pour a brown sugar mixture over the fruit and wait 10 minutes; if there are any larva in the sample, they will float to the top. Western cherry fruit fly really is not a problem for B.C. growers says Bal, a fourth-generation Okanagan farmer working a
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