I want to be a small producer with a big margin
— Fred Archibald
“Giving it a shot is the safest strategy in business,” Fred Archibald says. “Sitting still takes nerve.”
In 1968, when Fred’s father planted his first 40 acres of apple orchard just north of Lake Ontario at Bowmanville, he could never have imagined what he was starting.
In the next decades, the farm evolved with a pick-your-own operation, an on-farm market, then a winery and eventually a golf course among the trees.
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In fact, it all seems to have changed, with the exception of the Archibalds’ business philosophy.
In 1981, after his Dad passed away at an early age, Fred quit his job as an urban planner and moved his young family back to the home farm. Back then, it was 80 acres of established orchard, selling to the wholesale market, and it was a business plan that posted positive margins during the 1960s and 70s.
“I wanted to get out of the office,” says Fred. “I enjoyed the intensity of farm, the changing of the seasons and how every week I’d do something different.”
That phrase — “doing something different” — echoes throughout our conversation. For 27 years, Fred’s management has been a step-by-step exercise in diversification, driven by soaring farmland values and a local population boom.
During their first two years on the farm, hail damaged their apples, forcing Fred and his wife Sandy to look for quick changes.
To improve net revenues, the Archibalds established two self-marketing avenues, including setting aside part of the orchard for pick-your–own and opening a small roadside farm market.
Their first “shop” was a flat-top shed with a tent beside it so Sandy could simultaneously mind the store and the kids. “We always took small steps so we didn’t bury ourselves in debt,” says Fred.
