OFRE: Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton

The haskap has been feeding people for longer than Edmonton has existed.

Indigenous peoples across the boreal forest, from what we now call Saskatchewan to Hokkaido in Japan to Siberia, have harvested wild haskaps (also called honeyberries) for centuries.

The Ainu people of northern Japan call them "haskap," meaning "berry of long life and good vision."

That name stuck.

The modern cultivated haskap is a more recent story.

In the 1990s, researchers at the University of Saskatchewan began breeding wild haskap varieties into productive, garden-friendly cultivars. The result: a berry uniquely suited to prairie conditions, drawing on thousands of years of natural selection in cold-climate ecosystems.

When you plant a haskap bush in Edmonton, you're growing something with deep roots in this part of the world.

That's part of what makes them so well-suited to our climate. Unlike blueberries, which were bred for very different conditions, haskaps already know how to thrive in the boreal. They didn't need to be redesigned. They just needed to be invited into our gardens.

This is the kind of food sovereignty that builds resilience: growing what naturally belongs here

Join us for a haskap farm field trip July 11th. We visit the Rosy Farms haskap U-pick farm with a guided tour from the owner Andrew Rosychuk.

We provide the transportation, you bring your interest.