Bearing fruit: The ‘super’ berry that changed a couple’s life

Nine years ago, timber merchant Simon Fineman took a trip that was to change his life.

He had planned to go sailing in Norway with his wife Evie and their sons. But when weather forecasts predicted storms, he decided to play safe and go to a friend’s holiday home in Canada instead.

And they liked it so much they decided to buy a small farm in Nova Scotia with room for an orchard.

But what neither he nor Evie knew at the time was that the decision they were to take in what to grow there was to change their lives.

After dismissing the idea of tomatoes or garlic, they happened upon a fruit called the Haskap berry, little known outside Japan and Russia.

“We wanted to grow something interesting, something special. A friend Googled ‘superberry’ and it went from there. I had no idea what a Haskap Berry was but it seemed to fit the bill.

“We just wanted to make use of the land. What we grew was almost incidental at the time.

“It was only after we’d grown our first and actually tasted one that we realised how great they were. And we realised what we could do with them.”

Since then, the company they formed 3,000 miles away from Oxfordshire where Mr Fineman lives and runs his hardware distribution business, Timbmet, has gone on to build a serious business from the fruit, said to have antioxidant properties, with high levels of vitamin C and potassium.

The business, LaHave Natural Farms, now has a series of “haskapa” products, including juices, jams, chutneys, tangy salsas, ice creams and sorbets.

It has just picked up an international innovation award for its juice, and a number of mainstream grocery stores are now starting to sell the products. Mr Fineman now aims to triple production acreage next year.

He and his wife, both British-Israeli citizens who lived on a kibbutz and moshav from 1988 to 1993, are now thinking of distributing in Britain and are also looking to get a hechsher on their juice.

Dr Kemp, a consultant in occupational medicine, even uses the berry to cook Jewish staples in her kitchen at home.

She says: “I have a haskapa matza pudding recipe, haskapa honey cake for Rosh Hashana, and it’s a great topping for cheesecake for Shavuot. It’s a mixture, but I think it’s got its own taste. It looks like an elongated blueberry. It’s purple all the way through.

“It’s fabulous to see the berries grow and seeing this land, which had nothing, come to life. Maybe it goes back to our kibbutz days. It’s wonderful.”