The year 2024 marked the end of a career for Jim and Marion Hughes. Last fall, they harvested their final crop and put the farm up for sale.

A lifetime of horticulture: Building an industry on the shores of paradise

Hard work, expertise and organizing leave legacy in Prince Edward County

Charles Summers
Farmers Forum

If you want to visit Waupoos, you might travel southward off of the 401, past the weed shops and gas stations of the Tyendenaiga Reserve, to climb the towering Mohawk Skyway Bridge. Landing on the other side, you will take the notoriously bumpy County Road 49 through some of the wards of Prince Edward County. First Sophiasburgh, then Hallowell, then the scenic, historic Loyalist port of Picton, and then onto County Road 8 through North Marysburgh. The landscape is largely red cedar tableland; the height of the junipers silently noting when families of times past gave up on their hardscrabble farms.

A magical thing happens when you eventually drop off of the escarpment towards the water: the bleak, thin land yields to a fertile plain, gently sloping southward towards the lake, sheltered in Prince Edward Bay by Waupoos Island — the last inlet in eastern Lake Ontario where freighters can find shelter in a storm — and suddenly the rabbit scrub is miraculously replaced by apple orchards, vineyards and plots of berries.

Limestone cliffs to the north, calm and moderating water opposite, with mineral rich glacial till capped with lake deposited clay loam on top — it’s hard to imagine a better place to grow fruit in Ontario. This is Waupoos and this is where the Hughes family has been growing for five generations.

Jim Hughes still remembers the tears in his father’s eyes when he told him he wasn’t interested in taking over the family farm. A fresh high school graduate of Prince Edward Collegiate, he thought a job at the bank in Picton might suit him better. In those days an 18-year-old could get such a gig with a firm handshake. Given his poise, before long he was promoted off to Toronto, where as a very young man he was suddenly looking after millions of dollars of shipping contracts on the Great Lakes. “White collar work isn’t as easy as you think. At the end of the day, I was exhausted as could be, but at least after a hard day’s work on the farm you can sleep at night.”

After a few years of work under artificial light, Jim’s father invited him to a horticultural conference in Toronto — back when you would take the train there — and offered his son a second chance at taking over the family’s operation. Inspired by the gathering, Jim and his brother John formed a partnership and assumed the operation in 1961. At that time, it was the sort of mixed farm that typified the better lands of Prince Edward County: a herd of dairy cattle for the local cheese factory, crops like peas, beans and tomatoes for the nearby cannery, and a small orchard for dessert apples and juice. Jim recalls driving truckloads of fruit to Northport for processing before school. “A family could make a living on 100 acres here at one point. It wasn’t fancy, but it was a good life.”

I grow and sell produce on the side of the road to make a living. We have tomatoes and sweet corn and strawberries and beans. But we don’t have things like raspberries, blueberries and apples: and my customers want them. Before long a little birdie told me I needed to get in touch with some folks down in “The County” who grow fantastic dainties, and they have lots to sell. I quickly learned that these people are the Hughes, and I don’t think I’ve ever made such a pleasant or profitable friendship. The stuff they grow is in consistent supply, at a fair price and of the highest quality.

Decades ago, the Hughes family traded milking cows for raising fruit.

Growing horticultural crops isn’t easy. It’s extremely labour intensive, and above and beyond being organized, patient and precise, the endeavour takes a tremendous amount of knowledge. I suppose it might have been Jim’s exposure to the wide world of finance that clued him in to the possibilities of collaboration and information sharing, but what strikes me as I sit down with the 85-year-old man who brings me beautiful berries and apples twice a week is that outside of being a true gentleman, he has a very broad mind when it comes to growing food.

Right away, as agriculture moved in its unceasing march towards increased specialization and consolidation, Jim and John realized they needed to focus their farm’s activities. Would it be milking cows, or raising fruit? Hughes Orchards went all in on trees.

“The neighbours said we went tree crazy,” Jim laughs.

Over the decades, the harvests have been plentiful. Marion Hughes in front of a mountain of apples.

Tile draining their land, they established 80 acres of apples — a tremendously bold move, but Jim did so with a tremendous amount of information and support behind him. By the late 60s, he found himself representing Eastern Ontario for the Apple Growers Marketing Commission. He got involved with the International Apple Rootstock Association, and brought high density European dwarf tree methods to the new world. And not long after that, he assumed leadership of the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association — where they drafted and developed the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program which now supplies over 30,000 Central American and Caribbean workers to Ontario farms every year.

You’d never guess it to speak with Jim and his wife Marion — who have a modest, genteel warmness that is all but extinct — but the man’s efforts have left an indelible mark on Ontario’s horticultural industry. As the couple wind down their careers, all of the industry business is an afterthought: “What we’re going to miss more than anything is our workers, who have been coming here for decades. It’s their farm as much as ours,” Marion wistfully reflects.

As the preacher proclaims in the second book of Ecclesiastes: “I made me great works… I planted vineyards. I made me gardens and orchards and planted in them trees of all kinds of fruit,” and for better or worse, “I should leave it all unto the man that shall be after me.” Who and what that looks like remains to be seen. The developments that Jim witnessed and fostered in his lifetime plough forward — Prince Edward County continues to change rapidly.

The biggest crop around Picton now is new housing, supplying the demand of young families and retirees who evacuate Toronto for reasons that go without saying. Waupoos, always a summer retreat, has become increasingly upscale, as boutique wineries and summer homes replace the mixed farms and commercial fruit production. Much of the orchards Jim established now go into craft cider, and there are only two dairy farms left in North Marysburgh. Who knows what Waupoos will look like in another 85 years? Given the precious soil and climate, it’d be a shame not to see bees dancing in the flowers of another crop.

“I’ll never regret leaving the bank and coming back to the farm,” Jim looks back. And you can’t blame him. The Hughes’ built a solid business in what comes as close to paradise as you can find in our province. Jim poured a lifetime of effort into his crops and likewise selflessly devoted himself to developing the industry for his neighbours and the province as a whole. But 2024 marked the final year of production for Jim and Marion; their berry patch is for sale, next to the old cannery, which is now a marina. It’s immaculate and in full production: perhaps one of you is interested in it…. It would seem nowadays there are more homebuilders than horticulturist in the county. Jim’s leaving big shoes to fill — he and Marion have earned a break, but the legacy they leave is inspiring.

Charles Summers owns Salt of the Earth Farm, a direct-to-consumer operation selling vegetables at the roadside, near Lyndhurst, Ontario.