LUMSDEN, SASKATCHEWAN

This Regina suburb is finding delicious ways to bring the community together

BY JULIE VAN ROSENDAALSPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Wascana Valley Natural Area Recreation Site is a popular picnic spot, and has 15 kilometres of trails for hiking.GERARD MAKUCH

“That’s about to be 2,000 bottles of rhubarb-raspberry wine,” says Sylvia Kreutzer, following my gaze into a tank of brilliant pink juice extracted from fruit grown on the 16 hectares of rolling plains that surround us, overlooking the Qu’Appelle Valley in south-central Saskatchewan. Prairie Rhuberry is the biggest seller here at Over the Hill Orchard and Winery, and she pours me a glass to pair with the tall, saucy sour-cherry sundae I’m devouring as I take in a stunning view of orchard, grasslands and river valley.

Kreutzer and her husband Dean opened their orchard to the public 20 years ago, selling wines, cherry-focused desserts, and even the plants themselves, in order to support Dean’s love of agronomy and quest to leave a legacy in the form of new – or at least improved – prairie-friendly fruit varietals. Though they’re best known for sour cherries, new visitors are inevitably surprised by what they find growing here. It’s still early spring and there are figs in the greenhouse, pinot noir grapes thriving on vines, and thousands of strawberry plants – a variety that tastes like bubble gum, some of which they’ll sell at the Regina farmers’ market. The Kreutzers turn their organic peaches, plums, apples, apricots, raspberries, haskaps and saskatoons into wine, some blended with pinot noir, riesling, chardonnay and other grapes.

Over the Hill is just over 10 minutes by car from Lumsden, a town of 1,800 and a bedroom community for Regina. Lumsden has the feel of a small-town movie set, with wide streets, large green spaces, extraordinary century-old brick and sandstone homes and mature trees creating canopies over roadways. Known as a community of artists and entrepreneurs, the tiny population has been focused on alternative forms of energy in recent years, and aims to become the most sustainable town in the province.

Harvesting at Over the Hill Orchard near Lumsden.GREG HUSZAR/TOURISM SASKATCHEWAN