Frosty rhubarb

 AURI Crookston pilot plant freezes
early-summer fruit for out-of-season profits

 By Greg Booth

Crookston, Minn. — Call it the rhubarb connection. Fruit growers from northern Minnesota are chopping and freezing bounteous harvests of prime rhubarb at AURI’s Crookston pilot plant. The project, begun this summer, promises to extend the rhubarb season year-round for several northern Minnesota rhubarb processors.

The producers, a loosely knit group in the McIntosh, Minn. area, have been growing bumper crops for entrepreneurial efforts such as Forestedge Winery and Aunt Cookie’s Rhubarb Spreadable Fruit. These businesses need high-quality fruit year-round, yet rhubarb’s season is limited — most quality stalks are harvested in May and June.

Freeze when warm

AURI lab manager Todd Sisson helps rhubarb growers freeze, package and store their crop. “With rhubarb being a short-term crop, there’s no way to store it (fresh),” Sisson says. “You have to freeze it for preservation.” Growers such as retired farmer Rupert Syverson used the facility to develop prototype cuts for processors, Sisson says.

Sisson uses a machine to cut rhubarb before freezing. “It makes a nice, uniform crosscut,” he says. “Producers don’t have the ability to cut and freeze their own, whereas here we can do it on a daily basis.”

The four growers in Syverson’s group have about 2,000 plants. Syverson says the group is concerned about harvesting and preserving quality rhubarb. “We’re very selective as to what we take,” he says.

“I’ve always looked for different niches,” he adds. “I believe (frozen rhubarb) could be a good one.”

Juicier than ever

One successful connection the farmer group made is with Forestedge Winery, which requires large quantities of rhubarb for wine. “I linked them together, and it’s a happy arrangement,” Sisson says.

For Forestedge Winery owners Paul and Sharon Shuster, frozen produce means more rhubarb wine. A gallon of wine requires about four pounds of rhubarb. Frozen stalks, Paul says, yield more juice than fresh-squeezed ones. “We could use even more,” he says, “Our projections are to increase production.” The chopping and freezing done at the pilot plant, he adds, also speeds the winemaking process.

Jars of summer taste

The arrangement also works well for Terry and Cookie Potucek, owners of Aunt Cookie’s Rhubarb Spreadable Fruits in Warren, Minn. “I’ve got about 100 plants now,” says Terry, who recently purchased another patch of about 400 plants. Still, he needs more to stock all-natural fruit spreads at Cabela’s in East Grand Forks, Hugo’s in Thief River Falls, and other area food and specialty stores.

The Potuceks can their rhubarb-raspberry, red rhubarb and rhubarb-strawberry fruit spreads at Greenhill Farms in Audubon, Minn. AURI’s Charan Wadhawan helped the Potuceks with the jars’ nutrition labeling.

The Potuceks sold more than 3,000 9-ounce jars of the rhubarb spreads in less than a year. “The word has got around,” Terry says. His best customer so far? That would be the lady in El Paso, Texas who ordered 84 jars after her daughter bought a jar at Cabela’s.