By
John Schmitz
Western Correspondent
Nick Dubenko will
never forget the look on the chainstore buyer’s face when he
first showed him a new kind of blackberry that looked like it was
raised on steroids.
“Wow, monster berry,” the man gasped.
The moniker stuck and the mysterious variety, the origins and real
name of which Dubenko keeps secret, is now one of the main attractions
on the 94-acre farm that lies just off Interstate 5 between Portland
and Salem.
“They amaze people,” said Nick’s daughter, Laura,
of the near golf-ball-size berries.
Dubenko has built a nice berry empire for himself and his family since
arriving in Oregon in 1977 via the then Russian Republic of Kazakhstan,
China and central California. In fact, Berry Empire is what he’s
named his operation, which is boldly advertised along the freeway
as you approach the Aurora exit from Portland.
Dubenko, 76, said he got into caneberries because his wife, Natasha,
whom he met in China, likes them so much.
Like most farms in the diverse Willamette Valley, Berry Empire started
out small on former row crop land.
“We did it just a little at a time,” Dubenko said. “We
planted a quarter of an acre just for ourselves.”
The first two crops were the Willamette Valley’s signature caneberry,
the black Marionberry and the old standby Boysenberry.
At one time Dubenko had grown his caneberry operation to 94 acres,
with most of the crop going for processing. That changed though as
prices proved unstable.
“Some years were OK, other years we lost money,” he said.
Today Berry Empire grows close to 15 varieties of caneberries and
one field of strawberries on 45 acres. About 90 percent of the crop,
all of which is hand picked, is sold to large chains such as Fred
Meyer’s, WinCo and Alber-tson’s. Dubenko also outsourcers
blueberries, which are sold at the farm stand and to the chains.
The remaining 10 percent of the crop moves through the little farm
stand that fronts Arndt Road, which draws good traffic despite the
fact it’s about two miles from the freeway.
The 40 or so acres that came out of production after Dubenko severed
his ties with processors is now leased out to one of the numerous
ornamental nurseries that dot the Willamette Valley.
While the Monster Berry brings Dubenko a lot of notoriety, his real
pride and joy is a blackberry he bred and is now in the process of
patenting.
This berry he named himself: the Emperor Berry. The product of numerous
open, uncontrolled pollinations in the field, he is not sure himself
what the exact pedigree is.
“I know it has some boysen and marionberry in it, and loganberry,
maybe even tayberry and Evergreen blackberry. Who knows what bees
brought in,” he said.
During the 11-year development process, Dubenko collected some of
the berry seed from several vines for planting. The resulting offspring
that showed the most promise were kept in the program, their seed
in turn planted out and crossed again.
“I did that for several years until I got one berry I liked,”
he said.
The result is a blackberry with a caneberry with a very pronounced
taste “much more concentrated,” Dubenko said.
“It’s one of the most popular berries in the berry stand,”
Laura said.
Nick said, “It’s usually sold out before anything else.”
Dubenko varies his harvest schedule in his fields, choosing to go
to alternate year with some blocks to “give the berries a rest.”
One of the big changes Dubenko has been involved with since he’s
been growing caneberries is the decline of the once popular loganberry.
At one time Oregon was one of the country’s largest loganberry
growers with close to 7,000 acres. Today only about 70 acres are grown
in the state.
“They are a very fragile berry,” Dubenko said.
Dubenko grows two acres of Monster Berries at a yield of 6 to 8 tons
per acre.
“That’s just about right for us,” he said.
Though the Monster Berry doesn’t have quite the flavor that
smaller berries have, “it’s the size that sells it,”
Dubenko said. One of the biggest challenges to growing the Monster
Berry is the red mite, which bores into young druplets and prevents
them from maturing. The telltale sign is a druplet here and there
that is bright red.
Dubenko said the challenge in running a successful caneberry operation
is not so much in growing the berries but where to market them.
“If you go for processing, some years you’ll make a living
some years you’ll lose your shirt,” he said.
Western Oregon’s climate and soils make it an ideal place to
grow caneberries, Dubenko said.
“For some reason the grow better here. They’re bigger
and better all around. Most of it has to do with the right kind of
weather we have,” he said. This is especially true in the mild
winters.
The Dubenkos also have several varieties of their berries made into
preserves under the Berry Empire label, which are sold in gourmet
stores and through the farm stand. What distinguishes the fruit from
other preserves is the low sugar level.
“I make it with about half the sugar as jams,” Laura said.
“That’s why you can really taste the berry flavor.”
She’s now working with custom packer Wilhelm Foods in nearby
Newberg to develop a new product called Verry Berry Sauce, which will
feature a blend of all the blackberries grown on the farm.
Laura likes working with the small packer because they let her play
with different recipes and actually get involved with making the preserves.
Berry Empire’s strawberry field is unique in that it’s
the only one in the valley to produce a crop in September as well
as the first of June. The variety’s name?
“I call it the Secret variety,” Dubenko said.
Dubenko is one of the few strawberry growers in Oregon who double
rows his crop and mounds it for better drainage.
As for the future of the Berry Emperor, “I’m 76 and it’s
time for me to slow down,” Dubenko said. “Probably next
year I’ll decide what to do.”
