“Where’s the peaches?” ask many visitors to our little community. Not many peaches grow in Peachland anymore. But once upon a time Peachland had a very peachy reputation. Here’s where the Greata Ranch, just south of here on Highway 97, comes in.

Greata Ranch was once one of the largest orchards in the Okanagan, boasting an annual fruit crop of 485 tons (cherries, pears, apples, apricots, peaches and plums) in 1949. Water was piped from Brenda Lake up in the hills ; quite a feat in those days. Greata was also one of the more modernized orchards with 75 employees, plus a mechanized packing house and wharf. From the Greata wharf, produce was packed in railway cars and shipped out on the big sternwheelers.

It’s strange that the place is still called Greata Ranch. The George Greata who established the orchard at the turn of the century, only operated it for about nine years. He sold it to John Long in 1910 and it was Long and his sons who farmed the land there for the longest time. They were very successful with this plot of land, producing excellent quality and quantity of a variety of fruits, plus building the packing house and wharf. But to get back to the peaches.

Greata Ranch peaches were of such quality that people would come from far and wide to buy them. Senator Ross Fitzpatrick, whose father owned a packing house in Oliver, remembers coming to Greata Ranch as a boy to buy peaches with this dad. “ They produced beautiful peaches,” he says. They must have been good for buyers to come all the way from Oliver, where one would presume the slightly warmer climate would make for even better ones.

After 55 years of running the Greata Ranch, the Long family, with amazing good luck, sold the ranch just before the devastating freeze in the winter of ‘65-’66.
The poor sod who bought the farm, literally, saw terrible losses and decided to sell instead of replant. That was the end of the glory days of Greata Ranch, at least for a while.

The property fell into decline. The packing house, wharf , and bunkhouse began to sag and deteriorate. Most of the orchard was removed. A condominium development began and failed in the ‘80s. Squatter’s shacks sprung up along the shore. In other words, the formerly formidable family business had become a mess and an eyesore.

When the property again came up for sale in 1994, that young boy who remembered
buying peaches at the ranch was now owner of CedarCreek Winery and on the lookout for more grape-growing property. Since peaches are notoriously tender, Ross Fitzpatrick surmised that the Greata bench land was in something of a warm belt, a microclimate, perfect perhaps for growing grapes. He took a gamble on that and bought the property, also for sentimental reasons, wanting to restore the property to something of its former glory. (Of course the two kilometres of lake frontage didn’t hurt either). After a massive clean-up operation, all the arable portions of the ranch were turned over to vineyard and Greata Ranch was born again–this time as an award winning winery.

Stop in next time you’re driving past. Sip a glass of Greata chardonnay and spare a few thoughts for the history of the place.