Lines in the Sand

The Wall family have been feeding Canadians for nearly a century.

After immigrating from Europe in the mid-1920s, John Wall and his family took their farming expertise to Canadian soils and began fruit farming in the Niagara Peninsula. In the late 1940s, they moved their operations to Norfolk and Elgin counties and experienced significant growth, expanding into farming a variety of vegetable crops and starting up Sandy Shore Farms.

By the 1960s, John’s son, Frank, along with his wife, Luella, took over the family business and expanded into asparagus production, which is a key part of the company’s production today.

“They were one of the first to actually grow asparagus in our region,” says Marc Wall, chief operations officer at Sandy Shore Farms, and also Frank’s grandson and third-generation owner of the family business along with his cousin, Daniel, and other members of the Wall family.

Located in Norfolk, Ont., Sandy Shore Farms takes advantage of the sandy loam profile of the soil to optimize the growing of its asparagus crops.

“Asparagus loves well-drained soil, so sand is good for it. We have tons of access to water around here, and we have really good drainage. That’s why asparagus grows so well here,” Wall explains.

The company enjoyed a record year in its asparagus growing in 2024, processing and packing approximately 3.6 million pounds.

“To put that in perspective, I think the highest we’ve ever done in the past was about 3.1 to 3.2 million, so we kicked it into high gear this year,” says Wall.

Almost all the asparagus is sold fresh to processors across North America or to major grocery retailers such as Costco, Metro, Sobeys, Wegmans, Walmart and Publix.

With record numbers of asparagus being packed up to ship across North America, the company made a significant investment in its food safety program.

“There was a need to invest into metal detection on our asparagus program for food-safety considerations,” Wall says.

While searching for a supplier for metal detection technologies, Sandy Shore Farms received a recommendation to work with PLAN Automation from a food-safety consultant that works closely with them.

The Bolton, Ont.-based company specializes in technologies for food and quality inspection, food-processing automation, packaging automation, and plant hygiene and safety.

“It’s the retailer that’s asking for it, and producers are having to increase their inspection,” explains Greg Willsie, associate partner at PLAN Automation.

“Depending on the product and what it is, they have different grades for classification. For the asparagus and for the food service, because it’s a farm-fresh product, they only need to do metal detection.”

Marc says there are many ways that a metal could get into a product—nuts and bolts off the manufacturing line, or cutting blades during the processing, for example.

“We’ve got a very good maintenance and pre-maintenance program, but to ensure that there’s zero risk of any sort of metal getting into the product, this is a critical control point that we can control,” Wall says.

The company purchased a new Tech-Sight metal detector with custom aperture and custom conveyor from PLAN Automation, which was installed at the end its asparagus packaging line.

The biggest challenges that PLAN Automation had to accommodate for when setting up the machine were related to the company’s plastic asparagus case and production process.

“They soak their product with water as it goes out to make sure it’s hydrated, so as the product is running through the metal detector, it’s dripping,” Willsie explains.

“So we needed to get a metal detector that was able to screen out the differences that we’re going to get from dripping water and the inconsistencies of moisture level in the product as they run throughout the production day.”

PLAN Automation also had to accommodate for the plastic shipping containers that the asparagus were transported in.

“The asparagus bundles are stacked inside of it, and everything’s soaked with water and drenched just before it goes through the metal detector,” Willsie says.

“So we not only had to deal with a plastic instead of a corrugate case, but we also had to deal with water and the product dripping.”

Wall says the installation process for the TechSight metal detector was painless all around.

“Within an hour, we had product running through,” he recalls. The training was excellent, very straightforward.

“I now have most of my technicians and my plant manager trained on it.

“It’s a great machine: it’s easy to use and it’s highly accurate,” he states.

“One of the things we love about this metal detector is the HMI (human-machine interface) and the graphs that it shows.

“It’s very easy to read and if there’s an issue, it shows up very clearly on the graph,” Wall says.

“Our quality assurance staff and our safety consultants, are very happy with this machine.”

Another advantage of the TechSight metal detector is that it can be placed on casters and moved around to the company’s other production lines, if needed.

“I know this metal detector is versatile in how we can use it,” Wall says.

“The metal detector has a lot of different presets so we can calibrate it for a certain product.”

In addition to asparagus, the company grows Spanish onions and bell peppers.

While growing and harvesting the crops are a significant part of their business, Sandy Shore Farms is also vertically integrating the packing and processing of vegetables into its daily operations.

“As the asparagus program grew, we realized more and more that our core competency was more inside the pack house, and inside the processing facilities where we’re adding value to the products that we grow,” Wall says.

“We focus more on what we can do inside our facility, and if we can do something special to that product,” he notes. “We always think about how we can vertically integrate backwards to that growing stage?”

One example is the de-coring and processing of bell peppers, which started before the farm even began growing the vegetable.

“We were bringing product in from other growers,” Wall relates. “We realized that we could do this, and there was a good market for it.

“So for a few years, we worked with other growers, and then we started growing our own.”

However, Sandy Shore Farms continues to work closely with other growers, Wall points out, shipping in its bell peppers for processing from other farmers.

“We like that business model of building a community of growers to support a program, so that we’re not reliant on just our fields,” Marc says.

The company’s onion program follows a similar strategy, working with growers in the Chatham, Ont. area.

“We would bring that product in, process it, peel it, dice it, slice it, and then send it out to buyers up and down the northeast of the United States and Toronto to Detroit,” Marc says.

After realizing there was a market for processed onions, Sandy Shore Farms began attempting to grow their own.

“We went from six acres the first year—we failed miserably in the field, and that’s just how the learning curve goes in agriculture—and then in the second year we doubled it and did a little better.

“The third year was the same thing, we grew and did a little better, learned a little more,” he continues. “And now we’re up to 157 acres of Spanish onion that we’re growing ourselves, and we have a very good crop coming on this year on both our bell peppers and our onions.”

Sandy Shore Farms recently started up a brining program for its vegetable crops, having brined about 150,000 pounds of bell peppers this year.

“The awesome thing about brining is, it’s not just bell peppers: it’s carrots, celery, cauliflower, you name it.,” Wall extols. “Anything that you buy from the grocery store in that pickled product aisle, we have the potential to make it here.

“We already have some trials in place to prepare us for the eventuality of us expanding into these other products,” Wall says.

Currently, the brining process is a very manual task, but as the operation grows that could change.

“I was the guy hauling the bags of salt over my shoulder, dumping them into the mixer and mixing the brine.

“So, that’s definitely an area where we need to do some automation,” Wall says.

“As we grow that business, there’s no doubt that we’re going to start automating that whole process getting into automated recipes.

“I know some businesses that we visited where they’ll have different hoppers set up, and then each has a different ingredient, and then the augers are controlled by a PLC (programmable logic controller).

“They’ll type in the recipe in the PLC, and based on that recipe, a certain amount of ingredient will add into the mixer, and then everything gets automated,” he states.

“I would think within the next three or four years we might invest into something like that.”