Sun-Ray Orchards is a 4th generation family farm.
Our farm started in 1942 when Percival and his son Raymond Short bought 17 acres of land. Raymond and his family spent many years going to the Belville market. When Ray passed away his sons, Trevor and Larry, took over the farm. They wanted to grow the farm so they started buying neighbouring farms as they came up for sale and started wholesaling fruit to stores. Larry and Trevor continued wholesaling for twenty years but they missed being able to provide quality produce directly to their customer. One year they had a major hailstorm which damaged a lot of their crop and they did not have much fruit to sell to stores, this was the catalyse for our farmers’ markets.
The first market they went to was the Orangeville Farmers’ market, which we have now been attending for 10 years. Larry and his wife Tammy and there 5 kids would drive up every Saturday to sell their fruit. Larry wanted to add more products to the market table so he started with his mom Margaret’s butter tart recipe which then evolved into a bakery on the farm. Apple cider and jam followed. They started going to more markets and eventually got up to 20 markets a week throughout the summer months and 2 winter markets. In 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, we were not sure if we would have any markets to sell our produce at so we started our Fruit Stand in Grimsby.
