The only dogwood orchard in Ukraine and the largest in Europe, Famberry, is currently located in an occupied territory. However, its owners continue to produce dogwood delicacies and have gone even further by launching processing of a new crop for the company – pumpkin, writes EastFruit.
Today, Famberry not only processes pumpkins for the HoReCa sector and confectioners, but is also the only company in Ukraine producing a unique pumpkin sauce. The story behind the creation of this exclusive product was shared with SEEDS by the company’s Director, Nataliia Olshanska.
– Is anyone else in Ukraine producing pumpkin-based sauces besides you?
– I hope that no one else is doing this yet. That is why I consider our pumpkin sauce an exclusive product. This is our pilot project. It is a pumpkin chutney with added curry — our “eastern story”.
The sauce is so rich in flavors that the pumpkin taste itself is quite difficult to detect. However, pumpkin is the base of the sauce. Moreover, pumpkin naturally contains sugar, so there is no need to add anything extra — only spices.
– Did you develop the pumpkin sauce recipe yourself?
– Yes, both personally and together with our technologists. The most important thing was to choose the right variety. We decided to use muscat pumpkin varieties. And this is only the beginning of our “pumpkin story”.
The reason is that in Zaporizhzhia region, where we relocated our production, only about 25% of the territory remains accessible. But these are people who have land — households or even small farms.
All of us who work on the land in this region were thinking about what to grow in order to create economic value and added value. As a result, we created a collaboration, a value chain “from land to finished product”: we purchase muscat pumpkin seeds and distribute them to people for free. People grow pumpkins on their plots, and then we buy the harvest from them and process it.
In addition to sauce, we also produce other pumpkin products. We work in the B2B segment, supplying frozen diced pumpkin, pumpkin purée for HoReCa, bakeries, and industrial food producers.
– Your company became famous thanks to dogwood. You continue producing dogwood products even though you had to leave your orchard. Where do you source dogwood now?
– Unfortunately, there are no industrial dogwood orchards in Ukraine except ours, but there are private farms and the Hryshko National Botanical Garden. There are old trees there and an incredible dogwood harvest.
To my great surprise, dogwood is very widespread in the Kholodnyi Yar area of Cherkasy region. Almost every household has a lot of dogwood trees. We were even taken into Kholodnyi Yar itself — there are 100-year-old dogwood trees planted in rows.
This means that someone once planted them in a structured way. It used to be an orchard! This proves that our ancestors cultivated this plant intentionally and used it to strengthen immunity, as a medicinal product. Where there is dogwood, there is no need for a doctor!
– Your famous dogwood orchard remains in an occupied area. Do you plan to return or establish a new one elsewhere?
– We are not planning to plant new orchards — we want to return. There is a farmer, a veteran, a comrade-in-arms of our son Danylo, who was killed defending Ukraine. On his land near Dnipro, he has planted seven hectares of dogwood. This orchard does not belong to us, but we have already contracted its future harvests. I hope we will see a pilot harvest next year, and a commercial one in about two years at least.
Yes, our production facility is a single, large-scale, closed-cycle operation located in Zaporizhzhia. We built it from scratch in memory of our son. But our orchard remains there, in the occupied territory. And I believe and hope that we will return.
First, we will demine it, then restore it: replant and revive it. And then I will fulfill my long-standing dream — to build an eco-village there with traditional clay houses, without electricity, without internet. So that people can simply step barefoot onto our sacred land.
It will be an unusual tourist destination where people can come with their families and simply breathe fresh air.
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