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Tiny berries, big benefits
Hippocrates called the elderberry plant his "medicine chest" and the druids said that the plants protected against witches; but today, elderberries are a seemingly forgotten fruit. That's beginning to change, though, as more and more people are finding new uses for varieties of the Sambucus family, the scientific name for elderberries.
In Vernon County, Joe Wilson, Drew Kimmel and Kevin Hines, who also operate as the Missouri Northern Pecan Growers, are starting to harvest elderberries for the juice.
"Elderberries are considered a superfood and they blow the blueberry away on antioxidants and micro-nutrients," Wilson said.
Wilson said he got involved after hearing about trials at the University of Missouri.
"The University of Missouri has done a lot of research on them," Wilson said. "They've been working with elderberries the last six or seven years. Patrick Byers and Andy Thomas are two of the ones who started it. Andy Thomas is right down here at Mt. Vernon at the research center. Patrick is an Extension agent and they've done a lot of studies, it's a very interesting product with health benefits.
"I got to visiting with a guy over by Jefferson City that's growing them, Terry Durham, he's really embraced this as his future. We were on a farm tour, they chartered three busses that day, I sat next to Terry and by the time the farm tour got done with I was an elderberry convert."
Most of Wilson's land is planted in pecan trees, but he has five acres in elderberries and said he hoped he could plant 14 acres.
Growing elderberries isn't a project that nets immediate results. It takes about three years from the original planting for the plants to produce a robust yield.
"With this planting here, I've got five acres," Wilson said. "I hope to get 14 acres. I don't know if I can get that many, though. The first year you don't get a crop, the second you can expect 600 to 800 pounds and after that it builds up to where you're getting 5,000 to 8,000 pounds an acre, depending on the year, what kind of weather you get."
Wilson said he was thinking of selling the juice instead of just the berries, since the juice, he said, has several beneficial properties.
"My intent is to squeeze the berries into juice and sell the juice," Wilson said. "Drew, here, is an advocate of the health benefits of the juice. It remains to be seen, but the hope is that some of the customers who are buying the pecans from us would be interested in the juice. We sell to a number of health food stores and organic food stores and such as that so we hope to get them to buy the juice as well."
Kimmel said that the office manager for the pecan growers claims to have benefited by taking the juice.
"As an example, my office manager has a terrible problem with allergies," Kimmel said. "In allergy season you have to take the telephone away from her because she's coughing so much she can't answer it. It's made a real difference in her life. My brother-in-law works at a grain elevator and all that dust had his eyes watering all the time and his nose running -- it was a dust allergy and the juice took care of the dust allergy. My wife and I take a teaspoon of it every morning. It helps with several things, it makes you feel better."
The effect has been seen in scientific studies, in one 2004 study patients who took elderberry extract recovered from the flu in three days as opposed to six days for those who took placebos.
Wilson said he was hoping to entice people to bring in elderberries they have picked to stretch the crop he raises.
"I thought I'd offer 50 cents a pound for wild elderberries," Wilson said. "I think that's a fair price. I think there are a lot of wild elderberries out there, it's been a wet year and that should mean the plants are putting on lots of berries."
The Missouri Northern Pecan Growers have a retail outlet on the outer road north of Nevada where they buy and sell their products.