Hip Texas Elderberry Farmers Build a Devoted Following With Harvest Farmacy

Immune support has been top of mind a lot lately ― in fact, for the past year, we’ve thought of little else. Perhaps you’ve heard about the benefits of incorporating a powerful little purple berry into your daily regimen. The humble elderberry has taken a star turn as of late.

Meet Todd and Grace Vranac. They are elderberry farmers. They look more like catalog models, but trust me on this, they are farmers. The Fort Worth schooled couple’s Harvest Farmacy Natural Elderberry Cider is quickly gaining name recognition as well as a devoted following.

“We try to live a holistic lifestyle, but when we learned that the elderberry syrup we were buying was mostly water ― it spurred a new passion for us,” Grace Vranac tells PaperCity.

Why is there typically so much water? Because most elderberry products begin with dried berries, they need to be rehydrated and boiled down to produce a syrup. The Vranacs thought pressing fresh berries would produce a superior product. They turned out to be right.

“What most people don’t know is that the shelf life of elderberries is not like a blueberry or other berry,” Todd Vranac says. “They begin to breakdown only hours after harvest ― due to their very thin skin. Plus, most of the touted health and immunity benefits are found in the juice.”

By dehydrating them, you are losing a lot of their immune building properties. Because Harvest Farmacy presses fresh berries no water is added, making Harvest Farmacy Natural Elderberry Cider not only more potent, but potentially more beneficial.

When the duo scouted a supplier for fresh elderberries, they found the only option was to plant and grow their own.

The Vranacs, both graduated from TCU (Todd studied soil biology, and Grace focused on finance and real estate). They abandoned their corporate jobs, took over about 100 acres of the family ranch, and rolled up their sleeves.

“We always knew we wanted a career that we were passionate about,” Todd Vranac says. “In recent years, there has been a ‘clean dirt’ movement, and a new focus on growing nutrient rich produce again.”

The first plantings were installed in 2018. Now their 3-year-old elderberry farm (which is located north of Lufkin) is the largest in the state of Texas. The couple shepherds their Harvest Farmacy Natural Elderberry Cider through the entire process, literally from seed to bottle. They never use pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or insecticides in their elderberry orchard.

Like wine grapes, elderberries are a labor intensive, hand harvested crop, as some clusters ripen at different rates on the same branch. Their health tonic is made in a commercial kitchen in Garland, Texas from cold pressed elderberry juice, apple cider vinegar, cherry juice, manuka honey, lemon juice and mulling spices.

It’s a long process to get a farm “certified” as organic, but Harvest Farmacy is in midst of that process, and hopes to have that certification on the label soon. The Vranacs say all the other ingredients in their cider are just that ― organic.

You can locate Harvest Farmacy Natural Elderberry Cider at several locations in Fort Worth: Restore + Revive wellness center, Meyer & Sage culinary studio, Neighbor’s House Grocery, and Clearfork Farmer’s Market, plus at Cordell’s gourmet food store in Abilene, and in Tyler at 1948 Coffee and Juice Co. Each bottle contains 24 to 28 servings and costs $28. You can also shop online and they’ll ship it to your door.

“We launched our product during COVID. The first bottles were rolling out in March of 2020,” Grace Vranac says. “Fort Worth has been really good to us, and we are so thankful for that.”

The Vranacs suggest taking a shot a day “straight-up” or adding it to your smoothies, dressings or even mixing it into a mocktail.