Family elbow deep in N.B. tradition picking fiddleheads

WATCH: One New Brunswick family is trying to cash in on fiddleheads, while preserving another kind of tradition. Here’s Shelley Steeves.

LEWIS MOUNTAIN, N.B. – New Brunswickers across the province are putting on their rubber boots and hitting the river banks for a New Brunswick tradition.

For the Lewis family, they’re all about tradition. The family has been picking and packing fiddleheads, ready to sell, for years.

“It’s a very short season so people get very excited about it and you got to strike while the iron is hot,” said Craig Lewis.

With only about a week to cash in on the precious greens, the entire family of four are elbow deep in New Brunswick culture.

“Imagine two or three generations ago after eating root vegetables and storage vegetables you finally have some fresh greens and they are first out,” he said.

Mom Verna Lewis says she loves the idea of passing on the family business to her kids.

“It’s a very good, down-to-earth feeling that somebody sees what you see in a dream,” she said.

Verna and Doug started a family sauerkraut business almost 30 years ago and then started selling fiddleheads on the side to help support their family.

“I can remember picking fiddleheads when I was like six years old,” Doug said.

Now they sell almost 1,000 pounds a season and are getting ready to pass on this traditional family business to their only son.

“It’s a tremendous feeling being raised on this farm myself with my dad and my grandfather on the property and my son owns that now and he has a son so you never know what may happen in the future,” he said.

And big sister Jennifer also decided to move back home from Dartmouth to work the family business.

“I thought my brother and I might have more conflicts than we do but we don’t we actually work really well together,” she said.

“It feels like I won something, my kids are coming home,” Doug said.