VB: Crooked Stick Pops

Although not a farmer, Julie Tuman’s  first job as a kid in North Carolina was throwing hay bales and her second job was picking blackberries. Graduate school drew Tuman to the area, but a vision for homemade popsicles sourced from local produce kept her here.

Tuman is the owner and Popmaster of Crooked Stick Pops in Easthampton. In 2016 when she launched Crooked Stick Pops, Tuman aspired to pick local fruit for her products at farms that offered a pick-your-own model. She says, “Back then, I would go to Quonquont and pick blueberries. We picked 30 bushels of apples—which felt like so many apples! Now it just makes me giggle because now we get 100-120 bushels a season; but when you’re starting out, 30 was a lot.”

Through experience, Tuman realized she needed to protect her time for making popsicles. Tuman explains, “In 2016, my mother-in-law and I picked our own strawberries and blueberries. Then I realized, ‘there’s a reason the farms have full-time fruit pickers: because that is actually a full-time job.’ I did not have the capacity to be a fruit picker and a popsicle maker because this is a seasonal business. We have to make all of our income when it is popsicle season as defined by the New England weather, so fruit picking lasted only the first year.”

After that year, Tuman says, “we started working with great local farms to source our fruit.” Based in Easthampton, she connected with Mountain View Farm, who grows vegetables, but introduced her to Apex Orchards and Warner Farm for fruit.

Being in a small town, Tuman met former Easthampton mayor, Mike Tautznik, who has a very large raspberry patch. She says, “I suggested to him, ‘why don’t I just buy a hundred percent of your crop? If you have a bumper crop, I’ll buy all of them, and if you have a bummer crop, I’ll buy all of them. You don’t have to worry about packaging pints and taking them to sit out in the sun.’ So things kind of worked out nicely.”

Today, all of the fruit in Crooked Stick Pops is grown locally, except watermelon. Their recipe calls for seedless watermelons, which are not widely grown by local farms, and they need large quantities of them. Otherwise, the local pops feature strawberries from Warner Farm; blueberries from Burnt Hill Blueberry Farm; and apples, peaches, and pears from Apex Orchards.

Part of the fun of being a Popmaster is creating imaginative flavors, and the palate of Crooked Stick customers has evolved over her tenure. Complementary flavors, like young ginger from Old Friends Farm and chilies from Kitchen Garden Farm add spice to some bases. She uses unusual herb varieties, like Tulsi (India’s “Holy Basil”) and Shiso (sometimes called “Japanese Basil”)  from Foxtrot Farm in Ashfield.

The company continues to evolve towards greater sustainability and efficiency. Since 2018, Crooked Stick Pops has moved towards using only compostable, cellulose-based packaging. Whenever practical, they return expensive fruit flat and pint containers to farmers. The business composts food waste (peels, hulls) and recycles everything else possible through Valley Recycling. Tuman notes, “We’re very efficient because fruit is expensive.”

Perhaps the greatest increase in energy efficiency and for the popmaking process derives from a recent relocation, supported by MassDevelopment’s Biz-M-Power Program. The business moved from the 2^nd floor to the basement level of Easthampton’s Keystone building, which is both energy saving and better thermodynamics for a popsicle business.

Tuman explains, “We were upstairs on the second floor with compressors in raw factory space, trying to get our freezer to -20. Now we have compressors outside in a covered alley, so there’s no sunlight. It’s naturally cool underground, and we easily keep the walk-in at -10.” The passive system and increased square feet of freezer space reduced energy requirements while increasing their ability to make up to 500 pops an hour.

Although popsicles are created in a cold workroom and kept in freezers, Crooked Stick Pops has always been in the light and warmth of community. The business has a Pop Cart, and they vend at local farmers’ markets. Tuman says, “I definitely get a lot of, ‘oh, is that good?’ and I kind of laugh now, smile and say, “well, you know, I stopped making the bad pops a couple of years ago and I try to only make the good ones nowadays.’” All kidding aside, popsicles cultivate community and fond memories, and Tuman has known some of her customers’ families over the last ten years—long enough to watch toddlers in strollers grow up and come to work for her as a popslinger at a farmers’ market.

The Popmaster continues, “I’ve started bringing back flavors that I’ve made in the early years that no one would buy and now they’re selling really well because I think we’ve gained people’s trust.” She explains, “They know if we make something with ginger, it’s usually mild unless it’s called ‘spicy ginger’ and then you know it’s going to bite you back.”

That level of trust extends to nontraditional popsicle flavors, like corn. She says, “We do a corn and blackberry and it’s unusual. The people who like it wait all season for the corn to come in, so they can have their favorite.”

Farmers’ markets continue to be where the public finds Crooked Stick Pops. Tuman says, “It’s how we started. I wanted to be where the people growing the produce I used were. I was a farmers’ market shopper before this business, and it felt like a natural fit: we’re a Local Hero producer because we do have such a strong commitment to local produce. I love that farmers’ markets are those last holdouts, as real community spaces.”

Learn more at Crooked Stick Pops at crookedstickpops.com. Find a popslinger at the Amherst, Belchertown, Easthampton, Grow Food Northampton Tuesday, and Great Barrington Farmers’ Markets.

Lisa Goodrich is a Communications Coordinator with Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA). To find more specialty food products sourced from local farms, see CISA’s online guide at www.buylocalfood.org/find-it-locally.

All photos by Carol Lollis, courtesy of the Daily Hampshire Gazette.