Artisanal Soda

The County Bounty began as a market garden organic vegetable farm in 2016 outside of Picton in Prince Edward County. It mainly focused on a 20 person CSA and restaurant sales. At the end of her second season of farming, Dodie Ellenbogen was gifted a large flat of strawberries that were about to turn and spoil in the hopes that she, as a farmer, would be able to preserve the last of the summer in some way. Many farmers branch out into jams and preserves to be able to stretch out their produce over the winter months, but Dodie simply did not have the passion or skill to preserve anything well. Instead, she began to search for other ways to save these strawberries. Luckily she came across a recipe for cordials. She began to experiment with all sorts of weird and wonderful local flavours in unique combinations to create some cordials for market. They were so well received that she decided to take it to the next level and pursue bottled soda. In 2018 she launched the sodas as a farm value-added product and it caught like wild-fire! She has now switched to making soda as her full time pursuit but has not forgotten her roots as a farmer and she continues to support her fellow local farmers by sourcing as much Ontario-grown produce as possible. As the sodas have scaled up and life has moved on, Dodie and her partner, along with their son, have moved to the close-by community of Napanee and have expanded the soda operation into a larger facility.