Jawor Brothers Blueberries was started in 1962 by Carl Jawor Sr. and his wife, Millie. The first farm he purchased in Bridgeton, Michigan already had fifteen acres planted to blueberries and Carl planted ten additional acres that same year for a total of 25 planted acres. Millie was involved in the operation of the farm from the beginning working with the pickers and in the packing shed. Over the next 24 years, Carl added 98 acres to the operation through the acquisition of three additional parcels bringing total planted acreage to 123 by 1986.
Our Family
In the early and mid-90s, Jeff and Mike Jawor joined the family business on a full-time basis after working in engineering and construction for several years. Over the next eighteen years, Jeff and Mike expanded the farm from 123 planted acres to over 800.
Jawor Bros. Blueberries currently is in its third generation of family ownership. Between 2014 and 2018, Eric, Ryan, Michael, Carley and Alex Jawor all joined the family business full-time and are now responsible for running day-to-day operations as Mike and Jeff retired at the end of 2020. Kyle Jawor, the sixth member of the family, works on the farm during harvest while on summer break from his job as an administrator with the Ravenna School District.
The Jawor Bros. Farm
Since our humble beginnings with just 15 planted acres in 1962, Jawor Bros. Blueberries has grown to be one of the largest, fully-integrated, growers and distributors of fresh blueberries in North America. We currently cultivate nine different varieties of blueberries planted on over 800 acres. Plans are already in place to expand the farm to well over 1,000 planted acres in the near future.
Our headquarters in Ravenna, Michigan not only houses our corporate offices, but also a state-of-the-art pre-cooler, pack shed, cold storage unit, warehouse, and loading docks. The Jawor Country Store, which opened in 2012, is also in the same location which is adjacent to our 20-acre U-Pick operation.
Throughout our history, the Jawor family has not only focused on expanding the farm, but also replanting fields with more desirable blueberry varieties to satisfy ever-changing customer tastes. We are constantly striving to cultivate varieties that are not only higher quality in terms of their higher Brix values (concentration of natural sugar, mineral content, antioxidants, and other vitamins), firmness and size but are also more productive in terms of yield (pounds per acre) versus legacy varieties.
At Jawor Bros., we view everything we do as an investment in the future of our farm. As such, we have spent the time and money installing drip and overhead irrigation and drainage tile on almost all of our acreage in order to mitigate weather risks and deliver to our customers the best blueberries in the world.
Our Community
The Jawor family has been a fixture in Western Michigan for over six decades. We are always looking to help our neighbors and partner with organizations that share our vision for healthier communities today and for future generations. We take great pride in working with other growers, Michigan State University, Michigan State Ag Extension, the Michigan Blueberry Advisory Committee and other businesses and educational organizations and are proud to support a number of initiatives geared towards ensuring the viability of the Ag industry in Michigan.
