Summer on Vancouver Island
One lives like a king. Anybody who loves to cook with the very best ingredients, fresh from the source, will have found Gourmet Eden on Vancouver Island.
Just now, Arbutus Farm sells fresh strawberries (but only when they put up their stand at Telegraph Road), the winery sells eggs from happy chickens, and Mr Jessie (Jose?) Pereira of Terra Nossa Farms sells happy chicken meat, garlic, lamb, pork and black berries. Senor Pereira, owner of Terra Nossa Farms, hails from the Azores, Portugal, and has brought his love of land and farming to my little corner of the world, and provides good food to his devoted customers like in the old country.
A mile down the road, there are blue berries, fresh produce, happy pork, and happy lamb. A seafood store downtown Duncan sells fresh anything with fins or shells right from the boat - caught that very morning by the owner and attendant of the store. Sometimes it feels like a neighbourhood enterprise, where eggs from one farm end up in dough of the Cowichan Bay Bakery (True Grain Bread), and neighbourhood dairy cows provide milk for Hillary Cheese production.
Not bad, actually, the best place in Canada for anybody who loves to eat the best that our planet has to offer.
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| Volunteer farm worker hailing from the Province of Alberta, spending his summer on Terra Nossa farm on Vancouver Island during school vacations - and coming back year after year. Here he is giving me the choice of 'harness' to carry around a berry picking bucket. Backpack style or neck style...well, five pounds of berries feel better acting like a back pack, then as a necklace. |
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| Black Berries...you can pick your own. Quite inviting, as the absence of thorns makes picking a dream... |
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| Oblong, almost two inches long, sweet as can be..... |
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| The bounty is so rich, that my bucket fills with sweet dark and ripe berries within minutes |
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| Brain food , they say...apart from that a taste of summer without equal... |
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| And whilst the berry harvest is in full swing, juvenile turkeys are enjoying a short and happy farm life before the hour of destiny arrives, and they will be served - stuffed - Thanksgiving Day. |
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| Better than Kentucky Fried Chicken fowl, which spends its pre-slaughter years in crowded cages, without the pleasures of living a chicken life. These hens are enjoying party time. Well - a life well lived - and a quick and painless death to end it all. In the meantime, these hens enjoy each others company, munch on chicken gourmet food and wander around at will in summer pasture and rest in shady chicken condos. |
And the grapes are ripening on their vines....to add to the pleasure of the palate...soon. Merridale Cider is preparing for a bountiful harvest to brew the best cider in creation (find it in your local liquor store).
Off to Nova Scotia tomorrow....maybe fresh lobsters await???
