Wonderful Travels and Food

T’was a Thursday night choir practice, when I announced to the organist/choir director that My Beloved and I would not be at church on Sunday (which was last Sunday, 18th Sep). He took that very well, but on telling him, of course, the rest of the choir, including our priest, heard that the reason was because we would be visiting farms on Open Farm Day.

All at once, Rev. Txxxx sprang into action: “You mean, you’re just visiting farmers’ markets?”, she queried, implying that we could do that any day. Which we could, of course. “Oh, no,” My Beloved responded, “Open Farm Day means you can visit working and producing farms, but only on this Sunday.” (Those quotes might not be totally accurate: there may have been some editorial licence, but, oh well, I’m allowed a bit of that.)

The point was that the previous week’s Saturday paper had listed 62 farms in Nova Scotia, which would be expecting and welcoming townies such as us. Yes, of course, we have visited farms before – even lived on or beside them during the war evacuation days and we’ve owned and boarded up to 22 horses – but some of these sounded rather interesting and times do change. Besides, some listed were not exactly farms: a few were wineries and you know how we love those, especially with their tastings.

Out of 62 farms, how many would we have time to visit? Obviously, we would not be travelling from one end of Nova Scotia to the other, so they had to be relatively close to us and close together. We selected ones where we might be able to buy, say, Alpaca or emu meat, or even wild boar. As it turned out, we were unable to buy any alpaca or boar as that particular farm’s retail store is not open on any Sunday, but we discovered that we can buy there during week days. That makes it sound as if we are great red meat-eaters, whereas, in actual fact we eat much more fish than red meat, but, occasionally, it is nice to have a change. Change is good.

We decided that the farms we would like to visit were those in The Valley. The Valley is the Annapolis Valley, the 3rd largest fruit-growing area in Canada and famous for all sorts of produce, but particularly apples, peaches, strawberries to name a few, and stretches some 170kms along the Bay of Fundy shore of Nova Scotia from Windsor through Wolfville and Annapolis Royal to Digby.

First off on Sunday morning, we had to go to the drive-through ATM and get some cash, as very few farms accept credit or debit cards. The first farm was Oulton’s, of which the paper said: “Guided tours of mixed livestock operation through orchards and fields. Livestock include Hereford cattle, sheep, free range chicken and turkey. Exotic animals include emu, rhea, elk, deer, many varieties of ducks and geese.” Not only did our tour, guided by a daughter-in-law of the owner, take us through all of those, but also past the donkeys, llamas and wild boar. We also saw a lot of quail, bred for their eggs as much as for the dinner plate. (Raw quail egg on sushi is a favourite of mine!) And there were very noisy Guinea hens next to the pheasants.

Willd Boar

Besides the llamas, we saw, for the first time ever, an animal of which we were totally ignorant and had never heard of before, the Guanoco. It is a camelid, such as the llama and camels, resembling the llama and alpaca and is indigenous to South America, which makes me very surprised we did not hear about it on our trip to Chile, Peru and other South American countries. The photo shows one taking half an apple from My Beloved’s open palm.

Guanoco

I thought an anomaly was the presence of Black Swans, an animal I have seen but rarely in the past. These were in a pond close to the flock of geese. As far as I know, one doesn’t eat swans nor their eggs, so, presumably they are there simply for display.
On remarking on the large variety of animals, our guide informed us that next year they will be classified as an Agro Zoo and will be inviting the public on a daily basis. I can well imagine that many school busses will be appearing at the farm.

Our next stop was Muir Murray Estate Winery run by a couple who had immigrated in 2003 from Bermuda, where the husband had been a surgeon. They bought some acres and now, just eight years later, have 300 acres, 60 of which are under vines. We tasted some whites, among them a Riesling, and some reds, including a port wine, none of which appealed to our palates. Now that’s unusual! However, on tasting their Ice Wine, we bought a bottle, which, later, on gaining home, drank with a salad and a selection of cheeses. The wine was very tasty and, of course, very sweet, as ice wines are. However, the Ice Wine did not go with the Stilton. It’s for sure their port-like wine would not have done either.

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By the time we left the winery, it was two o’clock and we had had no lunch. However, at Oulton’s, we had eaten an apple and bought some lovely plums. So we ate another plum each and headed towards the Foote Family Farm, which claimed to make cider and honey. Now, you Britishers must realise that North Americans (yes, all Americans and most Canadians, except in a few select areas in BC) have no idea that cider is an alcoholic drink made from a certain type of apple and has an alcoholic content of up to 10% or more. What is called Apple Cider here is nothing more than a jolly good apple juice: better than the mass-produced apple juice, because, as it is filtered only in the press through a sort of very strong cheese cloth able to withstand a pressure of 1,500psi, there is some pulp in it. We were under the impression, however, that, like the places to which I made reference in BC, the Foote Family made ‘hard’ cider as well as Apple Cider as known here. We were disappointed.

But all was not lost: we watched our guide scrape the wax off the honeycomb frame and put it in the centrifuge, which removes all of the honey from the frames. And we bought a large jar of excellent honey. If you were allergic to bee stings, you would not have wanted to be in the building in which we watched the honey being processed, as there were hundreds of thousands of bees in there, some alighting on your face and hands, but as long as you don’t swat them, you do not get stung. Just shake them off.

As the directions were very complicated, we were a long time getting there – no address as such was given, only a road, which Ms. Garmin didn’t recognise. And we had no clue as to where we were. However, Ms. Garmin was able to show us where we were and got us back to civilisation quite quickly, along different roads than those along which we had been directed. In civilisation, we bought a few veggies and sat and, does one say, ate or licked, ice creams. Mine was Death by Chocolate and My Beloved’s a Rum-n-raisin.

Rum-n-Raisin