Cowichan Valley

So from sooke we moved on to the Cowichan valley. I don't know what you know about Cowichan, or what you think you know about Cowichan, but it is fucking amazing. On the drive up I was skeptical, but it is literally the best farm-filled area I've ever been to. All people who care so much about the product they put out, and also who have created a real community of interesting individuals. The people we met there were the nicest we've met so far on the trip. They kindly showed us around their farms, recommended the farms of others, and thoroughly made the experience way better than it could otherwise have been. It was pretty humbling in a way. But only sorta. Onto the farms themselves.....

The first farm we visited was Cowichan Bay farms. This place reminded me of my grandparents farm in a way. Lots of really interesting stuff hanging about, and all sorts of fun things to see around every corner. This is a shot of the shop fridge. Basically, there is no one on this farm, and the ducks pack their own eggs and put them in here. Slight exaggeration perhaps, but there was literally no people here, and the shop just had a cash box and slips on which you write the product your buying. There was a chalkboard with prices. Needless to say, we bought a dozen HUGE duck eggs and partied on. Just finished them yesterday actually. They were so fresh they still had fecal matter on them. Sounds delightful I know, but most of you probably have no idea what it's like to see an egg like that. These were a day old at the most, if not put in that morning. When we cooked them, the yolks were standing so high in the pan it was out of control. Also the yellowest colour on them, like a setting sun just burst in your pan. Fucking amazing. Sorry about the language,and to all you who are offended by it, think but this : I don't care.

After Cowichan Bay farms we went to the small seaside town of Cowichan Bay itself. This is basically the sweetest place on earth. So there's about to be some shameless plugs for local businesses, but fuck you I think it's cool. So this bakery called True Grain breads supplied us with some sweet rye. They mill all their own bread, meaning literally crush all their own grain on premises, and make their own flour. Then their baker makes, shapes and bakes the bread. I know, insane right? Well, it gets better. It also happens to be attached the the coolest cheese shop on the island so far. Carrying a lot of local and international cheeses, Hilary's cheese is not only an awesome cheese shop, but wouldn't you know it, Hilary is the name of the local cheese producer, whose farm is about one km away. He doesn't take visits, because he's such a raving badass that he does everything himself, so he has no time for savage and uncouth folks such as us, but the lady in the cheese shop chatted us up for a good 15 min. And gave us cheese, which was really good. She then pointed us in the direction of a couple farms and off we went.


So after visiting these two kick ass locations, we maneuvered our way around to Fairburn Farms, which is not only a farm, but also has a wicked cool cooking school/culinary retreat. Needless to say it was pretty awesome. But before all that, I had an impulsive moment. On the winding back road to Fairburn, I saw a sign for an alpaca farm. I was confused too. But Islanders are like that, they just get a kooky idea like hey, lets raise alpaca and water buffalo on our picturesque little slice of land because it's beautiful and we should make it quirky too. So yeah. There's an alpaca farm on Vancouver Island. It's actually a pretty large herd apparently. Like 65 head. We visited. We saw. It reminded me of my trip to south America, except that apparently the groomer had been having too much fun here. Some had booties of fur, others punk rock mops, and still others were unshorn long haired alpaca, rocking what amounts to a body full of dreadlocks. I wasn't too surprised when they starting popping off their alpaca noises with Jamaican accents. From the Island, boiieee......(don't judge me, the quality of jokes so far this trip has been sooooooo intolerably bad that they were good). Moving on from those masticating rock hoppers, we continued to Fairburn farms.

Now, Fairburn is kind of an odd spot. The culinary retreat and guesthouse beckons first, and we sort of just sauntered in, checking for someone to let us know just what is going on. Thankfully noone like that was there, so we just walked into the staff area and hung out with another two Germans (the island is swarming with them) who were WWOOFing there. That word means "Willing Workers On Organic Farms" and basically entails free room and board for labour on the farm. Pretty sweet arrangement. After not long Mara arrived, she runs the guesthouse. She was looking a little stressed and hurried, as she is leaving to Sweden soon for a Slow Food international conference. We chatted briefly and then we decided to wander up to the actual farm portion. Here they raise water buffalo. Remember that throwback? Anyways, this farm is a little more practical then those silly alpacas. Basically here they raise water buffalo for their milk and meat, and make awesome sausages and buffalo mozzarella. The mozzarella is actually made up north on the island, not on the farm itself, but we're going to see that place later so it's all good. Anthea, the principal lady of the farm, was the nicest farmer we met. Like so nice. A guy from the BC government was there, and she kindly ignored him for a couple minutes to check what was happening with us. Then, while she dealt with him, she told us "just hop over the electric fence and go hang with the buffalo". Sounds kind of daunting right? Well, I'm not so easily deterred by the idea of getting into an electrified cage with a bunch of nervous animals who don't know me and are well known in certain regions of the planet for their penchant for angrily crushing whole villages. So I hopped in. Good thing I did, these buffalo are super awesome and clearly have been treated so well they're chemical glands have been permanently altered into two states: "curious and apprehensive" and "your cool, pet me". So we jammed with them a while. After that we returned to Anthea, who was just finishing up with the BC guy. We talked for a little while, about her first herd, which was killed by the government for really, really mindless reasons. They had these buffalo two years, imported from norway. Then a normal cow from Norway was found to have mad cow, and all beef and beef related products from there were to be killed. Just to be clear, it was a Holstein cow that had BSE, and there has never been a recorded case of BSE in water buffalo. So they killed 16 of her animals. Pretty shite thing to do. She still gets pretty incensed about it, which is good to see. Anyways, she's doing well now, and was awesome enough to donate 12 buffalo sausages to our cause, which were delicious. That's a story for another post. I'll let you in on what we did with them later. For now, this is over, because it's far too long and I'm eating a really good muffin.