Greens, Eggs and Ham

Greens, Eggs and Ham(GEH) is a farm to the south of Edmonton that specializes in heirloom and hard to find vegetables, meats and lettuces. Their lettuce mix is well known in Edmonton restaurants, as are their ducks and duck eggs. The owners are Marie-Ellen and Andreas, two wild personalities with an abnormal farm. They own ducks, turkeys, chickens, goats, pet turkeys,ducks and chickens, two dogs named Yukon and Liam, and a room with at least 15 birds in it, ranging from parrots to budgies and back again, there are also cats about, but cats are evil and don't bear mentioning. Needless to say, they care about animals. We arrived on the farm Monday afternoon, just in time to set up for loading ducks. Ducks are a curious animal, with no apparent interest in self defense. They are carried in threes to the truck, with no trouble at all once you have a hold on them. They don't bite or even peck. They just sort of hang around and honk occasionally. Anyways, we load them in a massive truck, old school machinery that still fits it's purpose, and then go in for dinner. We relax, get to know everyone there, they have two daughters, both of which are characters as much as their parents, and one relatively shy ranch hand from India. The daughters both have certain tasks appointed to them, and carry them out every day or couple of days. One of them works at a bird shop in town, hence all the parrots. The farm is rustic and almost as eclectic as the produce that comes off of it. Their product line is huge and all relatively difficult stuff to find from typical purveyors. They originally started their business catering to the restaurant industry, and only recently started doing business in the farmers market. Though that business is good as well. They have the farm name on a couple menus about town, and some connections with the local farm community. That night we relaxed and got to know Mary-Ellen and Andreas a little better, which was great. They're really hilarious people, we had a few laughs at a silly TV show, drank a few beers and chatted the night away.

We slept there that evening, and awoke to start helping out on the farm. Fabian went to the hospital nearby to get checked out, wasn't feeling so hot. I hoed what felt like acres and acres but really turned out to be two fields of celeriac and corn. I still have remnants of the blisters. All five of them. Andreas and Mary-Ellen were away at the slaughterhouse getting the ducks processed that day, so not too much interaction with the farm folks. I got to know their help a little better, which is always fun. After we were done weeding, we took to the house to relax, eat dinner and hang out some more. We had kept Andreas and M-E awake pretty late, so I was wondering how they had been holding up to the duck slaughter today. They use a local Hutterite colony, more on those later. When they got home we helped get the freezers off the truck and get them back into their proper spots. Then we all had a dinner of duck, and hung out some more before going to bed.

We exchanged a reading list with Andreas, who is an avid reader and likes a lot of the same literature I'm into. He gave us his recently read, currently reading, and future reads. Some really good stuff in there. We slept and then awoke the next morning to hit the trail. Got a early lunch inside of us, talked a little more about food, exchanged info and got on our way. This was the most rustic farm we've visited so far, but it had a whole whack load of characters to go with it, so the experience was still extremely educational and worthwhile. Thanks for hosting us at your farm and we wish you the best in the future!