Keremeos in British Columbia’s fertile Similakameen Valley is bathed in sun and heat for 181 frost-free days resulting in the best tomatoes in the world and a price that will blow your socks off.
Top down to take advantage of the sun on the first day of fall, The Handyman and I head out from Naramata past Almost a Ranch, Foggy Mountain Ranch, Cedar Creek Ranch and the infamous Crazy Zach’s junk/antique on the way to the “Fruit Stand Capital of Canada” on our annual pilgrimage to bring home some summer to store for greyer days ahead.
I always feel a bit like Toad from the Wind in the Willows out for adventure on days like this…One of Zack’s treasures in a tomato red.
Harvest days.
A still life in gourds.There is something about the light in the fall…These 40 lbs. of vine-rippened beauties cost a grand total of $9.98. Add in some Walla, Walla onions and red Russian garlic and your total is somewhere around $16 bucks.
Nonna’s secret tomato sauce recipe
(Disclaimer…I am not Italian and do not have a Nonna but if I did this would be her recipe…I have made this basic but lovely tomato sauce for years and it pays homage to Keremeos’ bounty. This makes a lot of sauce at one time and takes advantage of Farmer’s Market tomato prices.
20 lbs. of perfectly ripe tomatoes
3 or 4 large onions chopped
4 to 6 cloves of garlic chopped
1/2 cup of Similkameen honey
2 tablespoons dried oregano
2 tablespoons salt (or to taste)
2 tablespoons fresh thyme
1/4 cup of fresh basil
2 teaspoons pepper
splash of olive oil (if freezing your sauce, omit if canning)
If you are freezing your sauce you could also choose to add in peppers, mushrooms…Don’t add in if canning as the additional fresh vegetables will change the pH so it’s unsafe for water-bath canning…
You can either can or freeze this recipe. If canning, omit the olive oil (very important) and follow standard canning direction adding 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to each quart jar after filling. This ensures that the sauce will be safely acidic.
Soften onions and garlic in a splash of olive oil (if freezing sauce) or in a small amount of water in a heavy large pot. (I actually use two large pots, dividing the onions and garlic between them, as one won’t hold 20 pounds of tomatoes.) While the onions are softening, begin preparing your tomatoes.
Add tomatoes in batches to a pot of boiling water for about minute and transfer to a cold water bath (I use the sink). This will make peeling easy… the skin will just slip off. Take a paring knife and cut out the stem end and remove the peeling skin and discard. I then give each tomato a bit of squeeze to eliminate some of the juice so you will have a nice thick sauce. Add the peeled, squished tomatoes to the onions, bring to a boil and then simmer.
Once all your tomatoes have been added to the pot or pots, add in your seasoning reserving the fresh herbs until the sauce has finished cooking. Simmer on low for two to three hours until your sauce reaches your desired thickness. Be sure to taste and adjust your salt and pepper if necessary.
If you like a smooth, uniform sauce, add the cooled sauce to a blender for 30 seconds or so. Add about three cups to each freezer bag and place all the bags on a cookie sheet (to prevent leakage in your freezer) and freeze. Remove the cookie sheet after your sauce is frozen. If you prefer to can your sauce, load your jars, add the lemon juice and place in a canner and boil for 35 minutes. (Do some canning research if you haven’t canned before so you know how to sterilize your jars and so on…)
Tomato-coloured pot not necessary but awesome right?
Balaton cherries ripe for the picking which I did just after I took this shot.
In a karma exchange I acquired 30 pounds of the most beautiful sour cherries known to man from Forest Green Man Lavender Farm in Naramata. I started some white lavender from cuttings for the farm in the spring and traded for these coveted puckery babies. The farm takes names every year for these Balatons, which originally hailed from Hungary, and they sell out. The catch, which really wasn’t a catch at all, was I had to pick them myself.
This was my view as I picked cherries.I’m a big fan of the raspberries and blueberries we grown but don’t you agree that cherries are the prettiest fruit going?
Then it got messy. Hot tip…wear something red.
Cherry pitting the old-fashioned way. It took about four hours to pit the 30 pounds. I did it outside and the deck looks like a CSI episode.This is about 15 pounds of cherries.
I made four pie fillings and froze them and then went on a jam-a-thon with a recipe that couldn’t be any easier. After pitting all the cherries they went into two large pots. I added the zest and juice of two fresh lemons to each pot and cooked them until wilted and soft, which takes about 20 minutes.
At this point, measure how many cups of cherries you have, including the juice and add them back into the pots with 3/4 cup of sugar per each cup of cherries. I added a dash of Kirsch to each pot as well because more cherry flavour is cherrier and one package of pectin crystals. The jam may have jammed without the pectin but I didn’t want to take any chances.
While the cherries are cooking, stick a small plate in the freezer to use to test the doneness of the jam. Remain on alert and stir often. Once the jam appears a bit thick and looks like it is beginning to gel put a small amount of the jam on the frozen plate and return to the freezer. After a few minutes, when you nudge it if it wrinkles, it’s done. If not, cook it some more and re-test…
Load your jam into sterilized jars. You can either decided to store your jam in the fridge and use it up within several months or boil it in a canner for 10 minutes, which I did as it’s pretty hard to use 24 jars in a few months. No half measures here.
I marked my jars with a Wine Glass Writer pen which is super cool. I can wash my label off and recycle my jars without dealing with the left-overs of a sticky label. Genius. Wish my hand-writing was prettier.
It’s purple rain at our Naramata berry farm and throughout British Columbia as blueberries come into season. What better way to celebrate than with a blueberry tart recipe?
My first step was to pick. Your’s may be to pick up a couple of pints at a farmer’s market or the grocery store.
You can adorn the tart with icing sugar if you like but I was happy to celebrate purple and leave it as is. The blueberry heart tart is also known as Nicole’s wedding tart at our house or more recently, Gone in 60 Seconds.
This recipe involves three steps: The pastry, a gourmet crumble and the blueberries and cream filling.
For the pastry I elected to use a Pâte Brisée, which is a wonderful flaky pie dough that works well as a dough to line tart shells. Although there are many methods to make it either by hand, with a mixer or a food processor, I find the later is the easiest.
Ingredients for pastry dough
1 teaspoon sea salt
6 tablespoons cold water
1 cup butter
3 cups minus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Combine salt and flour in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times. Add the butter in cubes and pulse after each small batch. Add the water and mix only until the dough comes together. It is important not to over-mix. Scrape the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap, flatten and place in the refrigerator for at least a few hours or preferably overnight.
Roll out the dough, place into your tart pan, perforate the bottom of the dough with the tines of a fork and blind bake. Preheat the oven to 325 F and top the pastry with parchment and add rice or beans all the way to the edges. Bake with this faux filling for 15 minutes, the remove the rice or beans and return the shell to the oven for another 15 minutes until golden brown and evenly coloured. Remove from oven and cool completely before filling. Just before assembly, brush the tart shell with an egg wash (1 egg beaten with a tablespoon of water) and bake for 5 minutes.
This crumble recipe is gourmet with the addition of Kirschwasser which gives it a lovely cherry flavour.
Crumble ingredients
4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup turbinado sugar (sometimes called sugar in the raw)
1/2 cup cake flour
3/4 cup ground almonds or almond flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon Kirschwasser
Preheat oven to 325F and line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Cut the butter into pieces and place all the ingredients in a bowl and rub the mixture between your hands. Spread on the parchment-lined baking sheet and bake 20 to 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until golden brown and crisp. Cool completely. Store left-overs in the freezer for future use on ice cream or muffins.
One cow contains the cream and the other the milk.
Ingredients for blueberry filling
2 1/4 cup blueberries
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 1/4 teaspoons water
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/2 vanilla bean
2 plus 1 teaspoon egg yolks
1/4 cup whole milk
1/4 heavy cream
In a saucepan, combine the blueberries and 1 teaspoon of the sugar and bring to a boil. Turn the heat to low and boil for 2 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk together the lemon juice, water and cornstarch in a bowl and gradually stir into the berries and simmer 1 minute until thickened. If the juice is still watery and another 1/2 teaspoon of cornstarch in a tablespoon of the juice and stir in. Remove from heat when thickened.
Use a paring knife and split the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape the seeds into a medium bowl. Add the egg yolk and remaining sugar and whisk together. Add the milk and cream and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Stir in the blueberries and take a moment to celebrate the colour.
Some assembly required
Preheat oven to 325 F.
Sprinkle about 6 tablespoons of the crumble in an even layer over the bottom of the pre-baked tart shell. Spread the blueberry filling on top. Place on a sheet pan and bake 30 to 40 minutes until just set. If you shake the pan gently, the middle will jiggle a bit under the surface until it cools, when it will firm up. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool. Sift on some icing sugar if you like. We served our’s with whipped cream.
“Forgiveness is the smell that lavender gives out when you tread on it.” Mark Twain. It’s also the smell that my badly abused running shoes now surprisingly give off when I tread with them on after three days of harvesting lavender at Forest Greenman Lavender Farm in Naramata.
Despite a setting of almost unreal bucolic beauty taken even father into a dream state by its heady scent and the background buzz of a million bees, lavender harvesting, like other farm-work, is hard-work. Bend, employ your hand and wrist to gather stocks, saw them off with your mini scythe with its serrated edge, repeat several more times, gather together into one big bunch, wrestle an elastic band twice around the bunch and repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat…on the hottest days of the summer so far this year.
Note bent-over position
2. You learn a ton about your fellow harvesters and harvesting with interesting, smart people with great stories is an antidote to 34 degree heat. Topics of conversation, in no particular order, included: Naramata gossip, farming, football, antique shopping in France, tai chi, swimming, children, pesticide practices, recipes, American politics, British politics, writing, travel, sciatica, tendonitis, knee replacements, house renovation, recipes, cherries, bee hives, ski instructing, mountain guiding, tragic accidents, cycling, triathlon, the English Channel, ancestry, dogs, raspberry farming, wine, helicopters, fire fighting, the olympics, compost, lavender and a story about the lavender farm’s co-owner’s middle-of-the-night chase after an escaped chicken disturbed by a fox that ended with an descriptive image of Doug with a chicken under one arm and a 22 over his other shoulder returning home buck naked.
3. Bees are big fans of lavender, especially when most other Okanagan Valley crops are no longer in bloom and numerous apiarists have cleverly placed hives near the lavender farm. As we worked, bees would move from the plant being harvested to the next, in their quest to make lavender honey. The Handyman, who also came to harvest, was worried. “What’s going to happen when we reach the very last plant? There are going to be a great many very pissed off bees on it.” Fortunately, we left before that eventuality.
The background buzz in the field was incredible.
4. I am a miser. The harder I work for a buck the less I am willing to spend it. This goes for the income from our raspberry farming as well. Money earned from writing is much easier to spend on a lunch out or a drink at the lovely distillery at the end of our road.
Six a.m. was the loveliest time of the day at the farm before the big heat made us swoon.
5. This sounds completely romance novel mawkishly sentimental, but experiences like harvesting lavender at Doug and Karolina’s farm with The Handyman, our friend Bill and new friends made in the field, makes me love Naramata all the more. A last snippet of conversation to dispel the barfiness…”Doug, I think the best place to fart is in a lavender field. No one would notice.” Doug’s measured response, “I completely disagree. I think the contrast is too great. A much better place to pass wind would be in a sewage treatment plant where it would go unremarked, in my opinion.”
She may be a workaday tug, but the SS Naramata has lovely lines that will only be fully admired when her hull is resting in the waters of Okanagan Lake once again.
Camera safely around my neck, I follow Adolf Steffen’s, (a director of the SS Sicamouse Heritage Park board) directions to the letter as I carefully clamber down a ladder into the pitch-black boiler room of the SS Naramata. Immediately engulfed by the smell of what I suppose is old engine oil, it’s easy to paint a picture of men stoking the massive boiler with coal, sweating in the heat with the sound of the pistons pumping madly away in the adjoining engine room.
Boiler detail
Launched in 1914, the Naramata is the last surviving steam tug in the interior of British Columbia. Along with the coastal steam tug, Master, based at Vancouver, they are the only tugs of the steam era, not rebuilt to diesel power, surviving in the province. That makes this vessel and my not-open-to-the-public tour pretty special .
Door for coal stoking
“Wouldn’t she look great out there in the lake,” says Adolf. Once the Naramata was brought back to Penticton (1991) to rest beside the SS Sicamous, it was discovered that her hull was paper thin in places and leaking. The tug was pulled onto the beach and backfilled with sand to prevent her from sinking. Even grounded, she is still shipping in some water when the lake is full at this time of the year and it’s not doing this centenarian any favours.
Adolf says about $75,000 is needed to pay a Vancouver company to “pick her up so a cradle can be built under her to fix the hull, sandblast, paint and push her back into the lake.”
It is thought that all the years of dumping spent coal to cool in an area near the boiler has corroded the hull from the sulphuric residue. The hull felt spongy beneath my feet.
Appropriately named after my village, a prosperous fruit-growing community back in the day, her main purpose was the transportation of fruit from the many packing houses along Okanagan Lake to the railway at Okanagan Landing and on to Kelowna. The ship could haul two fully loaded steel barges moving the equivalent of a 16-20 car train filled with Okanagan fruit at an average speed of seven miles an hour. A carload was 840 boxes of apples and even the early wooden barges could carry eight freight cars.
Engine room detail. The stern houses the compound jet-condensing engine that drove the single screw four-blade propeller.To use some non-technical terms…it was cool to take photos in the dark and see what neat details preserved from the past of this hard-working vessel were illuminated by my flash.
Sadly, these piston will never likely operate again. It would have been something to see and hear everything firing with smoke pouring out the stack.
A couple more shots before we headed back topside and into the light.
I love this door into the engine room
Another look at the rust on her poor hull.
“If we don’t get at this restoration project soon in another 10 to 15 years she will be a rust bucket and disintegrate,” Adolf says. Once she is restored and back on the lake where she belongs a pier will be constructed to connect the Naramata to Canadian National Tug no. 6 to offer visitors the opportunity to see the SS Sicamous, the Naramata and the CN tug. This second part of the restoration project puts the total tab at about $150,000.
Canadian National Tug no. 6 is a diesel-powered tugboat launched in 1948 to transfer railway barges between Penticton and Kelowna. A pier attaching it to the Naramata is in the restoration plans.
Topside and back into the light, the Naramata’s green and buff yellow paint is accented with simple but elegant brass details like the door handles leading to the various cabins giving this workaday vessel some class.
Adolf says it’s painful to replace the old-fashioned keys needed to open these locks as it’s hard to find anyone to make them anymore.The restored doors are a beautiful part of the vessel.
The Naramata’s hull and boat works were prefabricated in Port Arthur Ontario in 1913 with as many as 150 men working on her. She cost $40,000 and was shipped to Okanagan Landing for assembly and launched April 20th, 1914.
SS Sicamous Heritage Park board of directors member Adolf Steffen describing the workings of the winch. The tug pushed the barges rather than pulling them.
The deckhouse of the Naramata includes a small mess where a full-time cook worked in the blasting heat which was likely more welcome in the winter. Assistant manager of the SS Sicamous Heritage Park, Jessie Dunlop shared the reminiscences of a former crew member Abe, who stopped by for a tour a few years ago. Abe says the food was always fresh and delicious and a typical breakfast consisted of hash browns, bacon, eggs, pancakes and toast.
This massive coal-fired stove takes up a lot of real estate in the small galley at the bow of the ship which housed 10 to 12 at meal times.This life ring which indicates where the vessel is registered hangs in the galley.Some artifacts in the galley.
Crew member Abe also talked of how the cook brooked no nonsense on board and would threaten to pick up a troublemaker, clothes and all and toss him overboard.
The pilothouse at the front of the second deck features the ship’s wheel which would have had a good view of the lake. Today, it offers an unsatisfactory view of land.
The captain’s cabin is behind the pilot house on the top deck. The horsehair mattress is a long way from a comfy a memory foam.
The stairs’ brass fittings are a simple but beautiful detail.
When the Naramata began her service, she was the most modern tug on the southern lakes and rivers. Adolf also pointed out the Naramata’s double steel hull which made it capable of breaking ice on the lake. It’s been many years since the lake has iced up but it did frequently in the early 1900s. The SS Naramata would push through the ice to make a channel for the passenger steamers, including the SS Sicamous.
“The Naramata played a big part in the history of opening up the west here,” says Adolf. “Moving the fruit from the orchardists to market in the barges and onto the rails brought prosperity to the area. In the scheme of things, the $150,000 we need in total to fix her up and get her back in the water is not a lot to pay for preserving this important part of our history.”
So far $25,000 has been raised and the campaign to raise the remainder will launch soon. If all goes well everyone will soon be able see her and to paint their own pictures of what life was like on the SS Naramata during its hard working life on the lake.
SS Naramata photo from the City of Vancouver Archives showing her in all her glory on the lake.
This rustic bench is near her farm office yurt and is a favourite spot for evening mojitos made with help from her purpose-grown mint patch.
“Farming should not be a romantic idea because it’s very far from being a romantic pursuit,” says Michelle Younie, owner of Somewhere That’s Green Edible Landscapes in Penticton and the farmer of Valley View Farms that provides produce for the Hooded Merganser Bar and Grill. I re-visited Michelle’s own farm recently and was blown away by the changes in a few short months since my last visit. Her farm is not only productive, it’s beautifully tended, practically weed-free and the produce is super-charged.
She found her vocation early in life and took her interest to another level by working on farms in Italy. “I was always obsessed by food and learning about growing it. My very first day on the farm in Italy I helped make 500 jars of tomato sauce…how perfectly Italian is that?” says Michelle. The recipe involved basil, carrots, onions, garlic and tomatoes and it’s still her go-to tomato sauce.
“My three months in Italy with its olive groves and vineyards convinced me that this is the way I want to live.”
What a lovely bunch of cabbages. These were planted in February and thrived in our mild winter.Michelle says she will never do without a greenhouse again. The one in the background was constructed by her dad and crops just kept from freezing in late winter with a propane heater.
“Although it seems like the in thing to do these days it is a lot of hard work and a labour of love,” she says. “I had a friend who bought five acres thinking she was going to grow hops. She didn’t even have a watering can when they first started out. They are still in the process of planting the hops and converting the land, even if it’s all a bit overwhelming. Having land is a lot more work than people initially expect and some of the romanticism dies once you get your hands dirty.”
Michelle’s advice is to start small like she did with an eight-foot by eight-foot garden and work up from there. “Take everything in steps. There is a lot to learn.”
Mulch is a must in our hot and dry climate.
Michelle has learned to grow what people will order. She sells out her produce to a list of customers who come to the farm weekly to pick up their orders. “Nothing goes to waste. If there is anything left over it goes to the rabbits my partner raises.”
Much of the discussion on my second visit to Michelle’s home farm, this time with the lovely ladies of the Naramata Garden Club, centred on bugs. “We host volunteers from around the world for six to eight weeks every summer and a German girl’s worst nightmare was her job of picking bugs by hand. I’m so desensitized now that it seemed funny.
“Overtime you get a balance and some bug damage is acceptable. This year my issue is cutworms and I’ve had to re-plant some things. I need to let the chickens out more to take care of them.”
Lovely straight rows of carrots.
Michelle says there is a desire to learn about food growing again that was lost to the last generation. She is doing her part. “My nephew was with some of his pals and one of them found a big worm and was squeamish about it. He said, ‘You should keep it, take it home and feed it to your chickens.'”
Prettiest farm I’ve ever seen.
Described as a “stone-cold killer of mice” Missy is the friendliest farm cat ever.Onions in the foreground of the chicken yard.
In addition to her work on Valleyview Farm and on her own farm, Michelle consults teaching you where and what to plant in your yard with a focus on edibles. Her services range from designing and planning your edible landscape to building, planting and maintaining it for you.
Me and my camera paid a visit to Karolina and Doug’s lavender farm to drop off 140 white lavender plants I started from cuttings for them in my greenhouse.
Results of an experiment using two root stimulating mediums.
In an earlier post…Money for nothing and the plants for free…I did an experiment using honey on half the stems to be rooted and a root hormone stimulate (powder) on the other half. I had equal success with both methods so will use the more natural, readily available and economical honey from now on. After I took the cuttings from the farm, prepared them for planting, transplanted them from plug trays into bigger pots and fussed and hovered over the little guys for several months I have now turned them over to the lavender farm to complete the fussing for a while longer before they have enough of a root system to withstand transplanting in the field. Lavender grows best from cuttings as they often don’t come true from seeds. The white lavender looks stunning in wedding photographs. I did a trade for some of the farms famous Balton sour cherries.
The farm was in the midst of their first harvesting when I stopped by.
Doug with some bunches to hang to dry.
I’m looking forward to helping with the harvest in about two weeks. The scent is unbelievable. I wonder if I will be like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz with the poppies and just fall asleep in the field.
I took a bunch home (the spindly one is from my own lavender) and its drying on my kitchen light.
Not just a pretty face…the Okanagan is home to a cornucopia of food artisans.
Jennifer Cockrall-King’s Food Artisans of the Okanagan will make you salivate and then want to hop on a plane, train, car or bike and set out to sample as much of this bounty as your pants will allow. This new guide to the best of what’s grown, fished, foraged, made, baked, brewed or cooked in the Okanagan and Similkameen is the result of a year of Jennifer’s curation, interviewing and storytelling of more than 125 artisans. A food culture writer and urban agriculture expert for more than 20 years, she spent an afternoon talking to me about the the behind-the-scenes process of writing the guide book, the momentum of the Okanagan’s culinary scene and the people and passion behind it, life as a food writer and her next big project. Highlights of our discussion follow.
Jennifer Cockrall-King in her own Naramata garden.
“The toughest thing about the project comes after all the writing, editing and lay-out work is done and it’s too late to change anything,” she says. I’m always scared that there will be something I want to change or I’ve gotten something wrong.”
Unfounded worries.
Food Artisans of the Okanagan is attractively and thoughtfully designed and well laid out. The guide is organized geographically and then by category such as fish and seafood, cheese, spirits, beer cider and mead, fruits and vegetables and chefs… Each section (North, Central, South Okanagan and The Similkameen) includes a clear map to help you plan your foodie route. It’s also fun just to flip through the guide stopping to admire the great photos and reading through the stories of the artisans that catch your interest.
What the Fungus takes the prize for best-named artisan business. Brian Callow grows 70 edible strains and his Summerland operation is the only mushroom farm in the Okanagan.
“I’m pleased with the book,” says Jennifer. “The publisher (Touchwood) spent money in the right places. The cover stock is perfect and the illustrations great. We went through a lot of different ideas for the cover and then chose between six different colour schemes.” The guide’s Tuscan yellow and blue scheme is perfect for the Okanagan.”A good cover design makes a world of difference as does a good spine design. There are so many things you don’t think about such as the trim size. The book feels good in your hand and it’s a standard guide book size which helps you see immediately how the book is designed to be used. There is nothing worse than picking up a nice looking book and it’s all floppy in your hands.”
After Jennifer was approached by the publisher to write the book, she pushed back on the timeline to allow her the breathing room to do the great job she wanted to do. That meant the time to visit each of the artisans in person in a 20,000-square-kilometre area. “For that entire year you have no income from the project. You are working on perspective and just hope people will buy it.” (Sales are great so far…) Not to mention all the driving…
Joy Road Catering always has a line-up at the Penticton Market and is an Okanagan success story that owes a lot to these highly addictive seasonal fruit galettes.
Her criteria for choosing the artisans to feature is illustrated by a recent encounter at The Bench Market (featured in the guide). “I ran into a German tourist who bought a copy of my book which I signed for him. “I thought to myself if this guy buys my book and decides to drive to Osoyoos to seek out some of the artisans that captured his interest am I going to feel confident that he will be happy he did? This was my gut check. Can I feel confident that someone randomly opening a page and deciding to go somewhere will be glad they did.”
She included craft beer, cider and spirit makers in the book like the Naramata Cider Company but left the wineries to others to write about.
Jennifer writes about who the artisans are, how they got into their business and what makes their offering unique. “Part of the fun of writing the book was making new discoveries myself. I didn’t know the North Okanagan at all. One really surprising discovery was Fieldstone Organics in Armstrong. I’m a Prairie girl and just didn’t picture grains being grown in the Okanagan.” Fieldstone Organics works with 25 other local organic farmers and now has a line of dozens of organic, non-GMO whole grain and whole seed products like rye, flax, spelt and Emmer wheat along with organic lentils, dried peas and buckwheat.
She also had fun discovering unlikely success stories like Doug’s Homestead Meat Shopwhich is pretty much in the middle of nowhere in Hedley. With a cult following Brent and Linette McClelland sell over 300 pounds of beef jerky alone every day through their front door.
Jennifer also made a point of giving a shout-out to the amazing chefs of the Okanagan that are doing some very cool things attracting international attention with all the lovely meat, fish, produce, grains, fruit…that our bountiful valley produces.
Forest Green Man Lavender in Naramata tops the list for the most scenic artisans profiled. I took this photo this morning and you need to go to get the full effect of the aroma and the sound of the bees in action.
“My hope for the success of the book is largely for the people I profiled. I want readers to make an emotional connection and to understand what goes on in the production of their food. These people put their heart, soul, sweat and backs into this physically demanding work.”
Jennifer’s engaging writing gets right to the heart and stomachs of the people who buy her book. “Good food writing is not as much about the writing as it is about communicating. It’s not about flowery quill pen activity but more about being approachable, open, curious and well-informed.”
Job done or job jobbed as they say in England.
Her next project is about seed banks around the world and we got onto the topic of her visit to the Norway Global Seed Vault on the island of Spitsbergen. Future blog post I hope…
Food Artisans of the Okanagan makes me love living here even more…if that’s possible. This stunning view is a half-hour walk from our house.
The farm was in the midst of their first harvesting when I stopped by.
naramata-blend 