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Ronda Payne
Greenhouse Tour
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Ronda Payne
Vinegar Works
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Ronda Payne
Old Barn
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Ronda Payne
Farm Tour
There’s nothing like a beautiful sunny day on a bicycle to make a farm tour even better. In Maple Ridge a group called HUB: The Cycling Connection organized an early September farm tour. It included a sixth generation dairy farm (Brookfield Farm), a family-run produce farm (Red Barn Plants and Produce) that has half its operation in Cawston, and a backyard-based fruit and vegetable 'SPIN' farm (Farm 52).
SPIN farms are collections of small gardens tended by a farmer who races from one to the other on a bicycle.
At Farm 52, Lorea McCready grows 13 different kinds of fruits and berries in addition to her vegetables, herbs and edible flowers.
“I think everyone should grow food for themselves,” she told the approximately 20 cyclists milling about her yard.
At Red Barn, Elke and Ken Knechtel run the Lower Mainland operation, while son, Erik, manages the Cawston fields.
“This is the mud and greens farm and Erik is the dust and orchard farm,” says Ken during the tour.
Ken explains the difficulty in running a farming operation in today’s market.
“Sustainable to us means an income stream,” he says.
In order to keep income flowing, both farms produce fruits and vegetables, but the Maple Ridge operation also has a nursery while the Cawston location creates 10 flavours of wine vinegars.
“We contract the grapes,” Ken notes. “Erik takes the grapes, squishes them, presses them, and makes the wine.”
The flavours are created by infusing the wine vinegar with various items at the Cawston farm from rosemary to apricots.