Advertisement
Published: November 18th 2008
Edit Blog Post
On a sunny Sunday afternoon, November 2, 2008, my friends (Erin, Kellan and Mo) and I decided to go on a road trip for a tour of the Cowichan Bay Farm for a local culinary experience. Cowichan Bay Farm is situated near Cowichan Bay Village, approximately five minutes off the TransCanada Highway and forty-five minutes from Victoria. Kellan drove us to the farm (Thanks, Kellan!) and we had so much fun on the way to the farm (Bonding time~!).
The farm sells pasture-raised chicken, duck, beef and lamb.
When we arrived at the farm, we expected to see chickens and ducks running around, but there weren’t any. Not even a human being! (But we smelled the “fresh smell” of a farm right the moment we stepped out of Kellan’s car. You can feel that there’s animals living here.)
Upon arrival, we followed the directions that led us to the Farm Shop. The enviroment of the farm is very beautiful and authentic, we really enjoyed the walk to the farm shop.
It is a self service shop in a small farmhouse that sells food products such as whole pasture-raised chicken, chicken sausage, breast, legs and wings. Also, they
had whole duck and duck eggs. In order to purchase these products, we simply had to fill out an order form where we wrote down our name, the product’s name and the price of the product. With the form, we had to attach the exact amount of money or cheque and insert them into the cash box. (No cashier or anyone in the shop at all!! What if I didn’t pay for my chicken and ran away!?) Kellan bought a pasture raised whole chicken; Erin bought chicken breast and leg; Mo bought a fall harvest (raised indoor) chicken; and I bought a chicken leg to share with my housemates later. Each of us also bought a pack of chicken sausages each because they looked so tasty and fresh. (They were packed on the day we bought it!!)
In the farm shop, which looked old but authentic, had all the food products stocked in a freezer with descriptions next to them. We were able to help ourselves to a variety of chicken and duck products. They all looked delicious and I wanted to bring them all home.
Then, Mo and I went into another room in the shop to
search for the eggs; the room was so old and authentic that I actually thought it was haunted. There was a big light blue container in the room, and Mo was trying to open it while I was staying away from it. And when he finally did, he asked me to come near and take a picture of what was inside the container. But I was so apprehensive that I kept asking Mo what was inside the container (if there was a body inside?). Mo didn’t say anything, he was just enjoying the moment of me being scared. It turns out the container was a fridge with duck and chicken carcasses for dog food. In addition, there was a third room where they kept all the duck eggs inside.
Kellan went out to take some photos of the farm and tried to search for animals while we were in the farm shop. She then ran into a farmer who led us to meet the owner of the farm, Fiona Young. At the time, Fiona was very busy with farm related activities, she was teaching someone horseback riding!! However, she was nice enough to take time with us to share
the stories of how the animals are raised and how the farm operates.
Fiona told us that Cowichan Bay Farm is a family run farm which she operates with her husband. All the animals in the farm are fed by vegetables and grains that are also grown on the farm. Most of the farm products are supplied to local high end restaurants and some grocery stores.
She pointed to us that the white building behind the food shop is a processing plant that processes most of the chicken and duck raised on the Vancouver Island, and is the only one that is government inspected.
She also mentioned the reason why we couldn’t see any chickens running around the farm, because the weather is too cold and wet for the chicken to stay outside, so the chicken are kept inside with large natural light windows and lots of space for each of them to walk around and live. We would only see the chickens running around the farm in the summertime. (Oh! By the way, the chickens do not live in their own "feces")
After all the talk with Fiona about the chicken and the fact we
had our chicken products that we purchased from the farm shop, we were really excited to go home and cook some CHICKEN!
We decided to go to my house to try the chicken we bought from the farm. The chickens were frozen, so we decided to try the chicken sausages. Since we were in my house, I was the Cook of the Day. I fried the sausages and cooked Chinese rice noodles in soup to serve with them. The sausages smelled so good that I had thought of eating them all by myself.
After cooking, we sat down together to try the sausages. We all thought that the sausages tasted really good and matched with the rice noodles and soup. (It seems that I am a pretty good cook~) We really enjoyed the meal and planned to go back to the Cowichan Bay Farm sooner than later.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.057s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0328s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb