On the road again

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Not content with a 17 hour marathon journey yesterday, and clearly missing Winnipeg airport already, Chris, Ro and I headed back there shortly before 9am on Tuesday in search of a Greyhound. A very friendly and helpful man behind the counter relieved Ro and myself of $52 apiece, in exchange for a 5 hour road trip to Grandview, Manitoba.

Five hours sounds like a long time, but when you have years of catching up to do, the time passes very quickly! Undoubtedly we entertained/irritated the entire bus for most of the journey with our various stories. But we were happy and no-one actually complained. Besides, Mimmi the elderly lady sitting opposite us was far more irritating with her extremely loud mobile phone conversations for the first hour... half were French-accented Canadian and half were weirdly-accented French. Either way, I didn’t want to know about her bowel issues, and I don’t think the rest of the passengers did either. I would like to say that the scenery we passed through was... well, anything! I didn’t pay too much attention to be honest - too busy gossiping. The bits I remember were very flat and stretched away forever. At first glance this part of the country, the prairies, looks boring, but the variety of subtle colours and the quality of the light make it rather beautiful, if bleak at this time of year.

Anyway, 5 hours, one transfer and a McDonald’s burger later, we arrived in Grandview. And no-one was there to meet us. Deja vu, only this time there would be no airport hotel option! We needn’t have worried - the third car to pull up at the gas station/Greyhound stop contained a smiling lady who pulled up apologising for her lateness. The smiling lady was Kate Storey of Poplar Glen Organic Farm - our home for the next week.

A quick pit stop at the local store to pick up some groceries and we headed out to the farm to meet the rest of the family and get settled in. Poplar Glen is run by Kate and her husband Doug who raise grass-fed cattle, grow grain and keep a few dozen laying hens. Three dogs (Caraid the Welsh terrier and Rex and Sasha the Pyrenean Mountain dogs) and a housecat called Patches make up the rest of the household (plus a mess of cats and kittens in the barn).

After choosing rooms, dropping our bags and putting on a few more layers, we started on “chores”. First up, cows. Kate is experimenting with a rotation grazing system - each day the cows are allowed access to a new strip of land just beyond the one they’ve been in, marked off by moveable electric fencing, which they then graze to the ground. Our job was to let them into the new strip by removing the old fence line, then erecting that set of posts and wire into a new line beyond for the following day. So far, so good and I didn’t electrocute myself climbing over the fence. Next, chickens. Each day the eggs need to be collected from the nests and brought in for washing. An easy enough job as long as there isn’t a chicken sitting on the eggs when you want to collect them!

The last job of the day was to pick the last of the beans from Kate’s vegetable “garden” (more like a small allotment to my eye, but scale is different in Canada!) and pull up the plants for composting. At least that was a job I’d done before 😊

There are definitely benefits of staying on an organic farm (particular one with cattle) - dinner was homemade burgers from homemade cow, freshly baked buns, mayo and mustard and pickled gherkins (all homemade as well), plus the beans we’d just picked. Delicious. Kate strives for an 80:20 diet - 80%!o(MISSING)f her food should come from a 20 mile radius of her farm. Sounds good to me... although not sure I’ll manage that in London 😞

By 8pm the fresh air and exercise (and jetlag) had hit me and I headed to bed for a good 12 hours sleep.

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