Mitch & Jo's Canadian Adventure: Day 6, Day 7 and Day 8

Howdy Y'all out there in the blogosphere,

On Sunday - our last day with Tobi's family we headed out on there boat. It was a really nice Ski boat, Outboard 2 Stroke 175 - for all you rev heads out there. We put the boat in North Vancouver and headed into the harbour to Indian arm. The scenery from the boat was amazing, huge mountains and magical waterfront properties. After forgetting to pack the fishing gear, seeing our one hundred and eleventh salmon jump was a little disheartening to say the least. I have a sneaking suspicion we might have struggled to catch any due to the amount of seals we also saw!

Indian Arm, Vancouver (snow capped mountains in the distance)

Spot the mummy and baby seal.

Bald headed eagle. 3 spotted together Dad!

Mitch soaking up the rays

After cruising in the boat for a while we pulled up and had a delicious lunch time spread and a couple of vino's. We briefly stopped at Deep Cove for an iced coffee and a look through the funky little shops before heading home for the day.

Deep Cove

Jo & Tobi at Deep Cove

This is for Carly

Deep Cove

Mitch, Shirley and Tobi in the boat. Vancouver city & Sulfur piles

On returning home I seem to over hear a conversion between Hamish and Shirley (Tobi's M&D)

Shirley: Are you gonna soak a cedar plank??
Hamish: You want me to soak a cedar plank??
Shirley: Yeah, let's soak a cedar plank!!

And I'm all like why use wanna soak a cedar plank, eh??

Turns out on the menu tonight was Coho Salmon, and the 'soaked cedar plank' was used to cook the Salmon on the BBQ. The 'soaked cedar plank' would not burn but smoke and leave a very delicious flavour throughout the fish.

After dinner we returned to the Harmony Arts Festival to catch some live music. We went to see Barney Bentall a local BC favourite, he was great, he had a folky, country music sound. He was very well received by everyone, so much so he managed to rock out 4 encores.

Barney a few moons ago; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FApKN6bkmU

Day 7

On Monday we had a day of travelling, it was time to leave our very spoilt lives with the Watt family and head to Vancouver Island - the land of blueberries. We left Tobi's at 12 noon and headed for the ferry. The trip from Vancouver (West Vancouver) to Vancouver Island (Nanaimo) took approx. 1hr 40min and was very luxurious for the price ($16 CAD p/p). We grabbed fatty Canadian lunch (Poutine and burgers) and coffee on board while we checked out the rest of the archipelago that sprawl the coast to the west of Vancouver.

After the ferry we jumped on a bus bound for Port Alberni. Which is where our WWOOFing (Willing Work On Organic Farms) host Cathy was waiting for us. Unfortunately Cathy's husband Kerry had been called into work for 2 weeks - he is an emergency Harbour Pilot in Vancouver, hopefully we will be able to catch up with him before we leave. Avalon Farm is located approx 10mins drive from Port Alberni, at Sproat (not sprout) Lake. On arriving at the farm we were quickly given a tour of the farm prior to dinner. Our accommodation for our stay on the farm is a Caravan/Trailer (two trailer park boys go round the outside, round the outside - Warren Wilson) AKA The Road Ranger which is clean, tidy, cool and of a good size.

Avalon Farm;

http://www.avalonfarm.ca/

We met our neighbour - Phoebe from USA, the dog - Jazz, the cat - Forest (because that's where he came from), the horses - Shaq and Austin. We checked out the Veggie patch and the orchard - full of Tomato, Squash, Carrots, Beetroot, Green Beans, Soya Beans, Lettuce, Kale, Zucchini, Apples (I could go on and on with veggies, but I wanna keep the readers excited, engaged and stimulated so i will stop). It was getting close to tea time so we didn't get a chance to checkout the blueberries, but we were assured we would be getting very familiar in the next few days. Kerry is a commercial fisherman so we were shown to freezers full of locally caught Salmon and Prawns, hopefully we will get to have some for dinner one night soon!!

Forest

Jazz

Vege patch. More photos of the farm to come.

After dinner we had a quick walk down to the lake just to get our bearings and headed to bed soon after as we were assured we have a big day in the sun tomorrow.

Day 8

Today we woke at 0700 and had some granola & yoghurt and a coffee before heading out to tend to the blueberries around 0800. In return for our food and accommodation Cathy has asked us to do 5hrs work per day and normally everyone works 0800 - 1300, which suits us just fine.

The blueberry picking is all but complete for this summer, unfortunately the berries came a few weeks earlier than usual. Not to worry we get to do the fall (Autumn) maintenance on all the bushes. Growing blueberries organically presents some unique challenges. One challenge that we are quickly becoming familiar with is a fungal disease, which can be extremely damaging to future crops. If a fallen berry with the fungal disease (known as a 'Mumma Berry') is left among the bushes it can spread the fungal disease into all the other bushes. More commonly this is controlled with chemicals. However, in this case, it's controlled with a little bit of 'mitchbnjow'(please use only as directed on the label and if symptoms persist seek further attention).

At 1300, we had a bite to eat (BLT and Salad) then grabbed the bikes (Giant and Huffy) and headed to Sproat Lake for a swim and a little R&R by the water. The water was very nice and extremely refreshing after a hard day Mumma Berry rustling. Sproat Lake is home to one of the largest ever flying boats, the Hawaii Mars. It is used as a water bomber for fighting bushfires. Today, the Hawaii Mars flew overhead while we were working, hopefully just on a maintenance run. It is based on the lake and tomorrow we are hopefully going to canoe up to it for a look (hope they leave the keys in the ignition).