Wine-o Wednesday!

On Wednesday we had some great on farm tours that kept us engaged all day! We stared at Beatty Seeds, a family owned seed company that handles seed production and packaging of corn, soybeans, and wheat. They specialize in Identity Preserved soybeans that are traceable and guaranteed non GMO. The seed is often shipped out to Japan or China for soybean production that eventually is processed into soy milk or tofu. Also, they are a certified food grade facility and have strict standards to meet to handle food grade wheat. Ha that rhymes. 

Next was a tour of a family fruit and vegetable farm. They market all their product through their own farm side stand. They took us all over their farm and pointed out the different fruits and veggies. They do multiple plantings of each to keep fresh product at their stand from spring to fall. Some of their popular crops include potatoes, onions, tomatoes, sweet corn, raspberries, lettuce, squash, asparagus, and so much more. They employed family members and four Jamaican workers through their busy season. This was a one of a kind farm tour! Just wish we would have had time to do some shopping. 

We made a quick stop at the County Farm Center store that was sort of a combination Big R and Amish goods. They sold freezer beef, pork, and lamb (all local) as well as other repackaged frozen foods. Here's a price comparison between what we saw and what the Kilgus's (couple from our tour group) charge, all in US dollars and similar local farm to consumer model. 

$11.99 / lb Canadian beef

$15.99 / lb Kilgus Farms beef

The last stop of the day was at the Clossen Chase Winery. This has been the highlight of the trip and not just because we drank wine there. The farm manager really knew his stuff, was wildly passionate about the business, and did a great job explaining things from start to finish. He spoke the farmer language and he spoke it loudly! We tried a Pinot Noir and two Pinot Grigios from different years. Not the sweet wines we see around our home wineries but damn good wine that retails for $30-$50 a bottle. He basically talked me out of ever wanting to start a vineyard due to the complexity of the business. I think I'll just be happy buying and sipping wine! 

It rains and it pours and now we're all wet.

Our tour stops today included Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the US Embassy to Canada, and a tour of the Canadian Parliament all in Canada's national capital of Ottawa. We spent about 6 total hours driving between our morning ride to Ottawa, Ontario from Montreal, Quebec and our evening trip from Ottawa, Ontario to Belleville, Ontario. We were all happy and relieved to be in an English speaking province! The long drives gave me plenty of time to take a nap, catch up on emails, and chat with new friends about agriculture and what we saw today. 

Some take always :

• Canada and America, more specifically Illinois, are huge agriculture trade partners, trading things like corn and soybeans as well as processed foods and baked goods totaling $3.1 billion in trade. 
• Canada is the #1 producer of canola which was created in Canada and literally means Canada Oil Seed. 
• The US exports more agriculture products to Canada than it does the Japan, China, and the United Kingdom combined.
• The NAFTA trade agreement is very important to Canadian Agriculture and their consumers
• NAFTA is a bit one sided currently benefiting Canadian agriculture more than American agriculture and needs to be renegotiated

Did I mention that it rained? It has rained every damn day of our trip! Just for a little while and then it's usually beautiful for the rest of the day. Most of the time I have been able to grab my rain coat and stay dry but not today! We were traveling light because of the high security in the embassy and at parliament so I left basically everything on the bus. While standing in line at parliament, it began to rain. We had no where to go to escape it so there we all were in our wet polos and wet khakis with wet hair and running mascara. Let me tell you, everybody was a trooper. Just one more great memory made on this super fun trip and we did eventually dried off... just had a bit flatter hair and half the makeup. 

At dinner I tried a local (brewed in the same county) hard apple cider. It was awesome. 

Canada Day One/Two

Hi, hello, me again, out and about in Canada this week! I'm traveling with the Illinois Farm Bureau Young Leaders on their annual agriculture industry tour. For six days we will be traveling between Montreal and Toronto tour farms, meeting with Canadian agriculture officials, and checking out some tourist spots. Stay tuned for all the fun. 

Travel Arrangements

Life is busy and I have the tendency to over schedule myself. Here's maybe my best example yet. My best friends Matt & Ashlen are getting married and that means one heck of a bachelorette party in the Ozarks. That party unfortunately overlapped with traveling to Canada. I had to be in Montreal by 2pm Sunday to meet up with the group so I picked up a rental car in St. Louis on our way down to the Ozarks Thursday evening. Then I had to leave the Ozarks at midnight on Saturday night to drive to St. Louis and catch my 6AM flight St Louis > Chicago > Montreal. Ouch. Needless to say I got less than 2 hours of sleep plus a couple cat naps on the plane and tour bus. Essentially I didn't sleep for a full 38 hours. That travel rivaled Japan > Denver > Panama. I ran into A bunch of other young leaders and was happy to be traveling in a group. I was pretty much a zombie. We had a couple hours to kill in Montreal before the tour bus arrived so we had lunch and a beer at the airport. While sitting there we made friends with a nice older Canadian man who was waiting to pick up his son. He offered us some hard candies, made by his family business. They were maple leaf shaped and in plain clear wrappers. I had enough sanity to ask if there were drugs in them but not quite enough sanity to not eat one. I literally took candy from a stranger. Sorry mom. In my defense, it was from a Canadian (aren't all Canadians super polite and honest and friendly?), and it was a maple syrup flavored, and I did live to tell the tale. It was delicious and I'm fairly certain it was drug-free. Be adventurous am I right? Haha

Dairy farms

The beginning of the trip started off with three dairy farms and GEA, a manufacturing plant that builds manure handling machinery like manure spreaders, pumps, and stall cleaners. Each of the dairies had a bit of a different flare. The first was super fancy, beautiful farm stead, well manicured and served us beer. This family farm had 2 robotic milkers and 100 cows. Everyone worked on the farm including two cute little girls in pink and purple overalls. They ran Case IH equipment. Each piece was licensed and had a state plate. Even their side by sides had license plates on them. Here we also learned about milk quotas in Canada. Quotas guarantee milk prices and are bought and sold by dairy farmers. The amount of quotas available (or production capacity) is set by the Canadian government. This basically guarantees income to their dairy farmers and based on this stop leads me to believe, it encourages dairy farmers to invest in efficiencies. Their farm was fully automated from how bedding is distributed (by rail in the ceiling) to how the bunks are cleaned, and how the milk is handled. Did I mention each of the robotic milkers cost $250,000? 

The second was huge, boasting 22 robotic milkers and 1100 cows. They farm 3,800 acres of corn for silage, corn for grain, wheat, and alfalfa. The farm is ran by about 18 employees. Half of their production is kosher milk, when they are milking the cows, three days a week, they have a Rabi on the farm. Apparently this makes the milk "kosher". This speciality gains them about 15-20% premium on milk sales. There really isn't a market for organic milk in Canada. Another checkmark in the Canada vs America column. 

The third dairy was more modest and traditional for Canada. They had 110 cows and 2 robotic milkers but they will expand to 3 robotic milkers yet this year. Their controlled flow barn sorts the cows based on their leg tag. Some go to be milked if it's time others just get moved to a feed area. This is different than the two earlier dairies that run on free flow. Their cows can go into the milking stall anytime but only get milked if its time. 

Did you know Quebec-ians speak mostly French? Yea. Language barrier. I must be a stupid America because I wasn't expecting that. Let's just say ordering dinner last night and breakfast this morning was interesting. Delicious but challenging. 

Jeep the Mac

Well guys and gals this lady farm is traveling... in April... during planting season. Call me crazy! We planned this last minute run up to northern Michigan for "Jeep the Mac". The farm is not being neglected, not to worry.  We've had a lot of rain in the last two weeks, no-till farming puts us a few days behind everyone else for fields to dry out, and all the spring spraying is complete. With cool temps in the forecast and possible rain showers we decided to just go do it!
Jeep the Mac is basically a huge gathering of Jeeps to do fun stuff together. In this case we are talking about over 600 Jeeps crossing the Mackinaw Bridge in a lovely parade, then off-roading more than 100 miles of trails on Drummond Island the next day. If you can't figure out why people think this is a super cool thing to do, don't worry, it's a Jeep thing, you wouldn't understand.
I'm a pretty savvy traveler, boasting my ability to pack for two weeks abroad, to two climates, in a carry on suitcase. I'm a packing badass, Okay? Well, not everyone is perfect. I failed today in a big way. I left home without my purse! No drivers license (nobody better rat me out to the popo), no credit cards, no cash! F*%#! I remembered to pack the blister block, the deck of cards, the wine bottle opener, and the the poo-pourri but not my damn purse?
All I can say is I'm thankful I didn't get pulled over on our 400+ mile trip and that I have awesome friends and family to cover me when I stumble in life. Not my finest moment. There. The honest truth.

Voyaguers National Park by the Numbers:

8 students

4 instructors

6 canoes

1 hotel

1 National Park

3 camp sites

3 camp site breakfasts

3 lake side lunches

3 camp site dinners

4 L of water filtered in 2.5 minutes 6 times a day

3 bald eagles

4 loons

3 giant spiders

12 squirrels or 3 squirrels 4 times

1 beautiful sunrise

1 billion stars and the Milky Way

40 miles paddling 

1 failed portage

1,117 miles in a bus hauling canoes

18 mosquito bites

4 new calluses on my hands

11 new friends 

1 adventure for a lifetime

 

The Sunrise Paddle

On the last day we all woke up at 4:30 AM to pack up camp and eat a quick oatmeal breakfast. By the time we got the canoes loaded light was starting to break. We only had a couple miles to paddle to the boat launch and got to watch the sun rise on our way there. Still tired from the long day yesterday but calm and in awe of the beauty around us. The lake was like glass, the only sound was our paddles in the water, the sunrise reflected off the lake in pink and blue muted color. One lonely loon waited for us near the boat ramp and called out while we packed up the bus. 

Our instructors kept commenting on how efficient our class was and how well we work together to make sure there was always fresh water filtering or helping each other in and out of canoes or to light the camp stove. I could not ask for a better group of people to share this amazing experience with. 

The long bus ride home included a couple of stops for lunch and New Glarus beer from Wisconsin. I was happy to have an ice cold McD's Coke! We arrived back at the College of DuPage around 7pm, unloaded the bus, hung up the tents and sleeping bags, and put the gear away. We said our good byes and got our commemorative t-shirt. Happy I did it. Adventure enriches my soul! 

 

How much further?

Another morning with an awesome breakfast for my boat buddy and me. We had oddly shaped pancakes (the "skillet" wasn't exactly flat on the bottom) with bacon. We have become quite efficient and in sync in the mornings. One is cooking the other packing up the tent or filtering water for dishes.

Our failed portage yesterday left a nice part of Voyaguers unseen so we paddled back that direction to check out the pictographs on some tall stone walls either on the lake shore or on the islands. We saw some cool rock formations but no real pictographs. My boating buddy is an experienced rock climber and showed off her skills attempting to scale the wall. She can now say she climbed a wall in Canada! This excursion added about 5 miles to our already big day. We took a few breaks and had lunch on a sandbar where we had time to go swimming a cool off. I had tuna with mayo, crackers, trail mix, and lemon cookies. One of the guys caught a nice bass but while everyone was taking pictures managed to drop it back in the lake and away it went. Boo. No fish for dinner. A long track after lunch ran us up to 15 miles for the day. To pass the time Maggie and I played games, that I mostly hated, like 20 questions. We gave book synopsis's and told stories from our lives. That distracted us from the fatigue and pain in our arms, shoulders, legs, and butts. Maggie tell me a story! We paddled into camp around 5 PM exhausted! This camp is closer to civilization and had some pretty sweet amenities, mainly a bathroom with toilet paper, walls, door, and roof. No sink, no flushing. We were also able to pack away our water filtration devices and use a well pump to get fresh water. I took a "bath" in the lake and laid on the dock in the sun to dry while the guys tried again to catch fish dinner. They failed. The camp sites were wooded and filled with mosquitos. By dinner time we all broke out the 100% Deet! Dinner tonight was creamy potato soup with bacon bits on top. Yum. Fast and easy. Once we were all cleaned up and prepped for the morning we sat around and played Rummy. Farah won after 6 or so extremely competitive hands. The mosquitos were so unbearable we all retired to our tents. Again, I slept but tossed and turned during the night. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to sleeping on a thin sleeping pad with a blow up pillow and sleeping bag. Another good day in the back country.