Saturday 19th October 2013, day 101 - Macbeth, and a nice stroll around Downtown... not

For the first time since I've been here, I went to the cinema. Not to see a conventional film, but rather a screening of National Theatre Live: Macbeth. Until last year I had no idea that such things happened, that plays, ballets, operas and museum exhibitions were filmed and broadcast live in cinemas. I would have started going to see them years ago if I'd known. Anyway, unlike Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, I didn't know Macbeth at all, not even the basic plot, and so wouldn't be able to understand of what was going on and being said, at least not in detail. However, this performance starred the fantastic Kenneth Branagh as the title character and Alex Kingston as his Lady wife - so I had to see it.

The performance - held in a deconsecrated church in Manchester - actually took place back in July, not long after I left for Canada. I was disappointed about missing it until I found a cinema here that would be screening it. It was broadcast live to UK cinemas, but that live performance was recorded and sent around the world for international audiences to see at a later date. It was really good, I enjoyed it, and while obviously I'm not an expert in Early Modern English and all of Shakespeare's nuances, I understood what was going on in general. Kenneth Branagh was of course brilliant, as was Alex Kingston (who I've only ever watched as River Song in Doctor Who, so it was great to see her in something else, in a completely different role). The cast included a few other faces I'd seen before: John Shrapnel, Jimmy Yuill... the young man playing Prince Malcolm looked familiar and I later found out it was Alexander Vlahos, aka Mordred in the last series of Merlin. Ray Fearon's performance as Macduff was particularly impressive; his voice was just so powerful.

So yeah, that was good! I'll be going to more of those events. NT Live: Corialanus is coming soon. It's starring Tom Hiddleston :) so I might go. My debit card allows me to earn points, and a certain number of points means a free cinema ticket!

The annoying thing about my Canadian debit card, though, is that it's a bank debit card, not a Visa or MasterCard, so not everywhere accepts it. I haven't been able to use it for the few things I've tried to pay for online, including my phone bill - so I decided to go to the phone shop to do so after the cinema. (That bill is more than annoying too: I never send a text or make a call so thirty dollars every month is currently a completely unnecessary expense. It's kind of essential for job-hunting, though, and hopefully I'll use it more when I make friends, but I do wish they had pay-as-you-go here.)

I thought the phone shop was on an intersection on Granville Street. I didn't know which exact intersection, but Granville was only a few blocks away from the cinema so I thought I'd easily be able to find it. It wouldn't take long and I could go back to the house and have lunch.

Nope.

The red line on the map below is my accidental, hour-long route from the cinema to the phone shop.
The blue line is the route I should have taken, a journey of ten minutes.

Hahaha!

I laugh about it now, but it was frustrating at the time. I didn't want to hang around Downtown. I made it there eventually, though. I don't imagine I'll be forgetting that intersection again.

Monday 14th October 2013, day 96 - A Canadian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is exactly that: giving thanks. It's a time for everyone for reflect upon and be thankful for all that they have been blessed with over the past year, in particular the harvest. Of course, this meaning has been lost a little in modern commercialism, but it's still a time for food and family.

Americans commonly trace the origins of the festival to a celebration held in 1621 by the settlers of the Plymouth Colony, in what is now Massachusetts, after their first harvest in the New World. Arriving on the Mayflower in December 1620, the group who would come to be known as the Pilgrims faced a hard winter in a strange land, and only fifty-three of the original 102 passengers survived to see the following autumn. The English colonists invited ninety-one members of the local Wampanoag tribe to celebrate the bountiful harvest with them, and the feast lasted for three days.

Before I came here, I didn't realise that Canada, too, celebrated Thanksgiving. It's not that I thought they didn't; rather that "Thanksgiving" is so American, it just never occurred to me that Canada might do too. But with the two countries sharing a border it's hardly surprising. It's celebrated in pretty much the same way and for the same reasons as in the USA, but is held about six weeks earlier on the second Monday in October.

Me and Maxi were lucky enough to be invited back to Lockwood Farm to celebrate it over the weekend with James and Cammy, their whole extended family, and the two WWOOFers Ryoko and Haruka. What better place to spend a harvest festival than on a farm?

Saturday was a lazy, restful day in which nobody did much, but the evening was great fun. James and Cammy went out, so Maxi, Ryoko, Haruka and I had the house to ourselves. We had pizza for dinner, made from scratch. After I found a yeast-free dough recipe online, Maxi made the base, I chopped vegetables for the topping, Ryoko made cookies and a salad, and Haruka laid the table and took photos =] No yeast meant we didn't have to leave the dough to rise, so it was incredibly quick and simple to make: just flour, baking powder, salt, water and oil, mixed until a smooth ball can be formed and rolled out. While of course a little denser than most pizza bases, it wasn't very much so and tasted great. We topped it with tomato puree/paste, cheese, onions, rocket, peppers, courgette, tuna and peanuts. It tasted so good! We ate the salad while impatiently waiting for the second pizza to finish cooking. Before sitting down to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we finished off with some of Ryoko's cookies, and marshmallows toasted over candle flames :)

Late on Sunday morning the four of us left on a walk to Cobble Hill Mountain, taking Enzo with us - much to his delight. The hour-long walk through the forest to the top was lovely. Apart from our feet rustling the dry leaves strewn across the trails, and the odd breeze sending more floating down in whispering showers, it was still and quiet. The fronds of bracken gleamed silver and the maple trees were resplendent in colours that "red", "yellow" and "orange" are too boring for. There were sticks aplenty to throw for Enzo, though after bounding off after them he rather enjoyed breaking them and eating the ends... We reached the top - which was a somewhat strange area of exposed mossy bedrock and shortish trees that gave the place a feel of an abandoned orchard - and rested awhile in the warm sunshine looking out at the wonderful view to the south and west.

After lunch back at the farm, we spent an hour or two peeling and chopping quince, a fruit similar to apples and pears but one that is usually not edible when raw. They have a wonderfully sweet fragrance, and two full tubs had been sitting in the kitchen for days so the room was filled with it. It wasn't the most enjoyable task - they were covered in a grey-white fluff that stuck to the fingers, and were really hard and tough to cut - but it was worth it. The quince sauce made from them was incredible!

Fifteen people sat down to the big Thanksgiving meal on Sunday evening. Two dining tables had been pushed together next door, and even then it was a squeeze to fit everyone around them - and to fit all the food on. Roast turkey, roast potatoes, stuffing, carrots, parsnips, beetroots, courgette, sweet potato, potato salad, creamed corn, cranberry sauce, quince sauce, and gravy, followed by trifle and pumpkin pie.

Of course most of it was from the farm, which was wonderful. Cammy brined the 10kg turkey overnight before smothering it in lots of butter and herbs and roasting on a low heat for several hours. The potatoes were put into the same pan so tasted amazing. Maxi had fried slices of courgette in olive oil and garlic then put them in a dish with parsley, salt and lemon juice. Ryoko and Haruka made a Japanese potato salad, which uses mashed potatoes instead of chunks. James' sister had made what sounds to probably most non-Americans incredibly odd: sweet potato with marshmallow. Thick slices of the potato baked with butter, sugar, a bit of salt, possibly one or two other things but I can't remember, and marshmallow, results in a soft, sweet, syrupy dish that was so good! Needless to say, everything was delicious and nobody went away without feeling completely stuffed.

Some of us finished off the evening by playing a domino game called 'Mexican Train'. It was fun! I play board and card games so rarely that I don't know how to play any, and can never grasp the rules by just being told, it takes me a while. This was really simple, though, and despite my having never played with dominoes before, I understood it straight away and could just enjoy the game :)

On Monday morning I saw a hummingbird. I'd never seen a hummingbird! What a lovely thing to see first thing in the morning. Wonderful :)

We spent the morning cleaning eggs. It was Thanksgiving Day itself, a public holiday, so everyone took it easy and did no non-essential farm work. The table is usually in the workshop but, because it was gloriously sunny and warm, we moved it outside. Lunch was leftovers - the food on that table had fed fifteen people twice - and after that we did not a lot. I read for a couple of hours, sat on the sofa outside on the veranda while it was still fairly warm. James and Barry continued laying tiles for the soon-to-arrive wood stove, until the former went to chop wood and Maxi asked him to show her how to do it. So all four of us WWOOFers had a lesson in splitting logs with an axe, which was great fun! :D James' nephew and Cammy had a go, too, though of course neither of them are new at it.

We had a sushi party for dinner! Ryoko and Haruka made tuna and shrimp sushi rolls, a sushi salad (all the ingredients in a bowl instead of wrapped in nori, the edible seaweed that in Wales is called laver), and tamagoyaki, an egg roll or Japanese omelette. I've only tried sushi once before, from Pret's, vegetable not fish, and it was somewhat bland on its own but unpleasant with the soy sauce. So I was a little worried that I wouldn't like it again, but everything was really nice (though I didn't have it with soy sauce). For dessert, later, James made caramelised bananas with more than a splash of brandy (the flambeing wasn't successful) and served them on cold ice-cream. Yum! He and Cammy had spent a year in Japan soon after marrying, and did some acting work as extras, so they showed us a scene from "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" in which James appears. We then watched Top Gear :D

Maxi and I would be getting up before dawn to catch the 6:45am bus to Victoria, so we said goodbye to Cammy, Ryoko and Haruka before everyone went to bed. James drove us the two minutes to the bus stop in the still-dark morning, so we said goodbye to him there when the bus arrived. It took an hour and a half to get to Victoria, and I spent the entire time gazing out the window in tranquil wonder at the beauty of the quiet world we passed, ever so gradually brightening with the pastel blush of sunrise.

We took a second bus from Victoria to the Swartz Bay ferry terminal, where we waited two hours for the 11am sailing to Tsawwassen, which - despite receiving a ferry between once and twice every hour - only has one bus every hour. The bus queue was so long that only half of it managed to fit, packed to absolute full capacity, into the vehicle. Everyone else, including Maxi and I, had to wait an hour for the next one. Thankfully the 10am sailing had been cancelled so we didn't have people from that ferry in front of us as well. It's absurd. We did manage to squeeze onto the 2pm bus, though, and arriving in Vancouver nine hours after leaving the farm Maxi and I went our separate ways, she to a hostel then onto Banff, and me back to Kitsilano.

Friday 11th October 2013, day 93 - Tofino to Cobble Hill

I'd been breakfasting on the muesli I'd purchased at the Duncan Farmers' Market, and finished the last of it with hazelnuts (from the Free Food shelf in the hostel kitchen) and the remaining jam we'd bought on Sunday. After booking our places on the 10:30am bus, we went to The Cottage Loaf (the bakery-cafe I'd been to last time) to treat ourselves to a nice breakfast. I had a veggie burrito (burritos are popular here and are often on breakfast menus), which contained scrambled eggs, onions, black beans, spinach, peppers and cheese. There were meant to be mushrooms as well but there didn't seem to be any. (I've come a long way from refusing to eat mushrooms, to being disappointed that there aren't any in something I'm eating, haha!) It was served with herbed potato chunks, salsa and sour cream and was yummy :) I also bought a slice of baklava to take away.

We took the Tofino Express to Duncan, where the coach driver for some reason couldn't drop us at the bus depot so we had to get off literally on the side of the road when he was conveniently stopped at traffic lights. We didn't know where we were or how to get to the bus depot. Neither did he; turns out it was just a few hundred yards further along the road. We got there a minute before the bus to the farm left.

James, Cammy, Barry, Ryoko and Haruka (who I hadn't met) were in the workshop when we arrived in the early evening, finishing up the market preparation, and were glad to see us again. It was nice to be back. James' mum had made cottage pie for dinner and we all ate together. I had the baklava later on - which was delicious! Well, I had half of the slice: I asked everyone if they wanted to try some, and everybody did. Haha. I need to learn to make baklava. It's too yummy. Anway, there was no room for me in the spare room I'd stayed in before, so James' parents kindly let me stay in their spare room for the few days I would be there.

Thursday 10th October 2013, day 91 - Last full day in Tofino

I was mystified in the morning when I couldn't find my key to the dorm room. I'd gone out to the toilet during the night and remembered putting the key on top of my book when I got back. I looked everywhere, twice, and couldn't find it. Only when Adele returned from breakfast and asked what I was looking for did I find out: she'd accidentally picked it up with her purse or something, which she'd unknowingly put on top of it earlier. She was very apologetic, but I didn't mind, I hadn't lost it completely!

Maxi left at 11:15am to go surfing and, because she really wanted to see Long Beach and it was our last day, I spent a while trying to find out how we might be able to do so that afternoon. There are buses that go from Tofino to Long Beach - but only in the summer. To walk there would take three hours, one way, along the highway, so nobody does that. Cycling would also be along the highway and bikes rented for the 'day' have to be returned by 4pm. Maxi wouldn't be back until mid-afternoon so, unless we were willing to hitch-hike (which we weren't), we would not be able to go, which was a shame.

For lunch I bought a portion of soup at the supermarket and took it to a park, and sat in the sun gazing at the amazing view for an hour and a half and watching the seaplanes taking off. The cheese-and-broccoli soup had smelled nice and was two dollars cheaper than the Thai coconut chicken but, though I didn't dislike it, I'd have definitely preferred the other. I met Maxi on the way back to the hostel, and after she'd rid her hair of sea salt we ended up going to the park I'd left not an hour before and sitting there awhile. She suggested we have Toast Hawaii for dinner, so we went to the supermarket and bought some ham, those rubbish plastic-like cheese slices and tinned pineapple.

We still had pasta, tomato sauce, courgette and pepper to use up so we cooked all that, and put it into two containers to take for lunch on the bus the next day, before making dinner. The ham goes on top of the bread, and a ring of pineapple on top of that, and finally the cheese; it was really good, though towards the end we found that one slice of cheese, not two, would have sufficed. I wanted nothing except a glass of orange juice - something really healthy-feeling - after eating that. We had the remaining pineapple rings and warmed the rest of the cookies we'd bought the day before, for dessert.

Wednesday 9th October 2013, day 90 - Bear-watching boat trip

Ursus americanus vancouveri - Vancouver Island Black Bears - venture out at low tide onto the rocky beaches to forage for food. Thus bear-watching trips are best done at low tide, and on this particular day was scheduled for 9:30am; so Maxi and I said bye to Stephanie and Amy, who were leaving, and walked ten minutes to the dock.

The sun was still shining so the beautiful landscape - islands, mountains and unending rainforest - was visible clearly from the open top deck of the boat, as we made our way out from the harbour and up past the mud flats. We saw bald eagles, seals and glimpsed the dorsal fins of shy harbour porpoises, but it took a long time before we saw a bear: we had travelled pretty much as far as we could do with the time available. I would have been so disappointed if we'd seen none at all, but happily we saw two! We didn't get too close, the first one we saw was a few hundred metres away, but we were able to get about one hundred metres away from the second bear - still on the boat, of course. I'd completely forgotten to bring my little binoculars on the trip but the crew passed round theirs so everyone could have a closer look.

When back at the hostel for lunch we met our new dorm-roommate Adele, from Norfolk, then went back to the activity-booking centre. Maxi had booked to go kayaking the next day, but they need a minimum number of people to go and there wasn't that number so it would be cancelled. So she decided to go surfing instead, and we went to book that. Somewhat disappointed by the lack of bears we'd seen, she then suggested buying treats - crisps, cookies - at the supermarket and spending the rest of the afternoon watching a DVD in the hostel's TV room. "The Assassination of a High School President" is a bizarre film that we both soon wished we'd passed over in favour of The Wedding Crashers, but we watched all of it anyway and had chicken jambalaya for dinner.

...
I saw a bear! A real wild bear! Hehe! :D Magnificent.

Tuesday 8th October 2013, day 89 - Surfing

The hostel is right on the waterfront, and our room overlooked the water. Happily for a village on which it rains for two-thirds of the year, the day had dawned not only dry but clear and sunny - so when we opened the blinds on Tuesday morning, we were somewhat surprised to find ourselves looking at a mountain on the island opposite. We could see all of the land, stretching to distant mountains, that the day before we had no idea was there.

Maxi had the hot springs trip booked for today and our two roommates Stephanie and Amy were going surfing at 11:30. I planned to go surfing, too, but hadn't yet booked anything: the companies I'd been to the day before required people to get themselves to the beach. Stephanie and Amy told me they'd booked with a company that would take them to the beach, and after Maxi left I walked down to that particular surf centre and book myself a lesson. There was still space on the 11:30 one for that morning so I went for that, and we three were the only people. For the two hours in the water we wore wetsuits and water shoes, so it wasn't as cold as I was expecting.

I'd done a short surfing course in Year 10 at school, for an hour or two after school once a week for five weeks, in Bournemouth - but with nothing between it and Japan, Tofino is the surfing capital of Canada, so of course the waves here were much bigger and it was a little daunting. But I managed to get to my feet! I didn't stand upright, only a low half-crouch, but I was still pleased! We all felt the cold after getting out of the water, my toes were numb and I took a long time to warm up.

I bought chips for lunch on the way back to the hostel, where I read and wrote for a few hours before Maxi returned. We'd only used half of the seafood mix, courgette and pepper the night before in the jambalaya, so finished them in a tasty pasta dish with some more of the tomato sauce we'd bought on Sunday.

Monday 7th October 2013, day 88 - Tonquin Park

After a lie-in and breakfast Maxi and I went to one of the numerous activity centres, where we booked what we wanted to do over the next few days. It was a shop too, selling lots of things from and to do with the area, and I decided to buy a beautiful bracelet with wolf charms and little blue-black glittering stone spheres, and a simple string necklace with a wooden black bear pendant. After lunch we took a walk to Tonquin Park, where there's a walking trail through the rainforest and access to a beach, which was really nice. It was cloudy but dry, and the sun broke through now and again.

While in the supermarket buying lunch and dinner supplies, Maxi suggested rice and fish for that evening, so when we came across a box of jambalaya-spiced rice, I suggested we buy that, a couple of vegetables and some seafood to add to it. She agreed and we had an easy, filling and very very tasty meal! After dinner we went to Jack's, the pub at the other end of the village where I'd been during the Moose trip. We arrived just as open-mic night was starting, and it gradually got busier. The musicians were all good, and their instruments and styles varied. One guy - to my utter, absolute and sheer delight - went up with a bodhran. For those who don't know what that is, it's an Irish type of handheld drum. It's pronounced "bow-rawn" and I sat enthralled.

Sunday 6th October 2013, day 87 - Vancouver to Tofino for the second time

I was due to catch the 12:50 ferry from Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver, so before I left the house I made a frittata to use up eggs and vegetables in the fridge and to take for lunch. The clear sunshine meant that, on the ferry, the glaciated cone of Mount Baker - an active volcano 121 miles south-east in Washington State - rose up behind Vancouver like a ghost. On days of exceptional clarity, the even more distant Mount Rainier can be seen from Victoria. Perhaps it was, there were more snow-topped mountains in the distance.

(The water wasn't that dark. I reduced the brightness and increased the contrast to make the mountain more clearly visible - of course the camera couldn't capture it as clearly as I saw it.)

I boarded the Tofino Express at Departure Bay in Nanaimo, Maxi got on five minutes later at the bus depot and we spent the next hour and a half travelling west towards Port Alberni. It was the same route the Moose bus had taken, but looked much different in the sunshine - that is, everything was visible, not swathed in clouds and rain. We passed Coombs Old Country Market, Campbell Lake, Sproat Lake, Little Qualicum Falls, Wally Creek and MacMillan Provincial Park. Cathedral Grove had looked like something out of a Tolkien story enough in the drizzle that accompanied my first visit there, but this time - with the low sun, the occasional maple providing a splash of gold, and the silvery ferns - it was utterly enchanting. This was just from the road, too, not in among the towering trees themselves.

During the forty-five minute break at Port Alberni, storm clouds were visible in the direction we were headed, and after reboarding the bus we soon hit rain and everything was as I remembered it. We arrived in Tofino at 7pm - the driver kindly dropped us off at the hostel door - and after putting our bags in our room we hurried to the supermarket before it closed at 8, to buy some pasta and a jar of sauce for a quick and simple (but tasty) dinner.

Our two dorm-roommates were from - of all places - Southampton.

Sunday 6th October 2013, day 87 - A week back in Vancouver between trips

I left the farm on Monday 1st and took the ferry back to Tsawwassen. The sky over Vancouver was dark with storm clouds by the time it docked, but the sun shone from the west onto the early-autumn trees creating a spectacular contrast I happily gazed out at through the bus windows. Apart from the clouds and the trees, though, I didn't like the journey between the ferry terminal and the house; it felt like being in London when I didn't want to be.

After three weeks on a farm, returning to a major city, via areas I haven't been before, after sunset, was rather disorienting. Well, I say "rather"... It felt exceedingly strange being back in Vancouver, and back in the house, on Monday night and Tuesday.

Two of my housemates, Anna and Hannes, a German couple who had moved in while I was in the Rockies, had asked if they could use my quiet bedroom at the top of the house as a work space while I was away, to which I readily agreed (their room was next to the busy kitchen so they were repeatedly disturbed, though they've now moved into the room opposite mine since the girl who was in it left). They sent me a long email when I was on the farm, asking how it was going and letting me know what was happening at the house, which was a pleasant surprise, and I got back to find a bar of chocolate on my pillow with a photo of most of the housemates, which had been taken at a house meeting the week before I went to the farm :)

The housemates I did see on Monday evening were very friendly and welcomed me back, asking how my time on the farm had been, what I'd done there, if I'd been elsewhere on the Island, etc. Arriving at dinnertime, I'd planned to have pasta with butter for dinner - having not much more than those two things - but Hannes kindly offered me some of the large amount of bolognese sauce he was cooking, and even heated up a slice of apple strudel for afterwards.

It was dark when I arrived back at the house, so when on Tuesday morning I opened the curtain to see the gorgeous blazing shades of red and gold on the deciduous tree out front, bright in the sunlight against the clear blue sky, I was thoroughly happy. (Actually, the curtain too had been a surprise, a new addition that Anna had thoughtfully put up while I was away: the skylight has a blind but the window next to my bed had nothing and I'd been using a blanket to cover it at night.) I spent a couple of days working on the blog, sitting in my room at the top of the house, listening to the rain on the roof, and glancing every now and then at that tree. Now, when I'm finishing this and posting it two weeks later, all the leaves are gone.

On Tuesday I went shopping. Knowing I would be away for two or three or maybe even four weeks, I'd used up all the perishable food I had before going to the farm, and finished most other store-cupboard basics. (Hence the pasta and butter.) I needed to restock. Fruit, veg, bread, eggs, milk, meat, cheese, pesto, tinned tomatoes and tuna... pretty much everything except peanut butter and pancake mix. I also bought some sardines, and had sardines on toast for lunch :)

I could tell from just a single glance at the apples in the grocery store that they were proper, seasonal, local ones. They were gorgeous. I love seasonal produce. For once they were that beautiful deep red colour, crisp and sweet. I even bought some pears, which I don't usually do. Kale and chard, which I hadn't seen in there before but of course I'd been handling at the farm, had also suddenly made an appearance.

Autumn! Yay!

October. Wow.

Happily, a slow cooker has been found and cleaned. There's not enough room in the freezer to make lots, but I'll be able to make stews! Hurrah. I've been wanting to use the barley on the 'Help Yourself' shelf in the kitchen for a long time.

On Thursday, for the first time ever, I bought clothes from a charity shop. I needed to buy some more warm clothes, but clothes shops here are of such great number and variety that I didn't know where to start. So I started at the charity shop opposite the supermarket, and came away feeling very pleased! I'd managed to buy several items for the same amount of money that would buy me two or three things in H&M, thus eliminating my need to go to said international big name shop. I am a convert, I will use charity shops more often. There were, however, two things I needed to get which weren't available in there, and I had to spend a lot of money on those - but they're much better quality than I've had before now and should last longer, so should be worth it.

I've spent some time considering whether to spend the winter in Vancouver or Victoria. Vancouver is very expensive (well, it is in Kitsilano, much cheaper in other areas further from Downtown and the beaches). The Downtown area is huge and daunting and I don't like it much. Victoria's Downtown is lovely, and much easier to navigate. Rent there is also cheaper.

On the farm and until I got back to the house in Vancouver, I was leaning towards choosing to move to Victoria. I know I would enjoy it there. However I really enjoyed being back at the house, with my housemates.

It was quite unsettled the week I was back: people had moved out, people were moving in, people were moving into different rooms, there was maintenance, redecorating and a thorough clear-out taking place. That's calmed down now, but there are still ten people in this house, which means it is hectic at times. Especially in the evening when five people want to make dinner at the same time, and there's only three working hobs, the oven and the microwave available. But I quite like it, they're nice people, there's a nice vibe to the place. I know I've been away on trips for half the time I've been here, but I'm only just starting to get to know them, get on well with them, and think that maybe if I stayed here long enough that proper friendships could be formed. If I went to Victoria I'd have to start from scratch.

I don't care much for Downtown Vancouver at the moment, but there's so much in Kitsilano that I wouldn't necessarily need to venture there often. The house is between two major retail streets, both with loads and loads of different types of shops and restaurants and cafes. I need to take time to walk around and explore and actually take notice. Next to the charity shop, there is a second-hand bookshop. Until Thursday, despite the fact that it's opposite the supermarket and I've walked past it a few times to the bank, I'd never realised it existed. There are bound to be more. There's an independent family-owned organic bakery that makes fruit pies by hand in the back of the store. There are probably antique shops. There are a few quirky stores selling crystals and incense and Buddha statues. I could try to find a job in any one of those sorts of places.

So I've decided to stay in Vancouver for the winter, and give the big city a chance.

Lastly... I'm working on a blog post just about food, and I'm not sure whether to include it in this Canada blog - it's related to my time on the farm - or start a new blog altogether, start a food blog. I don't know what I'd write about most of the time, or how often I'd post, but food is one of my passions. Also I find I quite enjoy writing, though it takes me a heck of a long time. Anyway, I'll decide within the next few days, I think.

Lockwood Farm - Week Three

Monday 23rd, day 75
We cleaned tubs and eggs for three and a half hours and had lunch slightly earlier than usual. For myself I made scrambled eggs with tomatoes, herbs and cheese - which was very tasty and I'll make it more often. In the afternoon we removed dead tomato plants and planted broccoli. Everyone had dinner next door with James' parents then, while Maxi filled the house with the smell of baking yoghurt bread, I sorted photos for couple of hours. Of course everyone tried a slice, fresh and warm with butter and honey :) We finished off the evening with a card game called Dutch Blitz, during which James produced shot glasses of milk with amaretto; the first sip was nice, but after that I found it too strong for my liking.

Tuesday 24th, day 76
In the morning I put on full waterproofs, and harvested/washed/bagged rocket and bunched spinach until elevenses. Everyone else warmed up with mugs of steaming tea, which (much to their surprise) I don't like - but happily they had some Ribena so I did have a hot drink. I harvested and washed kale and bagged salad mix until lunch, for which I reheated some leftover shrimp korma and had a slice of Maxi's bread. The weather was still rubbish so we were given tasks to do in the workshop: for an hour and a half we cleaned eggs, then started to pot stevia plant cuttings but Cammy would be late back so I went to start dinner. It didn't take long to prepare so I sorted photos while it was cooking. James had been out and picked two full crates of apples somewhere so made apple pie for dessert: yum!

Wednesday 25th, day 77
Maxi wanted to go to the Royal BC Museum, so we went into Victoria with James and spent three hours in there; two of those were on one floor alone. For lunch we headed to a fish-and-chip shack on the waterfront, but the queue was too long so we continued another couple of minutes to the pizza place, got a take-away slice each (and a chocolate-cornflake-marshmallow-peanut butter square to share) and sat in the sunshine overlooking the Inner Harbour. I bought some honey from one of the market stall holders and James told us to check out the olive oil shop opposite while he packed up. On the way back we stopped at Goldstream for a walk along the river. We were slightly early for the salmon run, which is probably happening now and would be quite a sight, but it was a pretty place and a nice walk. Some of the market stallholders exchange leftover produce with each other at the end of the day, so we had some gorgeous fresh corn on the cob for dinner, barbecued with potatoes, shrimp and salad. After that we watched "The Matrix", an excellent film which I'd never seen before.

Thursday 26th, day 78
This morning we were tasked with removing selected weeds from where the tomato plants had been. It was frustrating and I disliked that as much as I did weeding at home. I'd have preferred to remove all the weeds, leaving a clear patch behind me, instead of just having to find certain ones in among a tangled profusion of others. After elevenses James asked for help cleaning eggs - a chef he supplies had called asking to pick up fifteen dozen early afternoon - so while Maxi and Ryoko continued weeding in the sunshine I did that. Cammy made egg mayo to have with the newly-arrived bread rolls for lunch, and I spent the last couple of hours helping to finish weeding the tomato patch. We had corn on the cob for dinner again, this time just boiled and buttered, with runner beans, salad and barbecued chicken wings. Simple things can taste so good :)

Friday 27th, day 79
Thursday was the last day I wrote anything down, and the only thing I remember harvesting was basil. We had eggy bread for lunch, with blackberries, jam and syrup, and after finishing for the day went to Kinsol Trestle, a wooden railway bridge from the 1920's that's recently undergone an expensive restoration. It was really quiet and foggy, which gave quite an atmospheric feeling to the place, and the bridge was impressive. We didn't get back until nearly 8pm, but had a nice meal and apple pie from James' mum waiting for us and, after gladly tucking into those, watched the second Matrix film.

Saturday 28th, day 79
Ryoko, Maxi and I spent some of the day helping Cammy prepare for the baby shower she was holding for her friend that evening. I made dinner, a sort of stew of sausages, beans and vegetables. The sausages Cammy had provided unknowingly had chilli in them and were very spicy, so the flavour of the stew was a bit lost, but it was warming comfort food after a rainy day. The guests arrived shortly afterwards and we were welcome to join the party if we wanted to, but when James' plans to go elsewhere fell through he suggested taking the DVD player, some popcorn and blankets next door to watch the third and final Matrix film, to which we readily agreed!

Sunday 29th, day 80
The weather worsened as a storm arrived so Cammy and James decided it'd be better for me to get the ferry back the following day, and I spent the day mostly reading. James made eggs Benedict for brunch - it was intended as a late breakfast but was nearly noon by the time we ate. Poached eggs over bacon on a buttered English muffin, covered in Hollandaise sauce: I've never had it, and it was really nice! We had pasta for dinner, with vegetables and pesto made of rocket instead of basil, then filled jugs and pans full of water in case of a powercut - their water comes from a well on the property but the pump is electrically-powered, so if there's no power there's no water either. The last couple of hours before bed was spent playing Cluedo.

Lockwood Farm - Week Two

Monday 16th, day 68

This was the day I was ill, and stayed in bed for most of it. I first began to feel not quite right when cleaning eggs so thought it was just the smell, but went to sit outside when I started feeling shaky and lightheaded. It soon passed, though, and I rejoined them. Lunch, however, was lasagne, and I don't know why I had even the single mouthful I did manage before being forced to hurriedly excuse myself. Needless to say I didn't join them for dinner, but did for a game of Monopoly and kept down a slice of watermelon. 

Tuesday 17th, day 69

I'd been fine overnight so, after having just some plain porridge for breakfast, started harvesting rhubarb. Washing and bunching that was followed by doing the same for kale, bagging runner beans - which reminded me of Grandad - and harvesting/washing rocket and mizuna to go in the salad mix. After cheese on toast and a fried egg for lunch, I finished off said mix by picking edible flowers and then bagging it all up with Maxi. I made dinner, pasta with chicken in spiced tomato sauce, and rhubarb crumble and popcorn were made before we watched "Now You See Me", which is a great film!

Wednesday 18th, day 70

I went into Victoria with James and helped set up the market stall, but then had four hours to do what I liked before returning when the market finished at 3pm. I spent an hour and a half in a bookshop, and bought a thick Lonely Planet comprehensive guide to Canada, before finding my way to and having lunch at the pizza place I'd been to on the Moose trip. We stopped at a viewpoint on the way back, and I helped unload the trailer back at the farm before having Thai green curry for dinner.

Thursday 19th, day 71

After cleaning tubs, the remainder of the day was spent weeding carrots. We finished early, though, when Cammy came back with Ryoko and James decided we'd go to the old quarry while the weather was still nice. The old quarry is now a lake and, despite the fact that it's apparently private property, has been a very popular swimming spot with the locals for years. The weather was cooler and cloudier than the previous week, but not so much that we didn't go swimming.

Friday 20th, day 72

With five people at it, most of the harvesting and market prep was done in a few hours; so Maxi and I weeded leeks for a while before lunch (Ryoko continued with James and Barry) and resumed afterwards for an hour or so. We finished just as it was beginning to rain and joined Barry cleaning eggs. Dinner was barbecued lamb-and-aubergine kebabs with potatoes, salad and Maxi's homemade mayo. She made dessert, too: a kind of bread and butter pudding without the butter, with apples and the custard on the side... we curdled the custard, but it tasted good.

Saturday 21st, day 73

James and his brother-in-law had fixed the internet connection the previous evening so, when he and Cammy left for the Duncan market in the morning, I took the opportunity to catch up with friends and family. Maxi did the same but Ryoko took a bike and explored despite the rain. Said precipitation stopped around 4pm so we went for a walk and found the Cobble Hill Mountain hiking trails, but didn't follow them. Returning about 5:30/6pm we joined Ryoko talking to James' nine-year-old nephew, who was up a tree sawing off a branch to make slingshots. He ended up making one for each of us. Dinner was eggy bread and I fried apple slices to go with mine: yum :) James had arranged to go and play video games with his brother-in-law for the evening so Maxi, Ryoko and I watched "I Capture the Castle" (a British period drama which I thoroughly enjoyed), then helped Cammy finish making another batch of plum jam and cleared up before bed.

Sunday 22nd, day 74

The morning was lazy, I worked on the blog and looked at Cammy's recipe books. Ryoko and I went with her for the short drive to the pretty little village of Cowichan Bay to trade for shrimp, then spent two hours shelling 10lbs of them. Haha. A new skill, much easier than cutting up a chicken. Of course we used some for dinner in a shrimp korma, which was followed by bread and butter pudding with apple.

Lockwood Farm - Week One

Sunday 8th, day 60

It took about an hour and a half (and two transfers from bus to Skytrain to bus) to reach the ferry terminal at Tsawwassen, a little over thirty kilometres south of Vancouver in the agricultural flatlands of Delta. Apparently it's the biggest ferry terminal in North America. The bus became surrounded by fog very suddenly as it neared the three-kilometre-long causeway, that juts out into the Strait of Georgia and leads to the terminal - but because the rest of the sky was for the most part clear, and the road is flanked on both sides by water, it created a wonderful glowing whiteness that I happily marvelled at. It cleared just as suddenly about five or ten minutes after the ferry left the dock at 3:15pm, and the straight line of cloud was visible sitting on the water behind us as we emerged into sunshine. I arrived two hours later at Duke Point, Nanaimo, where Cammy met me, and we took the scenic route back to the farm, where James had a simple dinner ready for us, of carrotts, beans, corn and little Ukranian potato-filled pastries called perogies. After clearing up, we watched Amelie (I'd never seen it... it's good, but strange) and had some homemade blackberry ice-cream.

Monday 9th, day 61

We met for breakfast at 8am, then James gave me a tour of the farm and introduced me to his dad before we started the Monday tasks. Cleaning eggs, for the most part by myself, took until around 4pm so I helped Cammy with dinner after that. It was Thai shrimp soup, from a packet mix they bought from one of their market friends, and we ate outside with James' parents. It was so delicious!

Tuesday 10th, day 62

The morning was spent harvesting, washing and bunching radishes. Lunch was salad with tuna, banana, peanuts and cheese, which sounds odd but was really good, and after that I sorted and bagged basil then salad leaves. We ate barbecued steak with potatoes and salad for dinner, outside again with James' parents and nephew, and after cleaning up watched "Oz the Great and Powerful".

Wednesday 11th, day 63

I weeded coriander then rocket for a couple of hours before leaving with Cammy for Duncan, a town about ten minutes north, where we picked plums, pears and apples in the garden of the house they rent out. Dinner was scrambled eggs with tomato and basil, made by me, followed by leftover Thai soup. After clearing up, Cammy and I made jam with the profusion of plums we'd harvested, and didn't finish 'til 11pm.

Thursday 12th, day 64

Planting seedlings into the ground was today's task. It was quite nice, simple, but uncomfortable: like weeding, it involves a lot of leaning or crouching down. Thursday is bread pick-up day so there were some cinnamon scones which went amazingly with the plum jam. For lunch we had freshly-made egg mayonnaise sandwiches and a cold fruit smoothie. Cammy's extended family came over for dinner, which was chicken roasted with rosemary potatoes, accompanied by salad and extra sides brought by the guests. One of them had bought a couple of rhubarb-and-strawberry pies at a bakery in the town of Ladysmith, for dessert. Oh they were ever so yummy! After cleaning up and everyone had left, we went out to the workshop to process some of the chickens that had been sent to the abattoir on Tuesday. They'd been plucked before being returned to the farm, so were as you see them in shops, ready to roast. James and Cammy briefly showed me how to cut it up and remove each part (thighs, breast, wing, legs) but it did take me over an hour and a half to do just one, haha!

Friday 13th, day 65

An hour and a half of cleaning eggs preceded the harvesting, washing and bunching of radishes until lunch. I spent the afternoon finishing the radishes, bunching kale and chard, and picking edible flowers for the salad mix. James' mum cooked dinner so we ate next door, before finishing market prep until about 9pm.

Saturday 14th, day 66

I went into Duncan with Cammy and, while she helped James' dad on the market stall, took the opportunity to go to the supermarket and buy some cold-weather tops (there isn't a clothing section in Safeway and there are so many clothes shops in Vancouver I don't know where to start). For lunch I bought some kushari from one of the market vendors; it's an Egyptian dish of rice, pasta and lentils covered in a spiced tomato sauce and topped with crispy fried onions and a garlic-cumin dressing. It was amazing! I've already looked online for a recipe, but I should have asked them what was in the sauce. I bought muesli and an oat-seed-fruit-choc cookie from the bakers' stall next to the Lockwood one. James returned from Victoria in the evening with Maxi, and we had a late but tasty dinner of pasta with pesto, leftover chicken, tomatoes and parsley, followed by rhubarb-and-strawberry pie. Then she and I had our 'initiation': balancing eggs on the table. I managed to get only one standing upright, but Maxi had ten or eleven!

Sunday 15th, day 67
The family went to church in the morning, so Maxi and I read for a few hours before I gave her a short tour of the farm and we played with Enzo for a while before they got back around lunchtime. Reading occupied the afternoon as well until dinner, which was pancakes with cream, raspberries and syrup - they make a point of having breakfast for dinner sometimes, because they don't have time in the mornings to make nice things like that. We watched Stardust before bed.

Overview of first WWOOFing experience

After three weeks spent on a farm on Vancouver Island I'm now back in the city, contemplating what I'm going to do next. For those who are interested in the day-to-day activities and variations thereof, I will write three more blog posts about my time on the farm, one for each week with a paragraph for each day; but this post I've written as a more general (though long) summary.

Lockwood Farm is located in Cobble Hill, about forty minutes north of Victoria, in the agricultural Cowichan Valley. My WWOOF hosts were James and Cammy, a couple in their late twenties with two kids aged four months and twenty-one months. Enzo the four-year-old chocolate Labrador completed the household. The Lockwood family has been farming for centuries, but mostly horticulturally; when James started, only a few years ago, he decided to take the tradition in a new direction, by growing edibles and having flocks of chicken and turkey.

There are three houses on the something like eight-acre property (which is on the site of an old school): James' parents live next door, and his sister with her family next to them. Originally from Yorkshire, they emigrated to Canada twenty-two years ago and James' parents still have no trace of a Canadian accent - though they use North American words like zucchini (courgette), arugula (rocket) and cilantro (coriander), which was strange to hear. His father Barry co-owns and helps manage the business.

For the first week I was the only WWOOFer, but German girl Maxi arrived on the first Saturday, and Japanese girl Ryoko the following Thursday. The variety of tasks wasn't large, but there were enough that we didn't do the same thing two days in a row. Cleaning eggs, harvesting and preparing for market, weeding and planting were what we did most.

Mondays and Thursdays were 'farm days'. Mornings began in the workshop (the old school gym, complete with paintings on the ceiling) with cleaning tubs that had been used to take produce to market the previous day. After the table had been cleared of those, we'd sit down to clean eggs (and weigh and sort them into medium or large cartons), which would take until about lunchtime. Afternoon tasks varied, but on Thursdays was usually weeding. On these days a sign advertising eggs was put on the roadside, so now and then someone would drive up to purchase a dozen or three.

I spent most of my second Monday there in bed, with a bucket on the floor beside me. Unfortunately and inexplicably I was unwell, which I haven't been in several years: the worst I get is a cold. Thankfully it was just a one-day thing, and everybody else was fine - although both Ryoko and Maxi have since suffered the same. James did too, on the day I left, but only from eating too many meringues and caramel cookies the evening before.

Weeding wasn't as hateful as I was expecting it to be: at home I used to loathe it, though was pleased that the garden looked tidy when I'd finished. Here it wasn't so bad. Of course it was still incredibly uncomfortable, which is never pleasant, and my neck and shoulders ached the next day, but weeding carrots and leeks was quite satisfying. It probably helped that the soil wasn't hard-packed and stony like at home.

Each Thursday Cammy picks up from the supermarket huge sacks full of bread about to exceed its sell-by date. It would all go to the food bank, but the people who use it are ridiculously picky and want sliced white only. So the Lockwoods get free bread, and lots of it. Some things like scones go mouldy within a day or two but there's always more than enough to last everyone the entire week. Everything left the following Thursday is fed to the chickens.

Tuesdays and Fridays were harvest days in preparation for market, so we worked until all the jobs were done. On Tuesdays we had to harvest not just for the market but also for the CSA boxes - Community Supported Agriculture members pay to receive a box of produce each week. After harvesting whichever crop, we'd wash them, picking out any bad or bug-eaten ones, then bunch or bag them.

Wednesdays and Saturdays were market days, which meant it was relaxed and easy on the farm and we could take the day off if we wanted to, and everyone had Sundays off.

The weather for the first week and a half was warm and sunny, and I got a bit tanned. We ate outside as much as possible, though the wasps were unwelcome company. The second half of week two was slightly cooler and cloudier, but with the autumn equinox arrived the autumnal weather, and week three was wet and chilly.

Meals were eaten together, which was nice. Breakfast was porridge and toast. Lunch varied, but usually had something to do with eggs or bread or cheese, or leftovers. Dinners were good; we ate well with as much as possible sourced from the farm or elsewhere locally.

It wasn't just things directly related to the day-to-day running of the farm that I was able to do. I had my first try at cutting up a whole chicken into the separate meat parts: breasts, thighs, wings and legs. I helped with shelling however many individual shrimp it takes to make up ten pounds in weight. Preserving-wise, I helped make jam with the profusion of plums Cammy and I harvested. We dried apples and herbs, and made pesto to freeze. The amount of rhubarb that wasn't quite good enough for market but still perfectly usable, was enough to make two crumbles with. Their pantry had jars and jars full of cherries and peaches, jams and jellies. I loved it.

Even though I've had only one fairly short experience of working on only one type of farm, I don't think I could be a farmer, or do WWOOFing during the winter (at least at this latitude). With full waterproofs on, working outside in the rain wasn't too bad - but it was only once or twice for a short while in the mild early autumn, and in worse rain and colder months I'd undoubtedly have more of a dislike for it. Also farming is a business; I have no interest in business and little tolerance for The Customer. It's a great way of life, but as with anything you have to be passionate enough to commit to it despite the things that mean it's not so nice sometimes.

However, I would definitely love to be able to grow my own fruit and vegetables, and perhaps keep chickens and bees. That hasn't changed, though I have a lot to learn. :)

So, to finish up: I enjoyed my three weeks as a WWOOFer on Lockwood Farm. While the daily tasks can't be described as fun or exciting, they certainly weren't dull or horrible, and there were definitely some fun times. Not for a moment did I wish I hadn't gone. I learned some new things, made some new friends and I'm so glad I did it. It was my first experience doing something like that and won't be my last.