Lily Inspiration: Locavores on Bikes!

Anyone with whom I have even a passing acquaintance can tell you that I like food. In fact, I like food a lot--especially locally grown, fresh, seasonal, Michael Pollan-approved kinds of food. In true locavore foodie spirit, Scott, our dear friend Aimée (who we sucker into working at the Vancouver shop every once in a while), and I decided to buy tickets for the Slow Food Vancouver cycle tour of Agassiz last Saturday. What an adventure! The annual tour is a self-guided visit to all sorts of interesting farms and food producers where you can eat, buy local products, and learn all sorts of fabulous things about good stuff to, well, eat. ...And, um, did I mention the eating?

This shot was taken at the first stop on our tour: The Farm House Natural Cheeses. Not only did they have incredibly delicious cheeses, but the world's friendliest donkey and insanely cute goats (see below!).

Riding through the orchard at Canadian Hazelnut was definitely a high point of the tour. The photo doesn't quite convey the overwhelming "enchanted forest" effect the dappled sun had.

Whilst checking out the UBC Dairy Education and Research Centre, we were required to "suit up" with these amazingly fashionable plastic booties in order to avoid tracking pathogens near newborn calves. They were a little silly and sweaty, but they allowed us to get up close and personal with....

...Superhumanly cute baby cows! We named this one Li'l Licky. You can guess why.

A little later in the day we stopped to gobble down homemade pies at Blackberry Lane B&B. Sitting in the grass, slurping down lemonade and pie while looking out over a paddock of happy little lambs was pretty idyllic. One recurring topic of discussion that afternoon was how incredibly cute farm animals are up close and in person....

Another major topic was how ridiculously beautiful Agassiz is.

This is, without a doubt, the best looking corn field I've ever seen--and my mother is from Kentucky farm country. I've seen a lot of corn fields!

The last stop of the day was at the quaintly rustic Limbert Mountain Farm, which sells an alluring assortment of fresh produce, garden plants, homemade comestibles and teas.

None of us had ever been on the tour before, but we had a great time and would highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in food--you'd never guess how interesting a tour of a working family dairy farm from a second-generation dairy farmer is! We will definitely be signing up for next year's tour; you should, too!