The Abbotsford Circle Farm Tour
Last year some time our friend Gayle tipped me off onto what is known as the Abbotsford Circle Farm Tour. This tour is comprised of 12 farms or rural locations in and around the Abbotsford area. We had originally planned on doing the Circle Farm Tour last year but for a number of reasons it never happened. A few months ago we talked to our friends Tony and Anna about doing this and yesterday drove out to Abbotsford to see what it was all about
The Abbotsford Circle Farm tour is comprised of 12 designated destinations and we had all decided to try and do only 6 of them in the Saturday afternoon that we had set aside for it. In the end, one of the sites (the Abbotsford Farm & Country Market) was closed before we got there so we only ended up seeing 5 which was just about right given that we ended up spending about 7-8 hours on the tour with just the five.
Abbotsford is about 75 km away from Vancouver but the drive out there with our friends from their house was quite pleasant traveling along mostly quiet country roads for the most part.
The first place that we stopped was at a winery called Lotusland Vineyards. Lotusland Vineyards is one of about 11 wineries in the Lower Mainland / Fraser Valley region. In addition to the many wineries in the Okanagan region of BC, the overall quality of wines produced in this province has definitely reached world class levels.
When we first arrived at the Lotusland Vineyards we thought that maybe it was closed give the lack of any human inhabitants but we eventually found a small radio button at the door to the store which we were able use to summon some help. We both ended up buying a bottle of organic red wine – ours a 2001 pinot noir.
With wine bottles under our arms, we departed the Lotusland Vineyards and headed off to out next destination called The Fruit Basket.
As we were driving into the Fruit Basket, we saw signs of a wedding that was to take place that day and as a result much of the activity on the sprawling property seemed to be focused on sitting things up for the ceremony.
The main focus of the Fruit Basket seemed to be blueberries – tons of blueberries. Knowing how Barb and I love our blueberries and now that they were fresh in season, we bought a nice large 4.5 kg box of berries from the Fruit Basket’s on site store. Between the two of us, I estimate that this box will easily be finished within 10 days.
The gardens on the Fruit Basket’s properties contains a huge grassy area as well as a fountain and lily pond – complete with the requisite bull frogs floating in the water. Overall, it was an impressive site and a picturesque tranquil location so we could see the appeal for wanting to have weddings held there.
Around this time we were all getting pretty hungry so we made our next stop for lunch the Clayburn Village Store & Teashop. The Tea Shop building is about 100 years old and the has the restaurant on one side and an old fashioned “general store” on the other – complete with an extremely well stocked candy bar with dozens of large glass containers selling loose candy by weight.
While in the planning stages of this tour, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from a teashop as I assumed that it was all about, well, tea. As it turned out, tea was only one of the things on the menu and they served all kind of other food and drinks suitable for a pleasant afternoon lunch with friends.
The Tea Shop was pretty crowded by the time we got there and we surmised that the Circle Farm Tour was either hugely popular or else the Tea Shop was a well known local hangout for the Saturday afternoon lunch crowd. Maybe a bit of both.
After we had finished lunch at the Tea Shop, we were on our way to the destination that, in my opinion, was the highlight of our Circle Farm Tour: the Birchwood Dairy.
The Birchwood Dairy is a real live functional dairy (yes, those cows in the barn aren’t actors and that smell is all real too) and it produces a number of different dairy product which they sell on site in their farmer’s market store. In addition to a variety of different types of milk and cheeses, they offer an assortment of yogurts as well. However, ignore all of those things because the real reason why you’ve come here is to get ice cream. Birchwood makes their own ice cream and let me tell you, this is the real thing.
A word to the wise: if you visit the Birchwood Dairy, bring along a picnic cooler filled with ice as you’re going to want to bring home a lot of ice cream and the last thing that you want is to have this stuff melting in your car before you can eat it.
Barb and I bought only a litre of the Coffee Crunch flavour ice cream and this was only because we knew that we couldn’t fit the 4 litre size carton on our freezer at home. Learn from our mistake and make sure that you have lots of freezer space before visiting Birchwood.
After a short detour to bring our frozen dairy products home to temporarily sit in Tony and Anna’s freezer, we went to our final destination for the day which was to the place called Restaurant 62 where went for an early dinner.
When I say early, I mean that we were the only ones in the restaurant for at least an hour.
A lot of people that I work with live in Abbotsford and many of them knew of Restaurant 62 as one of the few fine dining places to go in the area. The restaurant was definitely not the typical kind of place that I normally associate with Abbotsford as it had a modern, trendy look about it which wouldn’t be out of place in downtown Vancouver.
The food that we ordered was generally good and Tony and I both had the Bison which I found to be quite well prepared.
At the end of the day, the generally consensus was that the dining experience at Restaurant 62 was good, but fell short of being great. I don’t see myself going back there but that’s mostly because of geographical reasons more than anything else.
We relaxed for a while before heading back home after our long day in the country. Being the consummate city boy, it’s a nice change to experience the rural aspects of our area which is really just an hour or less drive away from where we live in Vancouver. More than anything else, the memories of the Birchwood Dairy ice cream still stand out and we will be able to reminisce about this with the frozen bounty stored in our freezer.
No doubt I see ourselves making some additional trips out the the Birchwood Dairy for some refills some time in the near future.
Baden
