Saturday’s work party at Haliburton went surprisingly well: although rain had been forecast, it happily and courteously fell overnight, leaving a fresh-washed farm shining in the sun for a team of workers that included a group of school kids. Our main task of the day was harvesting the chickpeas, which farmer Rod then threshed with his handy Italian tractor

and then “all” we had to do was sort the beans.

When you’re counting chickpeas, a day’s work doesn’t look like much. But that’s why organic costs more… We all had time to agree at some length we would never look at a tin of chickpeas the same way.

After all that sorting

you are ready to sit down and have some lunch.

Naomi had made some excellent soup for us; I contributed a bit of fattoush,

and following this we had many, many cakes: chocolate, chocolate zucchini, plum and grape. Then, after Laura showed us what the Salt Spring zucchini are wearing this season

it was back to work.

A tour of the fields showed the kidney beans and black soya ready to harvest

pumpkin ripening in the fields

and lemon cucumber and purple tomatillo ready for harvest.

Sunday was another beautiful day, perfect for the Feast of Fields, held this year at Providence Farm, a most gorgeous and appropriate setting. Before things got rolling, I had time to do a short inspection of the llama (or is it an alpaca?) enjoying a leisurely tree break and other farm animals.

A few of the sights:

Saanich Organics, with plenty of excellent local fruit and veg to taste

Oak Bay Marina‘s seafood shooters, topped with a clam:

Locals, a treat from Courtenay, with a pulled pork stuffed pasta, very nice:

Seasonality: highlighting local cream in a beautiful pumpkin soup:

LifeCycles offered fruit, including grapes hand picked by moi only days earlier:

Cheryl’s Gourmet Pantry had one of the winners, good ol’ beans on toast, featuring local pork and exquisite beans:

Amuse had a highly delectable seafood cucumber topped with jellied tomato water:

I went on another apple pick for the Fruit Tree Project the other day, or tried to. When we got there the owner explained that a fellow who’d picked his apples last year to make wine had turned up again this year and been told the fruit was going to LifeCycles; a couple of days later the tree was completely stripped,

leaving only this one little windfall to show what a gorgeous apple it was:

And this is what the skin looked like:

The owner didn’t know what it was; the pick leader thought maybe Gravenstein. So we picked what few apples there were on two other trees

and headed for a grapevine that was growing all over a house and into the hedge

and picked about 140 lbs of grapes from the one vine.

Then I made a cake from some of the grapes.

I admit I was suspicious of the recipe’s description of the “rustic crunch” of the grape pips, but in fact it was just so, and an excellent cake. We had some assorted appetizers – artichoke dip, Greek Salad, and some of Delia’s courgette & potato cakes with mint & feta (aka kolokythokeftedes) which I have made before and always have trouble turning as they get mushy, but they dry out eventually and are delicious. Had some beautiful yellow zucchini which I picked myself at Haliburton on Wednesday and made that into a respectable zucchini alla scapece.

So a good old feed.

Ready to feed the soul with the opening night of Planet Earth poetry later this evening!