This Just In!: Windmill Point Farm

I love that image, and, really, it kinda sums it all up: that majestic bird, those lucky kids (are they named "Bio" and "Organic," respectively, or are they just firm believers?), that rustic barn festooned with those organic coffee sacks. It was snapped inside the barn of our favorite new local organic farm (new to us, that is), Windmill Point Farm on Île Perrot. We'd gone with the Fruit Guru in search of the elusive Montreal Melon and in the hopes of meeting the legendary Dr. Ken Taylor (Windmill Point Farm's founder), but, as it turns out, the Montreal Melons were still a couple of weeks from reaching maturity and Dr. Taylor was away on business. And even though the farm was still a few weeks off from being at its harvest-time peak, we were still mightily impressed by what we saw. Windmill Point Farm occupies a sizeable 70-acre spread just a half an hour from Montreal and it's 100% certified organic. In many ways it's just the kind of farm we've been looking high and low for because, as Michelle put it after leafing through their catalogue, "they grow everything!": vegetables, herbs, fruits, nuts--you name it--and they specialize in heirloom varieties.

We found sweet brown peppers, red okra, Ceylon spinach, garlic shoots, zucchini, purslane, rapini, kale, and lettuce, along with pears



and tomatoes of all sorts.



But what we got most excited about was their nuts, and especially their lovely, somewhat mysterious heart nuts,



which come in a shell so tough they can only be opened with a sharp rap from a hammer (how's that for poetry?). Come fall, we're definitely going to be rushing back for walnuts, hazlenuts, heart nuts, and whatever else we can find.

All this and they also offer classes on grafting (!). Michelle could hardly believe it.

For more information and a handy-dandy map, please consult their website: http://www.windmillpointfarm.ca/

aj