Saturday, August 05, 2006

This Just In!: Windmill Point Farm

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

pears, Windmill Point Farm

and tomatoes of all sorts.

cherry tomatoes, Windmill Point Farm

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

Heart Nuts, Windmill Point Farm

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

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you! THANK YOU! I moved to Montreal a year ago and this is exactly what I have been looking for. Now I know what I will be doing next Saturday...
Yannik

Anonymous said...

That was a great post to read - we stopped by on Saturday and it was small but a good place to visit. As well as nuts and tomatoes, they had green peppers and plumcots and fresh basil. And the tomatoes were very good.

aj kinik said...

Hi Anonymous,
glad you found it and that it was to your liking. We'll definitely be going back in the next 2-3 weeks to see if the Montreal melons are in. Can't wait.