I spent a beautiful weekend on Mayne Island two weekends ago, where the scenery and friendly people were only topped by my visits to the Saturday morning farmers’ market and Deacon Vale Farm. The farmers market was very well-attended, I managed to get my hands on the last box of snap peas from one farm and merrily munched on them as I wandered the stalls, which were stocked with fresh produce, delicious baked goods, and jars and jars of organic sweet and savoury offerings from Deacon Vale Farm.
Don and Shanti McDougall produce so many fruits and vegetables on their farm that they also built a commercial kitchen to preserve what they don’t sell at the farmers market. The McDougall’s invited me out to tour the farm. Of course I wanted to see the commercial kitchen as well, where all the jamming and chutneying and pickling takes place, and Shanti explained how her specialized equipment, like her giant sized steam kettle, makes the canning more efficient. She's been known to can well over 300 large jars of tomato sauce in one day. If you knew how long it takes me to make 12 small jars of jam, you would appreciate what kind of volume that is!
Along with the steam kettle, another helpful too is a steamer that she puts the sealed jars into for final processing. It maintains the heat necessary for proper canning right from the start, and means no dunking and retrieving of jars from boiling water.
They make a wide variety of products which differs from year to year, depending on what they harvest, and can get up into the 10 thousand jars a year range. One of their most popular products is the tomato sauce, which people travel from the Mainland just to get it.
Don is a professional chef as well as a farmer, but when it comes to the canned products, that is totally Shanti’s realm, although she does admit that his knife skills come in very handy when she needs thirty pounds of onions chopped in a hurry! So Don takes care of the farm operations, which also include some chickens and beef, I’ve had a couple of their steaks, which are some of the best beef I’ve ever tasted. He was also responsible for getting the Mayne Island Farmers’ Market going when he realized the need for it. Don says the next dream is to actually open a store in an unused auto shop there on Mayne, but the idea has met with some opposition.
Here's the sign they had made up for the store, which would sell their own produce, meats and canned goods, as well as those from other farms and producers on Mayne Island, the other Gulf Islands and beyond. There’s a lot more to the story, but in a nutshell the Islands Trust has denied the McDougalls the permission to open the store, they’re fighting that decision, with the support of much of the community…to be continued! In the meantime, you can find their products at some Mayne Island retail outlets. Thanks to Don and Shanti for adding a very personal touch to my enjoyment of my first weekend visit to Mayne Island, I'm sure it won't be the last!
