Following our visit to Jessie’s Juice Co., we met up with Satnam Dheensaw in one of his strawberry fields.
Satnam has grown up in these fields helping his family on the farm since his parents bought it in 1981. His parents weren’t always farmers but his father had a sense that the mill was going to close and he wanted to secure a good future and livelihood for his family. The farm has grown and evolved and now Satnam acts as farm manager, working long hours to keep the family farm business thriving. Today they grow fantastic berries! Strawberries, Loganberries, Raspberries, Boysenberries, Blackberries and next year… Tay Berries. They also offer in season: rhubarb, 15 varieties of squash such as acorn, butternut, spaghetti, zuchini; beets, leeks, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and pumpkins.
We wander through the berry patch peering under leaves and searching out those ripe, juicy red poppers. These are the Rainier variety and are as sweet as sweet can be (great fresh or for freezing and make a fabulous cocktail hour snack, paired with with Pinot Gris or Champagne) . I remember snippets of Chef Heidi Fink’s post on searching out perfectly ripe berries and “oh yeah” did these berries fit the criteria. The strawberries were plump and bright red in colour, so smooth and sweet (almost melt in the mouth) and perfectly sun-ripened. Drool, drool!
We were briefly distracted by a family of quails running down one of the rows. The parents tried to divert our attention by flying off in two separate directions while their tiny babies sprinted for the cover of the dark, leafy greens. We tried to spot them, but their stripey feathers gave them the perfect camouflage in that dappled low leaf terrain. The Gobind’s usually have an electronic device that emits bird of prey calls to scare birds away from the berries, but the quails are accepted and act as “nature’s helpers” eating away bad bugs and leaving the berries alone.
We make our way up to the main farm and shuffle around in some robust looking rhubarb. Its later than usual this year, but great to have it to pair with the ripe strawberries in recipes such as: strawberry rhubarb pie and jam.
Next we get to a bumper crops of bush berries – loganberries (which will be ready in approximately 2 weeks). Loganberries were derived in 1881 from a cross of red ‘Antwerp” raspberry and the American ‘Aughinburgh’ blackberry. Their sweet/tart flavour is great for baking, canning, juicing, jam and jelly.
We amble around the rows moving from raspberry to boysenberry to loganberry and finally…. the golliath of all berries – Blackberry. Satnam holds up a twoonie to one of the berries and tells us that, “When this is ripe it will be 2 times the length and 1.5 times the width of the coin.” This mammoth variety is great juiced or frozen and saved for winter smoothies.
Fingers and tongues stained pink, we left the farm with 2 flats of strawberries, a punnet of raspberries, an armload of rhubarb and a sense of gratitude for families like the Gobind’s who keep growing fantastic fresh food for all of us to enjoy!
Gobind Farms is located: 6929 Veyaness Rd, Saanichton.
Their roadside stand is open 7 days a week during berry season, 9am to 6:30pm.
View their listing in the Get Fresh Guide for more info…
