Toronto girls get taste of sugar pie and target practice

Cory Bourdeaud’hui, ad sales manager for Grainews, organized a farm tour May 22 and 23 for Kyleen Labreche and Emily Ouellette from Toronto. Kyleen and Emily work for Bos, the ad agency for Syngenta. Cory thought they might enjoy a visit to a few Western Canadian farms. I tagged along. 

Our first stop was Sturgeon Creek Hutterite colony a few miles northwest of Winnipeg. David, the farm boss, and his friend Raymond were our tour guides. They showed us the shop where they build huge coal-fired boilers. They heat every building, barn and shop on the colony with two of these. A greenhouse near Carman, Man., recently purchased three of them to run on flax straw.

The colony has about 10,000 acres of cropland, along with hogs and a dairy. The population is up to 130 and so they’re preparing for a split sometime in the next few years. However that isn’t stopping them from building a massive new kitchen and dining hall. A crew was pouring concrete pads for the foundation the day we were there. After stopping by the construction site, we went into the old kitchen to see where the wonderful smells were coming from. Lunch was about half an hour away, and the women had just taken sugar pie out of the oven. They offered us some.

Their sugar pie has a thin crust made from cinnamon bun dough. They put the bun dough into a cookie sheet with raised sides, spreading the dough across the bottom and up the sides. Into the middle they pour a mix of two-thirds of a cup of flour, three cups of cream (whipping cream mixed with evapourated milk), two cups of white sugar, one egg and one teaspoon of cinnamon. To make the filling, mix the dry ingredients first then add the liquids. Blend by hand with a whisk. Bake at 325 F until it bubbles. Thank you to Marie and Phoebe in the kitchen for sharing this recipe.

We left the colony before the lunch rush and drove to Bruxelles, stopping by the Treherne drive-in for cheeseburgers and milkshakes. At Bruxelles, we visited the Jonk family seed potato operation. Steve Jonk toured us through their elaborate potato sizing, cutting and treating system. Then Emily and Kyleen  rode with Tim Jonk in the potato planter.

Before heading back to Winnipeg for the day, Cory took us to visit his parents’ farm a few miles away. After Cory's mom, Ele, got them dressed in warm jackets and hats, we took the Bourdeaud'huis' quads out to the pasture and shot the .22 rifle at some old stove pipe. We really showed those Toronto girls a good time. (See the photo. Kyleen is on the left.) Emily took a couple of shots, with her head turned away in fear. Kyleen tried hard but couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger.

The next day we stopped at two grain farms in the Rosser-St. Francois Xavier area. Scott Corbett took Emily and Kyleen on his tractor while he was planting soybeans for a neighbour. Then Gunter and Crystal Jochum, along with Gunter’s father Karl, gave us their thoughts on advertising and farm press. (They like Grainews, but some of the ads really bug them.) Then Gunter and Karl gave us a short tour of their 30-acre u-pick strawberry patch. Their new planter puts a small irrigation hose under every row of strawberries. This cuts down on water use because it limits evaporation, and it allows u-pickers to get out onto the patch right away because it doesn’t muddy the surface soil. Smart.

I’d like to thank Cory for inviting me along. I hope Kyleen and Emily had fun and learned something useful.