Fresh from the County

Delicious and nutritious farm stand foods

August is the peak month for some of the most delicious and nutritious fruits and vegetables the County has to offer. From scrumptious blueberries in Waupoos to sweet corn in Wellington, farm stands are full to the brim with the agricultural bounty of the land. Vicki Emlaw of Vicki’s Veggies says that freshpicked food is the absolute best. “As soon as you harvest something off the plant, that vegetable has the most amount of nutrients and vitamins in it that it will ever have, and the sooner you eat it the more benefit you will have from it,” she says. “The longer the vegetable is off the plant, the more it degrades in all of those essential things you use food for. So when I harvest a two-minute walk away from where my stand is, these have the most amount of nutrients you could possibly get.” Emlaw is very passionate about growing vegetables, and while she is most often associated with heirloom tomatoes, she also grows a variety of other vegetables, including beets, Swiss chard, cucumbers and potatoes. But her excitement is the most palpable when she speaks about tomatoes and their “tomatoness”, as she put it. During a conversation at her farm stand while she is setting out that morning’s harvest, she constantly interrupts herself by picking up one or another of the tomato varieties and enthusiastically speaking about it—or perhaps even to it. “This is a Golden Egg and it will have a very sweet flavour…this Black Cherry is very different and has a dark smoky flavour…look at this Berkeley Tie-dye.” She only leaves out the best and freshest tomatoes at her small shop; any that are more than a day or two after harvest are set aside for preserving, which she says is a great way to keep the tastes and flavours of summer into the off-season. Her much-loved tomato tasting festival has fallen victim to the COVID-19 pandemic and will not be offered this year. Instead, she is planning to host small groups for tasting and learning tours through her market garden. Visit vickisveggies.com or Instagram @vickisveggies for more information.

Sharon Kleinsteuber with a selection of fresh vegetables and cut flowers at her roadside farm stand in West Lake.

Located on County Road 16 in Black River, Wilbur Miller has farm stand much smaller in scale than Vicki’s, but with equally fresh vegetables. “This is just a hobby, it’s not a whole lot, just something we have left over in the garden—tomatoes or punkins, a little corn and cucumbers—it keeps the bailiff from the doors,” he says with a hint of wry amusement. At 90 years old, he keeps about an acre and a half of land as his garden. “It’s all good land here, you know, valley land, so it doesn’t dry out. I save all my seeds, and I kinda like growing. It’s in your blood, you start as a kid and you keep doing it. We don’t use fertilizer. Just the old barnyard manure, and I think that’s healthier. I know it must be good corn, because it goes pretty quickly. We may sell about 30 or 35 dollars on a good day, and it might buy our groceries, but you couldn’t put any beer on top of that, you know. But it’s all good, I’d say it’s all good.”

Kleinsteuber Farms’ stand on County Road 12 in West Lake also offers a wide selection of fresh produce, and caters to local residents while taking advantage of the tourist flow to Sandbanks Dunes Beach. Sharon Kleinsteuber is a life-long farmer, and enjoys operating the farm stand. “You meet a lot of nice people, and we do fill a need. We try to keep a variety of stuff coming through, we have a little bit of everything.” They farm about 50 acres of land, and take their produce to the Belleville and Trenton markets. Sharon is the fourth generation to farm the land, and says that their first roadside stand was an old horsedrawn cutter. “Dad had his hip surgery, so he was watching the stand, because he couldn’t do anything else,” she says. “We pick our vegetables fresh every day, and the corn maybe two or three times a day. We have a lot of people say how good our potatoes taste, that they actually have a flavour. We do four different kinds of corn—everybody is a little particular about how they like their corn.”