Happy Easter!

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Hopefully we saw Winter's last gasps this week. Although cold and snowy, we've been kept quite busy at the Tea Room.

Since this week is Easter week, we thought we'd welcome the Spring season by celebrating with an Easter special. We decided to create a seriously decadent Easter chocolate cake, decorated with our own little meringue bird nests. We'll be offering it half price per slice with every main order this week.

A nest for every slice!

Meanwhile, elsewhere at the farm things are starting to progress. We're finally getting some things done in anticipation of our Spring planting.

The first thing accomplished was the pruning of the old Concord grape vines. This was rapidly done; however, we still need to rebuild the trellises (perhaps we'll have time this Fall).

Finally reached the grapes just in time for pruning.

Even our Maple syrup is coming along quite fine. We're at the stage of finishing some of it in the Tea Room kitchen.

The Maple syrup is generating a heavenly smell in the kitchen.

This year's Maple syrup is quite different than last year's. It is very dark and rich in flavour. It actually seems that the sap has a much greater sugar content.

We'll quickly close this week by wishing all our readers a very Happy Easter and with a picture of our major project: the accessory building. The weather has not slowed down this team and we're already looking forward to move some of our equipment within the week,

Our accessory building is rapidly taking shape.

Our First Week Open

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The opening of the Tea Room this week has kept us quite busy. It was however quite fulfilling to see our new high teas served for the first time this year. Also, now that the Tea Room is licensed, we were pleased to see a few people enjoying the afternoon on the veranda while sipping a glass of wine (we actually feature the local wines of Henry of Pelham).

The first High Teas of the season

We were also quite pleased with the popularity if our seasonal desserts. With Maple season in full swing, this week, we have focused on a new pie: Maple Syrup, which we also provided as tarts for our High Teas.

A Quebec tradition: Maple syrup pie

Meanwhile our "gateau" has been a carrot cake with a twist (combining coconut and raisins).

A carrot cake with a coconut twist:

The quiches have turned out very well as well. The key ingredient turns out to be a local artisan cheese: Comfort Creme by Upper Canada.

The vegetarian option: Comfort Creme and baby spinach quiche

Meanwhile on the farm things continue to progress. Primarily, this has entailed recovering maple sap for our own syrup production. However, we now have to look at our old grape vines which need pruning. Now that most of the snow has disappeared, they are finally accessible.

Finally accessible, the old Concord Grapes are due for pruning this week.

We'll end this week with a quick update on the latest project: our implement shed. This week the concrete pad was poured and we now have taken delivery of the lumber. This building will up up in a rather short period of time, then we can begin to work on our old barn.

The implement building is rapidly progressing.

The Tea Room Opens: March 21st!

To view the latest from Ridge Berry Farm visit our new blog and site!

We've not been regular in logging over the past few weeks. The main reason is that both the cold and the snow meant that most of our work was mundane. In fact, we've been entirely focused on the opening of the Tea Room this next weekend. This has meant cleaning, resurfacing the Tea Room kitchen floors, taking in new inventory, and even moving in new equipment.

Getting ready for a lot of canning...a long awaited glass container shipment

Re-surfacing the kitchen floors...it's amazing the wear and tear on a professional kitchen

All of this activity was necessary since we have decided to open the Tea Room for its new season: March 21st (that is this coming Saturday!).

This week however, we were also very pleased to see the day time temperatures climbing back to above 0 Celsius.  This meant we could finally return to working on the farm. Our priority of course was the Maple syrup.

Although we do not have many trees, we produce enough of the syrup for the Tea Room and our market. Our few trees are all Sugar Maple and their sap is intensely sweet, producing a very high quality syrup. So it was clearly time to get back to our trees.

The rather painful and exhausting first trip to the Maple trees

Now we've already started the evaporation process and look forward to producing a lot more of our clotted cream, maple fudge.

Starting the evaporation process....soon our first  2015 batch of Maple syrup will be ready.

The thaw has also given us the opportunity to start on this year's major project: Phase 2 of the barn renovations.

In the back of our barn, we have an ancient dilapidated structure where we house a lot of our equipment. We will be taking this down and refinishing the walls of the barn and the interior lower floor. In order to do this, we need an implement building somewhere out of the way, yet convenient enough to be accessible year-round.

We decided to build this small structure down the farm not too far away from our "Beaver pond" and next to our Kiwi rows. This week, the beginnings of the foundation were finally started.

The first step to our barn renovation...a new implement building.

We'll end this week's blog with our latest wildlife pic. We've not seen them much this Winter, but we were really glad when a small herd of deer visited us one morning. Truly Spring is on its way.

The deer are back...Spring is on its way!