Farmer's Dotter

On our way to Nelson, BC, we stopped in Cawston (just outside Keremeos), where a friend of Florin's used to own an organic garlic farm. It is on this farm that eight years ago a small team of artisan bread and wood-burning oven enthusiasts assembled for an oven-building workshop conducted by Alan Scott. The Alan Scott.

We had an amazing three days building the oven. We made some good friends and some of the people present at the workshop ended up opening their own bakeries. There was only one regret we all had; none of us had ever seen "our little baby" in operation. It's a long story, but due to some unfortunate circumstances, Jenny wasn't able to open her bakery until about a year ago.

After all this time, Florin finally made it back to Cawston. We had planed our Nelson trip for a while now, and on our way there we decided to stop and visit the farm and the newly opened bakery. The place is incredibly beautiful and functional at the same time. The farm, and the bakery, are now owned by a charming couple, Yvonne and Morris (pictured above; Lisa has a hard time not taking amazing pictures all the time), who are hard at it working the land and baking fabulous loaves for the Penticton Farmers Market. Everything they do is organic, naturally leavened, and done with tremendous passion for good food. And, let us say this again, the place (and the oven) look fabulous!

We arrived quite late in the evening and found Yvonne and Morris in the middle of baking their market loaves for the next day. Despite the late hour and their being very busy, we were welcomed inside the bakery and given the grand tour. We talked shop for a while, took lots of pictures and even discussed the possibility of an "artisan bread retreat" on the farm at some point in the future. We shall keep you posted on this latter point if we manage to make it happen.

Check out Yvonne and Morris' blog to read about their story, their love of the land and how they got into baking.