This past Saturday, the Vancouver Slow Food folks organized a cycling version of the Circle Farm Tour in Agassiz.
My darling wife and I packed our car, put the bikes on the rack and after leaving our delightful daughter with her doting grandparents in Chilliwack, arrived at the starting point and were on our bikes by 9:30am.
It was a splendid way to spend the day - we visited the eight sites on the tour and had a pleasant spin through the pretty countryside in Agassiz. It was almost completely flat too. Five hours later, pleasantly sated and with pannier bags full of goodies (mostly fabulous cheese from Farm House Cheese), we headed back to my parent's place.
The finale on the tour was the Valedoorn Farm dairy, the twelfth largest dairy in BC, with 400 cows, half of them milkers, the other half everything from new born calves to pregnant cows. They produce about 14,000 litres of milk a day.
Every cow has an ear tag, and the tags use RFID chips to talk to the milking machines, which in turn provide all manner of data to the farmer; and the daily report gets sent to his Treo.
Three people run the farm, and it's a 24/7 operation. Our "tour guide" told us he's up every day at 4:30 and by the time the last rounds are done, he's up until midnight.
The weather was mostly nice, though we did get caught by a little drizzle, but it was a fun experience. I'm definitely going to do it again next year.
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