Gouda for You

And on the sixth day we ate gouda. "That Dutchman's Farm"--a famous Nova Scotia day trip destination--is in Upper Economy, just a stone's throw from the homestead. We spent most of the morning there, enjoying the walking tour and sampling gouda variations (stinging nettle gouda? delish!) in this re-creation of a Netherlands farm. Sam intended to view it all through the weighty binoculars slung around his neck, but we convinced him, thankfully, that it would be super slow going at his far-sighted pace.

First things first: ya gotta stand in the giant clogs and say "cheese!" Sam & Carter hammed this up pretty good (mmmham&cheese). Then we took a quick tour of the shop. Unfortunately, they weren't actually making any gouda at the moment, so we simply window shopped the wheels and checked out the cheese-making appliances (later, we wondered if maybe it wasn't a good thing we didn't get to see how this stuff is made). As we circled past the cheese displays, fresh fudge counters, buckets of Dutch licorice and café sandwiches, Sam remembered that he was starving -- and I remembered that I hadn't fed him for 4 hours. Happily, Grandma picked up a hefty cinnamon tearing bread with lemon frosting, and the eight of us pulled a section from it for a morning snack.

Then we took our walking tour map and headed for the bridge into the grounds. The "farm" was beautiful! There were wild flowers and exotic looking foliage everywhere. It was more like a lavish garden/forest spotted with picturesque animal pens to house the resident goats, donkeys, peacocks, emus, geese, and Vietnemese pot-bellied pigs. Everything was tame enough to feed by hand, and in some cases you could climb right in with the animals. Sam & Carter really loved revelling with the tiny pigs and patting the goats and donkeys. And they were tremendously excited by a cute feature of the walking tour: every time we reached a large directional stone embedded in the pathway, we knew there was a tiny gnome figurine perched close by. The two made a real sport of discovering which tree or post the little gnome was peering down from. The farm knows 4-year old boys.

We finished the route and ducked up the hill to collect golf-watching Jeremy and then head for Diane's Place--a local "kitchen" and ice cream bar near the waterfront that serves up fresh clams and flounder from the Bay. Our raucous party was given its own ante-chamber, but we likely still drowned out the other diners as we waited (a long time!) for our food. And was it worth the wait! Melt in your mouth fish that you just can't get in mid-country. Sam was pretty impressed with the cheese & bacon version of a hot dog as well. Though stuffed, we all found room for ice cream cones: they do up the dairy right in Nova Scotia, too. Delicious.

Down to our last afternoon of pool play and deck convo before collecting up our stuff and packing a gouda and fudge dinner. We bid Grandma & Grandpa and Jacquie goodbye and Tracey and Carter & Anabel good times and hit the road at about 5:00, intending to share the long (l-o-n-g) drive home. Jeremy and Sam fell into a sound sleep until 8:07, when a flashing red light on the dashboard changed our plans!