Quails’ Gate winery sits on a steep slope in West Kelowna, high above Okanagan Lake. From the winery, vineyards, and restaurant, the view of the distant hills and vivid blue water is peaceful, mesmerizing, and generous.

It’s unusual for the culinary team of an airport hotel to pick gooseberries, garlic, onions, Thumbelina carrots, and lemon balm from their own garden, and Kamal Silva is one Executive Chef who appreciates the opportunity to grow the items that add local flavour to his menus. He stands on the fringes of Richmond’s Terra Nova Rural Park and points with pride to the just-visible Fairmont YVR.

A hundred years ago, the village of Steveston was central to the Lower Mainland’s food system. The rich, fertile soil supported many farms. Fishing boats hauled in fresh catch most days, and much of it was processed in Steveston’s Cannery Row.

Today, the canning industry is long gone, and the farmland has been sadly diminished. Yet Steveston (now part of Richmond) has managed to retain much of that village charm.

I just finished my rock wall: a gently curving structure three years in the making. This is not my first rock work; when I was but a lad, my first love and I, with the very same stone, made very different walls. After twelve years the love was gone, but the wall is still there, and when I pass it I realize I had no sense as a young buck, and you can see that in the stone.

An Organic Wine Farm and Boutique B&B

by Debbra Mikaelsen, photo by Philip Solman

Working Horse is more than a winery, more than a farm, and more than a B&B. It’s a place where most of my favourite words merge in delicious harmony: organic, vineyard, boutique, winery, culinary, inn, biodynamic.

A Community Canning Renaissance

By Kimberley Fehr • photos by Tiffany Brown Cooper

Two months after Amy Steeves, 31, moved into her new house near Commercial Drive, she had a beautiful dream. “Our driveway was filled with kids playing, live music, this amazing community,” she recalls. “There were jars everywhere and mountains of tomatoes and long tables in the driveway with colourful tablecloths. Around them were clusters of people stirring pots, canning the tomatoes.”