Guineas and Goats and Pigs...Oh My!

Greetings once again. This latest blog entry is being brought to you from a nice comfy room at the V Hotel & Suites in downtown Moncton NB.  We are truckin' along the last stage of our trip and are slowly getting back into a nomad sort of vibe.  Unfortunately Krissy has come down with the cold that I had last week and it is pretty much knocking her out.  Poor thing.

When last we left off we were in Halifax, in a very warm room at the HI hostel on Barrington St.  We checked out of the hostel and paid a visit to the Halifax Farmer's Market, which is housed in a massive warehouse space along the water and reminded us somewhat of Pike's Place, in Seattle.  It was extremely crowded but we managed to get lots of tasty vittles for lunch including a vegan quesadilla, a lobster roll, african meat pie, and even a little dim sum, as well as lots of enticing samples and a couple bottles of wine to take out.  On our way out of the market we stopped by the Garrison brewery and got some samples.  From there we were ready to hit the road.

We were heading to Sweetwood Farm, which is where we worked for a week back in May, to spend a couple of nights with Heather and Neil.  Along the drive we intended to stop by Peggy's Cove, which is a cute little coastal village with an intense lighthouse.  We were also there in May, on a particularly cloudy day.  By the time we got there the clouds had totally rolled in.  We pulled in anyway but it was so crowded that we just drove through and then got the hell out of there.

Before heading to farm we stopped in Lunenburg to pay a visit to Ironworks Distillery.  We also went there in May and bought a bottle of delicious rhubarb esprit.  We had intended to take it home with us but wound up bringing it to the Bonavista Social Club, to mix with their rhubarb lemonade.  So we needed to replace that.  We wound up buying three bottles, just to be safe.

We arrived at the farm in the early evening and it was nice to pull into a familiar place.  The first thing we saw was a pen of baby chickens and guinea hens.  They are all tiny and quite adorable.

Baby guinea takes a break from the feeder to continue looking awkward.

Baby guineas on the shelf.

Kitten in the bird house, looking a bit too interested...

It was good to see all the goats again.  They are mostly integrated now and it was wild to see those babies getting so much closer to being grown up.  Some of them, for whom the de-horning did not take, are even starting to get little horns.  Those buggers are so awesome.

Baby goat looks like she's got something on her mind.

And this one is just chillin'.

This youngin' stops for her close-up.

This photo is hilarious.

Hans, hangin' with a goat.

The "teenagers", all in a cluster.

I miss these little buggers.

We met up with Heather and Neil in the back field, where they were feeding the pigs.  There are two pens now, with two different litters of babies.  The piglets are all 3-4 weeks old and are still very tiny.  It's hard to believe that something that tiny and cute will grow up into something so big and snorty.

Look at this adorable little thing.

"Hey guys, someone just said I look delicious...what does that mean?"

 We had a nice dinner with Heather and Neil and got caught up.  Heather is from Newfoundland and Neil is from Labrador (we stayed with his folks when we were in Red Bay, back in early June) and it was fun to be able to chat with them about all those places that we got to know and fall in love with.  After a while they went back to the barn for evening chores and we made it an early night and went to bed.  After the last few nights a good night's sleep was exactly what we needed.

We woke up Sunday morning and had a nice breakfast and then helped out on the farm.  We wound up doing a lot more work than we were expecting, taking down fences and sorting tons of wood, but it wasn't all that bad (it was definitely better than if we had been watching the Skins play).

Once we got finished up we hit the road and took a nice drive through Bridgewater and down to Crescent Beach, which is a beautiful cove with a nice white sandy beach.  While I did not partake, you can drive on that beach and there were a lot of cars down there as well as a lot of people that walked in (no one was swimming though).  It was a nice sunny evening, an hour or so before sunset, so it looked really beautiful down there.

Crescent Beach is lovely.

Another, even lovelier angle at Crescent Beach.

Tall grasses appear to be floating.

Andersons get a little sun at Crescent Beach.

We headed back to the farm and had another nice dinner and chat with Heather & Neil.  For dessert we had ice cream and tried all these different caramels on top (cinnamon, vanilla, bourbon, and coffee....yum to all).  The sky was totally clear and it would have been a perfect night to see some stars, given how remote and dark that farm could potentially be.  Unfortunately that "supermoon" made the sky so bright that there were less stars visible than at home.  I even woke up in the middle of the night and went out but it was no use.  The moon did look pretty awesome though.

This is quite a super moon.

This morning we woke up and, after a tasty breakfast of home-grown eggs and a long goodbye pass around the various areas of the farm, we made our way out of there.  The farm is such a great place, despite being such hard work, and it was a pleasure to be able to bookend our trip with stops there.  Thanks again to Heather & Neil for allowing us in.

And of course thanks to Nunzio, for being totally psyched all the time.

Viola says goodbye.

We were headed to Moncton but our immediate destination, which is along the way, was the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, which are pretty much at the end of the Bay of Fundy, along the huge isthmus that connects Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.  There is a great interpretive center with lots of fossils and geologic bits of knowledge but the exciting part were the cliffs themselves.  Now, I was expecting the cliffs to be totally stuffed with fossils, and they weren't.  But I did see a few fossils in the shale soon after getting down there and it was very cool to see those.  The cliffs went on for a while and we probably would have been able to find more but it was getting late and we still had to get to Moncton, so we cut our visit short.  Still, it was cool to see and, being that it is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it was awesome to be able to knock another one off the list.  This makes for #5 of this trip thus far - the other four were Old Town Lunenburg, Gros Morne National Park, L'anse aux Meadows, and the Basque whaling site in Red Bay, Labrador.  We also wanted to see the Landscape of Grand Pre, which is a perfect example of Acadian culture, and another UNESCO site but it would have taken us just enough out of the way to make the drive undesirable.  One day we will make it there.

Millions of years of geologic history in a slope.

A close-up of the wall of jagged shale.  The awesome thing is to think of how much fossilized stuff is buried in those cracks.  The sad thing is to think of how fragile these cliffs are and how they don't take much to erode.

Fossils and Fundy and a nice bit of coast.

If you look closely you will see a fossilized tube of something.

This is a shell of some sort.  It was quite large.  

We got to the hotel in Moncton around 4 or so and got checked in.  The place is pretty nice.  We haven't stayed in a place this nice since probably Saint John NB, the first night we were in Canada.  In fact, the bed is so comfy that it was hard to peel myself away to write this blog.

We did manage to peel ourselves away for dinner, a few blocks away at this place called the Tide & Boar, which is this amazing gastropub that I will do my best to not go on too much about.  They had a great beer list and it was awesome to be able to drink some excellent craft beers.  I had a few and it was great.  Then came the seafood chowder.  It was hands down the best soup I've ever had.  Lots of cod and scallops and mussels and the base was a perfect consistency, very creamy, with a touch of dill.  I told Krissy, who then recounted it to the waitress, that I could die happy if I could spend the rest of my life getting spoon-fed that soup.  Seriously, folks.  It is worth the trip to Moncton just to try this soup.  And if that isn't enough to convince you, the burger, made of brisket and bacon, on a brioche bun, clinched the prize.  To add to the amazing experience even more were these bricks of fried polenta that....well, damn.  One of the best meals I ever had in my life.

It turns out that my buddies from St. John's, Green & Gold, are playing there on Friday.  I would love to have an excuse to go to that place again but we will be in Fredericton that night.  Fortunately they will be playing in Ottawa on the 18th, our last night in Canada, so we will definitely see them there and are very much looking forward to it.

That brings us up to now.  I should probably wrap this up so I can get back into this awesome bed and have the ridiculously awesome night's sleep that I so need.  Tomorrow we will get up casually, with Krissy hopefully feeling much better, and we head to Fundy National Park, and our first camping stop since June (not counting our time on the hill in Skerwink).  We will be there for three nights and then will be camping near Fredericton for two nights after that.  Fredericton is getting a wee bit ahead of ourselves.  Fundy will be great.  An adjustment, to be sure, but it will be nice to see that park again.  The last time we were there was in 2006.  It will be interesting to see how we can keep up with those trails as compared to last time.  We'll see how that goes.

Until then...