Serendipity

Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time and good things happen without any planning. After getting rained on last night, it was a relief this morning to see that the rain was staying just north of the road we were following. The road surface was wet, so 10 minutes earlier or one block over and it might have been a different story, but for now we were dry and happy.

As long as the rain stays on its side of the road and we stay on ours, everyone will be happy. I wonder what they grow in that greenhouse?

Our first destination was Dawn. No, not that time of day when roosters do their thing - we have yet to wake up in time to enjoy a sunrise on this trip. Dawn was a settlement of slaves who had escaped to Canada on the underground railroad. The founder of Dawn, Josiah Henson, wrote an autobiography which is said to have inspired the character Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Amazingly, none of the members of Two Far have read this book, so I don't have direct knowledge of how Tom is presented in the book. Today the term Uncle Tom is derogatory, but clearly the actual Josiah Henson was a heroic character. As a slave, he was brutally treated. He managed to escape from Kentucky with his wife and 4 children. He was a well respected preacher and the Dawn settlement of 500 people he started was successful. He traveled to England and met queen Victoria. Rather than enjoying a well deserved peaceful life, he risjed his life and freedom by making dozens of trips back to the South to help other slaves escape.

Josiah Henson lived in this house at the end of his life- much nicer than a humble cabin.

A story in the local Wallaceburg newspaper confirms that Canada continues to welcome refugees. Toronto is currently overwhelmed with refugees, temporarily housing them in University dorms. Toronto appealed to other parts of the province to step up and accept some of these refugees. The newspaper indicated that the rural area around Wallaceburg has successfully integrated refugees in the past and is willing to do so again. The key is to pair refugees with sponsors/mentors.

The newspaper had another pair of stories that were related to energy. One story said that the planned Otter Creek wind farm project had been cancelled by the Ontario government. The article made this sound like a wise decision. When we were in this area a couple of years ago, local people had complained that vibrations from the wind turbines was ruining water wells by stirring up sediment. Surcharges on electric bills to pay for wind farm development were not popular - at least they were not popular with people who didn't have any turbines on their property and were not receiving rent.

There are lots of wind farms in this area. We have first hand experience with the strong winds that blow off of Lake Erie.

The other energy article was about a new compressor station being added to a natural gap pipeline. This article talked about all the tax advantages of expanding infrastructure. As an outsider looking in, there seem to be pros and cons to both the wind farms and the gas pipeline, but I got the sense that the newspaper had a definite slant in favor of gas. I don't understand the details enough to back up my opinion.

After visiting Dawn, we continued on our way towards Erieau on Lake Erie. The area is flat as a pancake and well suited for agriculture. We saw the usual grain suspects we saw in Michigan - corn, soybeans and wheat. But we also saw vegetables such as onions, cabbages, and tomatoes.

The tomatoes in this area end up as tomato sauce or catsup. None of them were ripe yet.

Cedar hedges are common windbreaks in this area.

We needed all the wind protection we could get.

We were traveling on a grid of roads and lines instead of roads and streets.

After a few miles we saw a second large greenhouse. This time rain was not threatening, so we decided to try and figure out what was growing inside. My guess was strawberries.

We were determined to find out what was growing in here.

We saw a guy outside the green house texting on his phone and pulled over to ask him what was growing inside. He spoke only Spanish, which we don't speak despite decades of living in Florida.

We continued on and saw some more people in a parking lot on the other end of the green house. They told us that the entire greenhouse was growing sweet peppers.

They were shy, but they gave us the scoop on what was growing in the greenhouse.

Then we hit the serendipity jackpot. As we were saying goodbye to the girls who had told us about the peppers, a guy on a Segway was zipping across the parking lot. We gave him a friendly wave and he came over. His name was Henry and he was the chief grower in the greenhouse. He asked if we would like a tour of the place and we enthusiastically said yes.

We were in the right place at the right time when we met Henry.

For the next hour we toured the greenhouse. The place is huge - 101 acres under glass or plastic. I'm used to pepper plants in a garden that are no more than a couple of feet tall, but these things reminded me of Jack and the Beanstalk. All of the plants in the green house were planted in November. They grow and keep producing peppers for an entire year. Every couple of weeks a new round of peppers are harvested.

The top part produces the peppers. These will keep growing and producing for several more months.

Because the plants are so tall, they are tended to with electric carts that can rise up to the top of the greenhouse. The carts run along a pair of rails between each row of plants that double as hearing pipes for cold weather.

The carts run on rails between the rows of peppers.

All the peppers are on the top part of the plants. The carts rise to the occasion.

The windows on the roof open to control the temperature and humidity inside the greenhouse. All of this is automated these days, although years ago Henry had to monitor sensors and control the windows himself.

With open windows, how can they prevent insects from entering the greenhouse? They don't. Instead, they fight bad bugs with good bugs such as lady bugs and lacewing larvae. This year they have not had to use any pesticides to supplement the good bug defenses.

Every few rows of peppers, a planter of wheat grass was hanging. The wheat grass has wheat aphids. Wheat aphids don't attack peppers, but the good bugs are happy to lay their eggs on wheat aphids. The eggs hatch, eat their aphid hosts and grow into an army of adults that will kill any invading aphids that target peppers.

I thought this was a decorative spider plant - it's wheat grass.

Pickers carefully cut off ripe peppers and fill a bin on the electric carts. Once the cart is full it goes into an autonomous mode that follows a track in the floor to a machine that unloads the cart.

An experienced picker can harvest an entire greenhouse row in less than an hour. It would take me all day.

The carts drive themselves to an unloading machine.

So much is automated in this operation, but manual quality control is still essential.

The unloading machine empties the cart and feeds the peppers into a conveyor belt.

The greenhouse where the peppers are growing is warm. Once the picked peppers are unloaded from the carts, they enter an air conditioned part of the building where they are inspected for quality, bagged and boxed for shipment. The main customer is Costco, famous for being fussy about the quality of whatever they sell, so strict quality control is needed. The first level of control are the pickers, who discard any damaged peppers they see. Next an army of workers checks each pepper as it comes down the conveyor belt. Good peppers go into a tray, bad peppers are discarded. Finally, the trays of peppers are placed into bags containing a mix of red, yellow and orange peppers. The baggers do a third quality check for any imperfections as they bag the peppers. Overall, about 30% of the peppers are discarded, even though most of the rejects appear perfect to my untrained eyes.

Conveyor belt leading from the cart unloading machine to a sorting area.

Sorting out peppers with any imperfections.

Bagging the peppers and doing a final quality check.

The "GHP" stamped on the bag means it came from this greenhouse.

Henry is one of the nicest and most knowledgeable people I have ever met.

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Darlene HnatiwWow - what a lucky break. It is tours like this, unplanned and spontaneous, that add that special charm to your trip. Enjoy.
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6 years ago

Alain AbbateTo Darlene HnatiwIt was definitely a highlight of the trip. You Canadians know how to show people a good time :)
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6 years ago