O-Canada!

Here we are in Canada! The drive was super simple, even with the torrential rain that followed us from Boston all the way to Northern Maine. We're getting about 38 miles to the gallon -- go Scion!

We arrived in Moncton, New Brunswick around 5 p.m. (we lost an hour to the time change -- Atlantic Canada is 1 hour ahead of the East Coast) and checked into the really great hostel. It was a big old house with two living rooms and a great kitchen. Found out it only opened in 2006, so it was really new and clean, too. We walked around Moncton a bit. It's a small little city and we hit up the yummy vegetarian place that Lonely Planet recommended for dinner.

I was exhausted, having stupidly stayed awake on Saturday night until 1 a.m. reading. We read for a couple hours in the living room and then went to bed.

I have no idea how I did it, but I thought the drive from Moncton to Grand Pre (where the farm is) was going to be 6 hours. It wasn't. It was 3. So we got up at 7 and after hitting the Tim Hortons (yay, Tim Hortons!) drove out of Moncton around 8. We could've slept till 10, considering we planned on hitting the farm by 2 and ended up here by 11. So we drove past the farm another few miles to Wolfville, the closest town, and had lunch.

Wolfville is the home of Acadia University, with about 3500 students (the town itself only has about 7000 including them). It's a gorgeous campus on a hill. The town is super cute too. Coffee shops and little stores. And we finally hit a bank. 24 hours after crossing into Canada, I finally have some Canadian money. (Luckily, everyone takes U.S. dollars -- as well they should, since miraculously, the USD is at $1.07 to the Canadian dollar.) So after overpaying at the hostel and at the Tim Hortons, I now have the right money.

Anna is great. She's the wife of the farm couple. We haven't met George yet. He's got another full time job as an electrician, so he'll be home later tonight. We did find out that we are going to be harvesting pumpkins the whole time we're here, pretty much. So cool! We will use wheel barrows to begin with, but they are hoping to have the trailer soon for us to be able to use the ATV instead! (Everyone hope for that!)

The house looks small from the outside, but has a ton of bedrooms. Heather, one of Anna and George's three kids, is living here now and working for the farm/tofu business, so she'll be around. And Paul, a British wwoofer is here. He'll be here till next Wednesday and Jasmine, a woman from Halifax is coming Sunday for a few days. So we're not the only peeps working the farm these weeks.

I'm not sure I told everyone before I left, but this is a produce farm and also a tofu making business. Anna told us a lot about tofu already, in only the first 30 minutes or so we talked. We are looking forward to learning more. For those of you who don't know, tofu is made from soy beans. When I lived in Paraguay, we made soy milk and then used the "meat" that's known as "carne" in Paraguay and another name in Japan (Anna uses the Japanese term -- I can't remember it right now) to make other stuff. Tofu is made from only the milk. She's been selling it to a bunch of stores in Halifax and Wolfville and a large grocery chain in the province too. She's had to make some changes, recently, though, due to new food regulations since 9/11. Most of our tofu in the U.S. is vacuum packed and then boiled in the package in order to kill any bacteria. This is why our tofu doesn't have much taste. Canada is putting in similar regulations and it's killing the little guys. Anna's deciding not to do the boiling process, as it ruins the taste and texture of her product. So she's having to rethink where she'll be able to sell.

That's a lot that we already know, considering we arrived here less than 2 hours ago. I'm sure we'll learn more.

I'll be sure to take some photos. I've been lazy so far.

More as we go!