Windsor Day 4

Windsor Day 4
Today we spent looking at Essex County with John and Mary as our guides of which the city of Windsor is a part of. It was great to have John do this because if anyone knows the history of this area John certainly does. This is the southernmost part of Canada and Point Pelee is the southernmost tip of the country. Essex County could be called the fruit and vegetable garden of the country because of the vast farming on the flat land that occurs. Heinz and Green Giant both have extensive canning works here to can corn and beets and catsup and tomato sauce cucumbers and pickles. At the Heinz plant we saw 40-50 truckloads of tomatoes lined up ready to unload their tomatoes. These would then go into troughs as the tomatoes would be handled in water filled troughs for the canning procedure.
We saw a bald eagle along the way in a tree just by the side of the road. Out on Lake Eire there were thousand of cormorants and I did get a picture of them but they would not let me get too close to them.
Along the farms you saw either the Detroit River or Lake Erie and the cottages or homes along the banks. When settlers first came here this was all very dense forest and they were given 80 feet ( I believe) of river or lake front and as far back as they could clear for their farms. Hence most of the farms started at the waters edge.
We stopped at a roadside farm to buy some blueberries and you could pick them there also, but we did not have time to do that. Next, was a stop at one of the many wineries to do some tasting and to try some ice wine. This is wine from grapes picked at -10 degrees Celsius (about 25 degrees F) in the winter and then processed immediately . You only get about one drop per grape but the wine has a sugar rated content of about 15 – 19 whereas other wines have a sugar content from 0 to 2.
Later we went thru Leamington and Kingston small towns in the county. John and Mary’s son John Jr. works in Kingston at the Toronto Dominion Bank and lives in a cottage as they call them here on the lake. We visited with him and he has completely redone his home there. He has a great view of the water and just a short distance to his work.
We also visited the cottages my parents owned on Cedar Island when I grew up here and the present owner was gracious enough to allow us in to look at them. There were four originally and each had two bedrooms a small kitchen, bath and living room with a screened in porch. Only one unit number four was still original as they have converted the other three to a single home. It was however the one that we used in the summers to escape the heat of the city. Unfortunately the large Weeping Willow tree out front on the lake was gone (lost to a lightning strike two years previously), but the island was still there.
Well after all of that we had a wonderful dinner at the country club in Kingsbury courtesy of John Jr who is a member there. Then it was time for bed and home as it was a really long day.
1 One of Windsor's many churches
2 The cottages
3 Tomatoes at Heinz
4 Comorants
4 John and Mary Fletcher