Hard work making bellies happy
Preserving produce in delicious ways at Roadhouse Farm
“I don’t make any money growing vegetables, and I don’t make any money growing animals, so I have to make money on the processing and preserving.” Matt Cottreau Owner, Roadhouse Farm
NORTH KEMPTVILLE — Matt Cottreau, owner of Roadhouse Farm in North Kemptville, realized early on that in order to make a successful livelihood from farming, you have to take it to the next level.
“I don’t make any money growing vegetables, and I don’t make any money growing animals, so I have to make money on the processing and preserving,” he says.
Preserving farm produce is something he does in spades: smoking hams, bacon, scallops, pollock and more in his smokehouse; making sausages that include Hawaiian, bacon and cheddar, creamy mushroom, tomato and feta, roasted garlic and honey; and pickling cauliflower, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, beans, celery, in addition to more traditional mouth-puckering favourites like dill pickles. He has 100-day old hams in fine shape in the smoker and in the fall, he sometimes butchers deer for hunters.
Although he does farm Berkshire pigs, he doesn’t butcher them. He says he’d never be able to keep up with farming on a large scale with the other things he does.
He buys certified, high-quality meat in the Maritimes and specializes mainly in pork, and fish, filleted and smoked fresh off the boats.
He has turkeys but didn’t raise chickens this year as the owls were swooping down and stealing an average of two every day last year.
He planted a small apple orchard years ago, specifically for making cider but lost half of it in a hurricane.
“Every time you go two steps ahead, something knocks you down nature-wise,” he says. Someone once asked him if there was anything he didn’t do and he replied with a smile, “sleep!”
Years before he opened his popular Roadhouse Farm, Cottreau bought his land and farmed part time, working mostly aboard fishing boats. But the danger of that job concerned him.
Then, he almost killed himself falling off a chicken house that he was building. He impaled himself on some freshly sheared Japanese knotweed, with a stalk going up through his arm and into his neck. He spent a year healing from that and realized first-hand that danger was everywhere.
Back to the sea he went, for seven more years, reading books about farming during his spare time on the boat and learning a lot.
“Everything on this farm has a book in the library about it,” he says.
Eventually, farming won the wrestle match when working both occupations became difficult.
Cottreau says when COVID started, he and his partner, Sherry Sisco, amped up the business and got stock rolling. Cottreau’s mother, Holly, helps weekly and there are friends who pitch in on days when he’s brewing wine or beer.
The couple started buying mason jars in June, anticipating a shortage and Cottreau’s practice of saving seed from years past proved a blessing. Veseys Seeds in PEI sold out of many kinds as they couldn’t keep up with the 400 to 500 per cent increase in demand.
Cottreau planted 300 feet of beans, Asian cabbage that he
later made kimchi and sauerkraut from, Savoy and purple cabbage, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, swiss chard, beets, squash, pumpkins, turnip (greens go to the turkeys), 80 feet of dill and some corn. He tries to make unique products that not everyone can obtain, including gluten-free products.
“I just try to keep every customer happy, one at a time, and keep the new stuff coming.” He says the next phase for the business is underway. He’s hired a consultant to encompass everything he does under one roof and make it flow.
The Roadhouse Farm Facebook page is a popular click, with postings on what’s being harvested and tips on preserving.
“We created Roadhouse (FB) to promote positivity,” says Cottreau.
“When I post things, it’s to let people know that they can grow it too. We promote gardening, homesteading, the preservation of food. Lots of times people think I have a restaurant out here. I’m just posting my supper.”