Ostriches are Our Future

And I for one welcome our long-necked avian overlords. Okay, I may be exaggerating, but I'm fascinated to discover that ostrich farming is a booming business in Ontario, to the point where the supply of ostrich chicks, eggs and meat simply can't match the demand.

This revelation comes from my excursion of last Wednesday to the rural territory around Guelph and Milton with Tastes of Tomorrow, the student-run chef's club at George Brown's culinary school. They run a great series throughout the school year, with an annual farm visit each summer. All the Tastes of Tomorrow events that I've attended have been great, and I highly recommend them.

In this case, for an amazing $10, I had a full day's worth of farm touring plus lunch and lots of time to ask questions of the farmers and representatives of Foodland Ontario and the Ontario Farm Animals Council.


Our first stop of the morning was White Rock Ostrich Farm near Rockwood, which is a little over an hour from Toronto via the 427. There, farmer Deb Simmonds recounted how she and her husband just drifted almost by accident into raising ostriches 25 years ago after reading an article about them.

Now, with 17 breeders, a small herd of "teenagers" (pictured above) and an incubator room full of chicks, the farm can't handle the market for ostrich meat. She describes visits from top chefs and their emissaries begging to be supplied regularly; she turns them down. (The farm does attend some farmers' markets, including Nathan Phillips Square, however.)

"We're training two other families to raise ostriches," says Simmonds."Quebec will buy any ostrich chick, and we're now selling fertilized eggs to BC." The farm experienced a 30% business increase after the "buy local" campaign started. Sidelines include selling the egg shells and moulted feathers, which people use for decorative crafts, and tanning the hides.



An ostrich farm will keep one male for every two or three females. Females can lay 30 to 60 eggs per season, each of which has 42-day gestation period. Ostriches can live for about 70 years, but the best meat comes from an 11-month-old bird. "They're lower fat than chicken or turkey, and there are no antibiotics because they're so disease-resistant," Simmonds comments. "It makes good carpaccio."

An ostrich egg is equivalent to two dozen chicken eggs. Simmonds mentions one family that created a monster devilled egg for a party after using a band saw to cut an ostrich egg in half. The demand is so high that Simmonds only sells eggs for eating in April and September, by reservation.



I must say that as we bumped around the ostrich enclosures on a tractor-pulled wagon, the theme from Jurassic Park started running on my inner iPod. Of all birds, ostriches have to be among the most dinosaurean. Look at those feet. Like something from Tatooine or what?



After our ostrich experience, we were treated (by Foodland Ontario) to a really lovely lunch featuring local ingredients cooked by Chef Hubert Bielmann of Heaven on 7 Bistro and Pub in Rockwood, before heading to Andrews' Scenic Acres, which is not far from Highway 401 and Trafalgar Road. Lauraine and Bert Andrews grow a wide range of fruit and berries, with 100 acres of pick-your-own crops and an additional 700 or so acres under cultivation.

Although most of their soil is the alkaline limestone of the nearby Niagara Escarpment, they also have one patch of very acidic soil that enables them to grow blueberries, which are rare in the neighbourood. Other crops include strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries (pictured), rhubarb, asparagus, apples, sour cherries and a few grapes.

The Andrewses also run Scotch Block Winery, where they sell wines made with their own fruit. As someone with a weakness for fruit wines, I tried several, and ended up taking home a bottle of their Raspberry Rouge, which I may or may not serve with my chunk of roast ostrich.