National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day
I'm a big PB fan. It comes caching with me with jelly more times than not.
Raspberry is my favourite, but stock strawberry too for my Little Buggers...
There ARE peanut growers in Canada, first introduced into the soil in 1982!. There is a little southerly corner of Vittorio, Ontario that has a couple of peanut growers (rumours are that they are feuding competing family companies!). With the decline in tobacco consumption (Cardiac nurse says - hooray!), farmers searched for an alternate cash crop. The County possesses the right combination of sandy soil and temperate climate to produce a high quality crop. The price of nut butter—which includes peanut butter—rose 5.6% year over year, and Canadians were paying 8.7% more than prior to the pandemic.
What Canadian farmers do grow a lot of is fresh fruit, which can be made into jelly.
Canada is the second-largest blueberry producer in the world, following the United States. In 2021, Canadian farmers harvested 142 779 metric tonnes of blueberries, down 2.6% from 2020 and 18.9% lower from 2019, when a record high of 176 155 metric tonnes were produced.
Strawberry is reputed to be the most popular fruit jelly; Canadians farmers grew 23 490 metric tonnes of strawberries in 2021, down 0.5% from 2020 and 11.2% lower from 2019.
2021 was the most difficult for raspberry farmers on record. Production fell 25.8% from a year earlier to 5 253 metric tonnes, by far the lowest level since the current data series began and 83.0% less than when first counted in 2002.
Found us a nice covered shelter in Deep Cove, in case of rain. I'll bring a few PB & J to share. Or maybe some PB & J cookies. We'll see... You are certainly welcome to contribute, if you would like. A nice meet and greet in a beautiful corner of North Vancouver. You may not get me hosting again over the bridge, so come while you have a chance. I think this is a very, very busy area on weekends. Car pooling is highly recommended. Note the parking lot and 3 hour road side parking. Parking may be full, plan to potentially walk... Geopups are okay in the park, but not technically in the picnic area. I'm leaving mine at home... Make a day of it on the North Shore.