Dick Dixon lives at Hawkins Lake. He has been all that a pioneer could be: cowboy, wild horse catcher, homesteader and rancher. Dick is known for his kindness and a wonderful smile that never ends. He is the ultimate optimist. He says that if you look hard enough on a cloudy day you will find a tiny spot of blue somewhere.
The dark cloud of COVID-19 has shadowed all of us for over a year. However, there is a spot of blue that has grown during this difficult time. That spot is a new focus on family and home, on learning new ways to do things, and on making do with what we have.
A positive result of that focus is the revival of vegetable gardening. Packets of seeds are flying off the racks, and soil and fertilizer are on the move. People talk about their successes with this and that and their failures. The Cariboo can be tricky. One person can grow great asparagus and their neighbour over the hill can’t grow a stalk.
During the 1950s and ’60s, one of the most productive market gardens in B.C. was located at the west end of Canim Lake, where Bridge Creek ends its long journey from Bridge Lake to Canim Lake. A short distance after Canim-Hendrix Road crosses the creek, a marshy stretch of land opens out into a wide flat plain that is stunning in every season. In the spring, the grass is a brilliant emerald. Cattle graze along a fence and a sliver of Canim Lake sparkles in the distance, backed by a high, tree-covered ridge.
This is the Cabbage Patch. It was once a busy place of machines, workers and trucks coming and going from the coast. After years of horse logging, Toody Shirran found her job there interesting. She said it was a welcome change from skidding logs behind a team through rough bush.
“In those days that was the biggest truck farm in all of British Columbia,” Shirran said. “A man from the Okanagan named Witter ran the place and I was one of their main workers. I drove a tractor and pulled a planter that could plant two rows of cabbages at a time. When there was a dry spell, I hauled water. There was a big root cellar where the corral is now and I worked in there, sorting and trimming vegetables and packing them. Many young women from Forest Grove and from the Canim Lake Reserve also worked there. The land in the valley at the Reserve was excellent for growing potatoes. Big loads of them were shipped from Exeter Station on the PGE (Pacific Great Eastern Railway).”
When Shirran’s daughter Vicky was 12 years old she had a summer job at the Cabbage Patch.
“I earned $75,” she said. “It was a full day, harvesting potatoes, turnips and cabbages for 75 cents an hour. It was hot, hard work. One day I saw a man get his arm caught in the PTO from a tractor. That left a lasting impression!”
An entrepreneur named Bob Fish bought the Cabbage Patch and the vegetable gardens gradually disappeared back into the original rich bottomland. In 1972, Louis Judson went to work for Fish.
“He was developing a subdivision on the hillside above the Cabbage Patch,” Louis said. “I dug a hole for the Canim Lake reservoir up there. His idea was to build a marina down where the vegetable fields had been. I dug the channel in from the lake with a dragline and cleaned it out with a cable-operated excavator. Then I used a grader to level off the berms that outlined the fields along the channel. You can still see where those berms were. In the spring I monitored the lake levels as part of the environmental requirements and saw that the water came up four feet in one day. Fish finally gave up on his plans for a marina and moved on to something else.”
The Cabbage Patch is on Canim-Hendrix Road. From Forest Grove, the road goes downhill into Hoods Hollow, a narrow valley. It winds through the Canim Lake band and on to the Cabbage Patch. From there it curves up a hill and on to a spectacular panorama of snow-capped mountains beyond the lake.
