IT IS THE PERFECT DAY. A warm sun, a big blue dome of sky, the smell of growing things perfuming the air over the gently rolling hills of the Niagara Escarpment. If only we weren’t caught on the steaming asphalt of the Queen Elizabeth Way behind an upside-down tractor-trailer and a parking lot of irate vacationers. We turn onto an alternative route, but it, too, is jammed, a stinking stew of honking, sighing irritability. My husband Nick and I try to laugh it off, but a certain desperation begins to thicken the air in our car. Our time away — alone — is short. It feels as if every moment must count, every second must be filled with meaningful conversation, important thoughts. We don’t have the energy or time for traffic jams, for other people’s road rage, for our perfect day to tank before noon.

When we finally arrive in the town of Beamsville, on the southern shore of Lake Ontario near St. Catharines, the directions to The Good Earth Cooking School instruct us to watch for two birch trees. Luckily, the enormous, ancient specimens are hard to miss, and with their gracefully weeping branches draping over the drive, they seem like magical sentries welcoming us to the working farm inside. It’s almost as if there’s a spell cast over this place, and I’m already feeling the stress dissipate as we drive up the gravel lane, peach trees lining one side, a small patch of Cabernet Franc grapes the other. We turn in at what was once a garage, now a modern kitchen painted in a rainbow of colours and outfitted so that 12 people may comfortably witness the labours of the Good Earth’s chefs.

Nicolette Novak, owner and selfproclaimed “facilitator of fun,” greets us at the screen door, hand extended. She smiles sympathetically at our tale of traffic woe and hands us each a fortifying glass of Niagara wine.

With her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and dressed in pink turtleneck and jeans, Novak sets an easygoing vibe. She opened the small cooking school and catering company nine years ago after deciding she could no longer manage the 89-hectare family farm on her own. Though she grew up on this vast tract of peach, plum and pear trees, farming itself was something of an afterthought for her. It was only when her father died tragically in a car accident on the first day of the peach harvest in 1987 that she quit her job in Toronto as a ministerial aide at Queen’s Park and moved home, literally taking up where her father had left off.