Sparkes Corn Barn

The name says most of it. A corn barn belongs to a particular strand of food retail, and it is a strand Chilliwack supports better than almost anywhere else in the province. Something over 17,000 hectares of the municipality is farmland inside the Agricultural Land Reserve, carrying more than 700 farms, and agriculture accounts for close to 30 per cent of local economic activity. The consequence for anyone shopping is a layer of independent food retail that most cities of ninety thousand simply do not have: farm stores selling their own beef, dairy and eggs, greengrocers working off fields a few kilometres away, butchers, and the roadside stands through Greendale, Yarrow and Rosedale that open with the corn in August. This is the largest dairy-producing area in British Columbia, with poultry and greenhouse growing close behind it.

No street address, telephone number or website is published here. That is ordinary at this end of the trade, where the crop and the calendar set the terms, but it does mean there is no way to say what is on the table in any given week. Produce retail moves with the growing year across this whole valley, and the roadside trade thins considerably outside the warm months, so check before making a special trip for one particular thing.