My Aunt & Uncle, who we were visiting, live near Manotick. We went out one day to get some strawberries from Miller's Farm & Market. They are at 6158 Rideau Valley Drive, in the south end of Manotick.
They are a fairly large operation, with pick-your-own or ready picked berries in season.
In addition to berries, which are their main crop, they run a small shop with vintage/antique furniture and housewares, and local preserves. Outside, there is a selection of potted annuals and other garden plants, and it looks like you can even buy bulk composts and mulches.
We had missed the early season strawberries and all that were available were a rather large, insipid variety; much like almost all the others we saw in Ottawa while we were there. However, it turned out to be the first day that they had raspberries so we bought some of those instead. They were absolutely superb, sweet-tart and bursting with flavour and aroma. We could also have bought pies made locally by another company, but using Miller's berries.
Some of the preserves available in the store. They don't grow apples, but they do sell them in season. They have an arrangement whereby they send corn to be sold at a similar on-farm store with an orchard in Prescott, and apples are sent up to them to sell in Manotick. I thought this was a great idea. Small farm stores like this need to have more variety than they can reasonably grow themselves in order to attract more customers and keep going all summer, and this is a great way to do it and still keep it fairly local.
Last year at this time I made Strawberries in Lime-Ginger Syrup.
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