Where the Wild Things Grow

Jones, who was born in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, didn’t originally set out to be a chef. As a young boy he loved cooking, but his father, who was a chef himself, talked him out of following the same career path. “Back then, it wasn’t very glamorous,” Jones says. His other passion ("walking on the beach and collecting rocks”) led him to geology, which in turn led him to Calgary and a job in oil and gas. 

“I love geology, but I didn’t love the business,” he says now. “I’m happiest when I’m cooking or walking in the mountains.” When he wasn’t hiking, he began studying cookbooks, devouring 1,000 of them in a year. “I sucked it all in and read them all like novels.” 

He eventually exchanged geology for cooking school in London, England, where he graduated at the top of his class, and then a Michelin two-star in Alsace. “It was an eye opener. It was quite rough. I learned to swear early on,” he says. From there, he worked at the legendary Le Crocodile in Alsace and Tour d’Argent in Paris. But he quickly tired of French food and returned to Canada, this time to Vancouver. 

It was 1992 when he did so, and a handful of restaurants were beginning to define a unique Canadian West Coast cuisine, among them Raintree and Sooke Harbour House. Jones worked at both.

But after seven years in Vancouver, he began looking for an escape. “You don’t make a lot of money as a chef, so we couldn’t afford to buy a place,” he says. “So we looked around and bought this place for half the price of a small house in Vancouver.”

“This place” is a five-acre heritage farm in the warm, dry rain shadow of the Koksilah Mountains. “We’re a very special area for climate here. My friend James Barber called it the Provence of Canada.” (Barber was such a good friend that the oven from his cooking show, Urban Peasant, enjoys pride of place in the Deerholme Farm kitchen.) 

Just about everything grows on the farm, including apples, plums, quince, and a wide variety of vegetables and herbs. “Some of it doesn’t make it past the deer,” Jones admits. “Whatever’s ready, that’s what goes into my menus.”

Best of all, he says, “It’s right in the mushroom zone here. We’ve found truffles here and pine mushrooms and chanterelles, right on the property.” Those fungi were featured in 2013’s Deerholme Mushroom Book (Touchwood Editions), and every fall Jones organizes mushroom dinners, including two that focus on local truffles.

In the 20 years since he and Lynn bought Deerholme Farm, guests have made their way from all over the world to their cosy dining room, with its warm pine tables and mushroom mural painted by a local artist. Of course, this pandemic year, they’ll be travelling from a lot closer than New York or Australia, but they’re still booking out the dinners and other events. “It’s been shockingly busy,” Jones says.

And when they arrive, those guests might find themselves dining on multi-course feasts of Peruvian barbecue or Spanish tapas, German potato pancakes, Korean vegetarian fare or Japanese farm food. 

“We take influences from different places. The foundation is French with lots of Asian stuff mixed in, except when I do a themed dinner,” Jones says. “Because we’re on the Island, we make our own sushi, we make our own dim sum, we make our own barbecue pork.

“But, at the end, I’m doing Deerholme Farm food.”

And that is something that could only come from this uniquely wild and untamed place on Vancouver Island.