Wall Murals

The kitchen stove was the centre piece of the homesteader's food production. On the stove you can see bannock or fry bread that was a staple for settlers and indigenous people in the colonial period.
But Dr. Nancy Turner, professor of Ethnobotany at The University of Victoria, says Indigenous people already had their own version made from a wild plant called camas. The camas bulb would have been baked for long periods of time, dried and then flattened or chopped and formed into cakes and loaves, similar to modern bannock. Turner suggests that unleavened breads made from the starch/flour of bracken rhizomes were probably “cooked/baked on rocks over the fire, in sand, or in cooking pits or earth ovens.” Moss, black tree lichen, ground cat tail roots and ground bracken rhizomes are all known to have been used to make a type of bread-like food.
Turner says that since the Aboriginal peoples of Canada were consuming these bread-like foods pre-contact, the Scots’ bannock was easily adopted.
Flour-based bannock became a common food among Indigenous people across the continent. Bannock keeps without spoiling for a long time and is a good source of carbohydrates, which historically was hard to come by in some regions of Canada.
CBC radio “Unreserved” 2016

Dairy farming has always brought with it the home based manufacture of secondary products: butter, cheese, yoghurt. However the development of commercial cheese production in the area is fairly recent. There are now several cheese factories in the Lumby area.

Domestic honey bees were brought to North America by early European settlers. Father Pandosy has been credited with establishing honey bees in the Okanagan Valley in south Kelowna. Domestic bees have been increasingly threatened by use of weedkillers, pesticides and other chemicals.

Pre-contact, the cedar tree was a vitally important source of fibre for many purposes including basket making.These baskets carried roots and berries and served as cradles for babies. If woven tightly enough the baskets served as cooking pots. People would heat up stones in a fire and then add the stones into the water tight basket to cook meals. Cedar root baskets are very durable and many have survived many years of use and storage." information from the Lake Country Museum.
Other plants,such as Indian hemp and hazelnut roots were important sources of fibre.

The glaciers had retreated from south central BC about 13 thousand years ago. At first the land was barren but gradually plant and animal life moved in to the raw land. By 11 thousand years ago the warming trend resulted in an opening up of the valley bottoms and archaeological consensus is that human occupation likely followed soon after (Ignace p 80.) Solid archaeological evidence secured by carbon dating has given us 8,340 years ago as a fixed date for " Gore Creek man" from the South Thompson River valley. The variety of tools discovered in the central plateau area of BC indicate the cross roads between several different traditions south, east and west, but by about 7,500 years ago a distinctive Nesikep culture had solidified. The continuity, variety and sophistication of the stone points: spear heads, knives and scrapers are evidence of long historical development and are found "in almost every environmental niche and geological context and at almost all altitudes. " throughout the region. (Ignace p 87) Archaeological evidence is clear that the Interior Plateau Region was continuously occupied for thousands of years.

The following quote is taken from "a Memorial to Sir Wifred Laurier ... from the Suswap, Okanagan and Couteau tribes of British Columbia ... 1910"
"The country of each tribe was just the same (When settlers arrived) as a very large farm or ranch (belonging to all the people of the tribe) from which they gathered their food and clothing, etc., fish which they got in plenty for food, grass and vegetation on which their horses grazed and the game lived, and much of which furnished materials for manufactures, etc., stone which furnished pipes,utensils, and tools, etc., trees which furnished firewood, materials for houses and utensils,plants, roots, seeds, nuts and berries which grew abundantly and were gathered in their season just the same as the crops on a ranch, and used for food; minerals, shells, etc., which were used for ornament and for plants, etc., water which was free to all." The whole document is available online.

Early farmers grew oats, barley and wheat for human and animal consumption. Apparently, at one time, there were two water mills for grinding grain in the Lumby area.

In the 1930's Lumby delivered an average of 5,000 tons of hay per year to Vernon. (Lumby Historical Society) Hay storage evolved over the decades in response to mechanization: loose hay was replaced by square bales, square bales by round.

Field corn for silage is an important crop fermented and fed to cattle over the winter months with a variety of means of storage developed: conventional and limited-oxygen tower silos; horizontal silage bunkers; bags and silage bales. . Formerly wooden silos were a significant  farm outbuilding, however these have gone into disuse and been mostly dismantled.