Somehow, I read my way through childhood without encountering Anne of Green Gables. Knowing what I know now, I’m certain I would have liked the gregarious and adventurous Anne Shirley just as much, if not more, than I did Heidi, the four March sisters of Little Women, or Nancy Drew.

When we pulled up in a sprawling yard on Prince Edward Island one sunny morning last August, I knew nothing about the original owners of the quaint farmhouse in front of us. I had yet to understand a reference someone (who had read the book) made to the “Lake of Shining Waters sparkling just beyond the trees across the way. However, I soon learned that John and Annie Campbell, aunt and uncle to the author Lucy Maud Montgomery, had built this home in 1872 on land that had been in their family since 1775.

It’s not surprising that Lucy Maud Montgomery’s first major publication was the story of a young orphan girl. Maud herself was not exactly an orphan, but she might as well have been. Born in 1874, she was 21 months old when her mother died of tuberculosis and her father placed her in the care of her maternal grandparents. Grief-stricken Hugh John Montgomery remained in the area for some time but then took off for adventure in the Canadian North-West Territories (now Saskatchewan) when his daughter was seven.

The little girl spent much time alone, later acknowledging that this period of life helped develop her creativity as she played with imaginary friends Katie and Lucy who lived in the “fairy room” behind a bookcase in her grandparents’ drawing room. When she was a bit older, she often visited her cousins, children of the Campbells, and referred in her journal to their green-gabled farmhouse as “the Wonder Castle of my Childhood.”

The farmhouse and grounds are now part of The Anne of Green Gables Museum at Silver Bush, which James Campbell dreamed of opening after his cousin became a famous author. It was James’s wife Ruth who actually opened the museum in 1972 after her husband’s death. Today, George Campbell, son of James and Ruth, owns and operates the museum and farm with his family.

So here we were, more than a hundred years later, wandering through this wonder castle, from the cozy kitchen with its wood-fire stove to the upstairs guestroom that displays many of Maud’s hand-developed photographs and an intricate “crazy quilt” she worked from ages 12 to a6. Back downstairs, we admired the sunny parlor where Maud married in 1911. The original organ and furnishings are still there.

I bought a copy of Anne of Green Gables before we left the property, and it made for delightful reading during the rest of our travels.

A couple other things I didn’t know before that August morning: 1) It seems few Canadians use the elegant name Prince Edward Island anymore. Locals have permanently shortened it to PEI (not pronounced “pie” but rather “pee-eee-aye” with all three letters). 2) PEI is known for its potatoes, which have been grown in the island’s iron-rich red soil for more than 200 years. In 2013, approximately 88,000 acres of potatoes were grown in the Canadian Maritime Province known as PEI.

George Campbell wanted us visitors to appreciate the proper way to plant potato tubers on his Green Gables farm, so he took us over to a prepared patch of that iron-rich red soil, did a short demonstration, then handed out hoes so we could practice the technique.

George was standing off to one side in his straw hat, denim overalls, and boots when someone in our group commented that he reminded them somewhat of Grant Wood’s 1930 painting, American Gothic. Then someone else decided we should stage a scene for photographs and handed me a hoe. Our recreation of American Gothic is much more cheerful and not nearly as artistic, but you get the idea.

After all that, we were off up the road to Raspberry Point Oysters for a lesson in oyster farming. A local fisherman who specializes in oyster farming gave us an in-depth description of what goes on during the four to five years it takes an oyster to grow to harvesting size. He explained that PEI oysters are special because the salty influx from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, combined with cool water temperatures in the area, gives these oysters a clean, salty flavor with a “delightful, sweet finish.”

He then encouraged all of us to prove his point by “enjoying” a raw oyster, his definition of “enjoying” including actually chewing the oyster instead of simply letting it slide down the throat.

Now I do love oysters, but my preferred version is an oyster po’boy deep fried. I wasn’t keen on chewing a raw oyster, but my fellow travelers shamed me into it and then grabbed my phone to catch the experience on camera, as you see here. That oyster was a bit salty and a bit sweet, and I did actually chew it, but in future, I plan to stick to my po’boys.