Last week for the Kemptville Kinsmen Farmers Market!

Sunday is a busy day for us. When my father was sick in 2007, we began a weekly family dinner ritual that we continue today. It is a great opportunity to reconnect with family after a busy week. Most weeks we have 15 to 20 guests at Sunday dinner. This is why I didn’t make it to the Kemptville Kinsmen Farmers’ Market until a couple of weeks ago. I was just too darned busy.

But let’s face it. The Farmer is the chef at our house. All I have to do is clean house, set the table, make a salad and some appetizers, and then clean up after the event. I don’t really have to be in the kitchen Sunday afternoon. In fact, he prefers that I am not there. An invisible line exists between the kitchen island and the stove. No one is allowed into the cook’s area on Sundays.

For some reason, we ended up with far too many chickens in our freezers this year. We were brainstorming, the Farmer and I, about marketing our meat. I suggested the Farmers’ Market. Finally, I got to go. As a vendor at the Farmers’ Market, I didn’t have much opportunity to shop. I did a quick run-through, however, and I can report that the KKFM is very impressive this year. Vendors offer fresh fruits and vegetables, farm-raised chicken, turkey, beef, pork and lamb, as well as maple syrup, fudge, fresh flowers, jewellery and handicrafts. Don’t eat lunch before you go to the market. You will want to save your appetite so you can sample the Thai spring rolls, samosas, jams and chutney, homemade pizzas, pies and cookies.

The first week I was in attendance, a great blues vibe was permeating the scene. I thought someone had a really good CD on the speaker. Then I saw the singer. He was sitting at the end of the lane in the sunshine, playing his guitar and singing into the microphone. Wonderful! The next week, Doug Hendry and friends were playing Irish music on the fiddle and mandolin. In 30 degrees of Indian summer. Bless them.

We have a really good thing going here, at the Farmers’ Market. Check it out. You have just one more week! After Thanksgiving, it’s all over until next year.

Many Farmwife readers have stepped up to introduce themselves over the past few weeks. Thanks for that! It’s great to meet the people who are reading the stories. We have sold out of our Thanksgiving turkeys, thank you. Next year we will raise more. Some farmers tell me that turkeys are dumb and difficult to raise. I find them lovely. Granted, if you let them go free, they will run amok into coyote territory. The wild turkeys aren’t much help. More than once I have caught them whispering to the domestic turkeys through the chicken wire, telling them of life in the forest. When the turkeys do manage to escape from their area of the barn, however, they tend to go straight for the neighbours’ house. There, they climb up onto the porch, peek into the kitchen window and terrorize the show dogs.

The other night our daughter Paulina, who works in an Asian restaurant in Ottawa, was sent to the supermarket to select and buy a live lobster. She called me on the long walk back to the restaurant, obviously upset. ‘I can feel it moving in the bag!’ she said. I told her to thank the lobster, and to try not to think about it. I assured her that its end would come quickly and without suffering. I will do the same with the turkeys. I love them, with their gentle ways and their melodic gobbling. On October 5^th, I will gently tuck them in their cages, send them on holiday, and thank them for their contribution to our Thanksgiving Sunday dinner.