October 13, 2021
Last week, I teased the return of Fall Food Fest! Our annual celebration of food, fall, and community is back again! Growing Chefs will be at Market this Saturday, October 16th to host a wonderful variety of fall food activities!
🍎 Pie Contest (Judging is at 12:30)
🍎 Apple Tasting
🍎 Cooking Class (11-11:30)
🍎 Funny Vegetable Competition
🍎 Interactive Activities
🍎 Live Music
🍎 Food Drive for @londonfoodbank
🍎 Delicious Food
And more!
Find the Fall Food Fest out on the square from 10am to 1pm along with the Outdoor Farmers’ Market! Let’s celebrate food, friends!
This event is free for all, but please consider making a donation to Growing Chefs♥️
On Wednesday, I stopped by Janssens Farm Fresh Produce and had the opportunity to see Diane for the first time in a long time, and was able to see the farm and chat with Ray about how farming has been this year.
Most of you are probably familiar with the farm as they’ve been a part of our market for years now. Ray usually comes on Thursdays but now that most Saturday Markets are ending, you’ll see Ray on Saturdays too, starting this weekend! Those apples you’ll taste at the Fall Food Fest? They’ll be Ray’s!
It always amazes me how much work and planning goes into farming. The amount of knowledge a farmer needs to hold is astounding. Ray has 37 different varieties of apples on his farm and can recognize them all. (Me? I see red, yellow and green fruit – not much more!) As we walked through the apple orchards (10 acres! – no, we didn’t walk that all), Ray chatted about some of the things they have to think about when growing apples. Deer, bugs, season changes, when to pick, what to pick, when to prune, etc. The list is long.
From talking to some of your other farmers, you probably know that the weather has been a bit “all over the place” this year. While some of our farmers have faced extreme dry periods, others have faced inches and inches of rain, all depending on their location which is not that far from each other. Ray has faced issues due to too much water. You know the saying, “Farmers love rain!”? Well, sure, but not THAT much rain. You can talk with Dan from Wandering Bee about this as well. Drowned plants just don’t produce.
It’s been an unusual year for warmth, too. We had an early frost last year that caught some people by surprise, and to see this warm weather that we saw on Wednesday this late in October is a bit strange, especially in comparison. All of this affects farming, and particularly the plans farmers put into place at the start of the year. It is nice to still have lots of producing tomatoes and peppers this late, so we’ll take that one with a grain of salt!
Last week’s cooking class was led by Kimi Abdullah! She made a Weeknight Indonesian Chicken Soup and it was delicious! She used a rotisserie chicken from Alo Chicken here at the Market and a variety of other ingredients from the Market. My favourite twist on this soup is that lime was used – I hadn’t seen that before and the medley of flavours was lovely.
It’s definitely soup season! Once that first red leaf falls from the nearest tree, I pull out my stock pot and crock pot! This week, Melanie Amadasun, a former vendor of ours who many of you may know, is leading our cooking class! She is making a Coconut Lentil Soup!
This is the list, folks! See who you can find at the Farmers’ Market this Thursday, October 14th from 4-7pm! Click on their names to find information on pre-orders and to learn more about their farms and businesses!
Check out their websites for more information about their products and to see what’s in season/currently available!
This is the list, folks! See who you can find at the Farmers’ Market this Saturday, October 16th from 8am-1pm! Click on their names to find information on pre-orders and to learn more about their farms and businesses!
Check out their websites for more information about their products and to see what’s in season/currently available!
