A Country Wedding

This past weekend, my wife and I attended the wedding of one of her friends. In my experience, it was an uncommon event: it was held at a farmer’s produce store outside of town.

I’ve attended, perhaps, twenty weddings. Most were held in churches, followed by drives to country clubs or hotels or other places that could hold crowds for meals and dancing. Only three weddings I’ve attended were outdoors and independent of churches. Those were the most enjoyable, excepting, of course, my own wedding which, though it was in a church, made all weddings pale in comparison. (My wife might read this blog entry. You get my drift.)

This weekend’s wedding was absolutely delightful! The farm market—Ard’s—has evolved in the twelve years we’ve lived here from a simple produce store with a deli counter into a produce store with a restaurant and family-friendly attractions. These include a rope maze, a gunny sack slide, various playground items, a goat pen, and a corn maze that opens when the corn is tall enough.

We’ve gone to Ard’s for their annual customer appreciation days (a small carnival), to choose Christmas trees, and to ride a hay wagon out to a pumpkin patch where we harvested our jack-o-lantern candidates. Ard’s seems very successful, and I’m sure some of that success comes from these extra bits they provide for the community.

For the wedding ceremony, there were rows of benches on the lawn behind the building—adjacent to an open-air dining area (under cover) that wraps around the back corner. Sitting on these benches put the goat enclosure immediately to our right; we could see the goats wandering up and down a ramp that leads to a feeding station about 20 feet over our heads.

During the ceremony, a rooster crowed three times, and then strutted between the guests and the wedding party. The service was simple and pleasant, and afterward we walked to the dining area where we had a buffet dinner service before guests (especially the youngsters) headed out to play volleyball, to explore the corn maze, and otherwise to enjoy the farm market’s recreational facilities.

As the bride’s brother spun up some tunes and got the dancing started, I enjoyed the goats, visited the rooster, and watched patrons of the store come and go. It was such a pleasant time in such a remarkable place. Imagining that the choice of this venue must represent the tastes and sensibilities of my wife’s friend and new husband, I must conclude: my wife has good taste in people.

For the complete City Slipper experience, visit my web site at http://www.cityslipper.com/.

Also, please visit my blog about growing your own vegetables and fruit: Your Small Kitchen Garden

The Farmers' Market

What a wet shopping day! Since I took over cooking for the household back in December, I’ve done the grocery shopping on Wednesdays. Yesterday, it happened to be raining quite hard during my excursion.

My shopping trip usually includes visits to a Mennonite grocery store, to the Lewisburg Farmers’ Market, to the nearly adjacent recycling center, and to Weis Market, the local branch of a typical grocery chain that originates in Pennsylvania. My favorite stop by far is the Lewisburg Farmers’ Market.

The Farmers’ Market is a very long building with vendor tables along the walls, and more tables marking stands along the center of the building. There are stands outside, many along the north side of the building, several more forming a courtyard in front (to the east of the building), and a couple more spilling along the south side of the building. Beyond these outdoor stands is a dirt and gravel parking lot.

The Farmers’ Market is open only on Wednesdays. It draws farmers and vendors from all over central Pennsylvania. Shop there through a year, and you can track the seasons up the east coast as produce arrives from points south months before the same items will ripen here. The best produce at the market, however, is whatever’s in season locally.

We’ve already overdosed on fresh strawberries, and have had no problem with the segue into cherry season (and the overlapping blueberry season). On the vegetable side, we’ve been chowing fresh peas and new potatoes, and we did in a quart of wax beans over the past week. Local peaches are available, though we’re early in peach season, and local sweet corn started appearing at the market a week ago.

The available options will continue to change, but our farmers grow nearly every vegetable and fruit the local climate allows; we’ll see great variety all the way into winter. And, if you think something’s in season but you don’t see it at the market, ask one of the vendors and the item might be available next Wednesday.

The Farmers’ Market is more than a great produce-shop. Inside, there is a stand dedicated to serving hundreds—perhaps thousands of sausage sandwiches each Wednesday. Get to the market early, and the whole building smells like cooking sausage. Get there around lunch time, and a crowd surrounds the stand. Folks buy sandwiches, then chat with fellow shoppers as they lean against the counter. For many, this is the Farmers’ Market experience... who needs produce when you have a sausage sandwich?

At the Farmers’ Market you can buy meat, seafood, candy, cheese, spices, kitchen gadgets, soft pretzels, deep-fried potatoes, antiques, tools, all-for-a-dollar items, soaps, clothing, vacuum cleaner parts, hand-made crafts, and baked goods. The prices are good, and the vendors are usually friendly—even during heavy rain when canopies of the outdoor vendors stream sheets of water through which customers must step to reach the tables. Sure, I got soaked, but still the Farmers’ Market was the high point of my shopping chore.

For the complete City Slipper experience, please visit my web site at http://www.cityslipper.com/.

Hay Season

I love hay season. The timing of the season varies from farm-to-farm, but usually the local farmers cut and harvest in late June or early July, and again in September. Much depends on rain. In some seasons, central Pennsylvania farmers may get three cuttings of hay, and in a very dry year, the second cutting can be a great disappointment.

Making hay is a simple task. You begin by having a field of grasses and other plants that your livestock likes to eat. Popular plants include Timothy grass, Orchard grass, Alfalfa, and Clover. When the grasses are mature, but not fully gone to seed, you “mow” the field, cutting the plants close to the ground.

After mowing, you leave the cut plants on the ground to dry… and you might even revisit the field after a few days to flip the clippings so they dry evenly. Before the cut plants dry out completely, you gather them into bales or piles, depending on your preference—or the equipment you have available.

Of course, this is a gross oversimplification of hay-making. A farmer must prepare and plant a hay field; work the cutting, drying, baling, and storing around the weather (drying hay during a rainy month can’t be easy); evaluate when a field must be revitalized (it’s possible to get several years of good hay from a single planting); and deal with the baling equipment.

I have nothing to do with any of this. In fact, the only part of hay-making that makes me love the season is the cutting. Here’s why: when the local farmers cut their hay fields, the smell of onions fills the air. This is because wild onions grow in the hay fields—enough to produce a cloud of sweet onion aroma that hangs over the land for a day or two. This same onion smell can drift off of a freshly cut soy bean or corn field as well… but the harvest for those is still a month or more away.

If I simply craved the smell of onions, I’d go to the kitchen and cut one open. But I love the hay season not for the onion smell itself, but rather because of the smell. I’d never have expected it: a farmer harvests a crop, and the neighborhood smells like onions for a few days. It’s unexpected. It borders on absurd. I love it.

For the complete City Slipper experience, please visit my web site at http://www.cityslipper.com/.