Miskatonic University PressClover Roads Organic Farms is another of my favourite tables at the farmer’s market managed by The Stop at the Wychwood Barns. It’s run by John and Inge Crowther, somewhere near Hagersville, southwest of Hamilton. There’s a picture of John in Growing Ambrosia From The Earth, a write-up by someone who saw them at another farmer’s market in town.
I always enjoyed stopping by their table, saying hello and picking up something. I got all my onions from them, and I went through a fair bit of squash over the last months. I was looking forward to the summer and the delicious tomatoes and all the other fresh produce.
My onions are long gone, but I have some of their stuff still around. Here we see two bars of soap, a half-filled jar of honey, an empty jar of mustard and an unopened jar of pesto that I found behind a jar of pickles in the back of my fridge. The large thing on the left is a frozen two-pound pheasant. I’m going to roast it soon. The word is that the legs are tough so you need to give them special cooking.
There are eight or ten different types of soap, I think. I don’t have a favourite—they all smell good. These are the last two in my pile.
Here are the jars, with pesto on the left, no mustard in the middle and honey on the right. The herbed mustard is really good—it’s just strong enough, and the herbs give it a flavour that really brings a sandwich alive.
Their beeswax candles are nice small ones, which, as John once pointed out, just fit into a beer bottle. They make a beeswax hand cream, but I finished the tin a couple of weeks ago. A couple of months ago I got a smoked chicken leg from them that turned a middling-good roasted squash soup I’d made into something great when I put some strips in the middle of the bowl.
I don’t know if there’s any way to get hold of their produce or products during the lockdown, but I’m going to print this off and include it with a letter to find out.