end of an era, end of the summer

It is eight pm on Saturday evening and I am sitting here at my kitchen table in my pj's and bathrobe amidst the following items. Aprox 12 bags of organic chicken feed piled in the sunroom, six boxes of kitchenware from the Red Canoe Cafe, all the pots from our five ayem perogie-cooking marathon for Taste of the Valley,coolers, bins, a pile of sweaters and mittins and scarves (it is very cold at six ayem at the Cobden Fair Grounds). The old Belanger kitchen range is toasty warm, the sheep and hens are safely in their beds and I have had two glasses of "girly wine" and a hot bath. I am celebrating the end of one life and the beginning of another.

This weekend marks the official end of the Red Canoe Cafe and the Wilno Station Inn. I will be exploring a lot of my ambivalent feelings into my novel when one of my characters, Orleen,decides to close her diner and take off in her RV for parts unknown. In the story, she hooks up with a band of lesbians called the Van Dikes and tours off to New Orleans, but that is a future plot development.

We were up at five ayem this morning, preparing for the Cobden Taste of the Valley. We boiled and fried up about 300 perogies,loaded the travelling freezer with pork, beef, lamb and chicken. In the past two days, I have roasted and pureed pumpkin and baked scones, biscuits and pumpkin loaves from morning till night. All this was piled in the truck and the trailer. We fed the chickens and threw hay to the sheep and dressed in about four layers of clothing, set off for the Ag Hall in beautiful downtown Cobden.

I love Cobden. I love Cobden's hearty plaid shirt farmers, I love their sweet small town main street, I love the view of the lake as you hurtle down toward highway 17 and I love the Cobden Sales Barn and my teenage excitement sneaking out of Opeongo High School to see Pierre Fontaine....another story for my novel...

My visit to Cobden today was more prosaic with a full day of selling meat and baked goods and perogies at the last and final Taste of the Valley for 2010. Despite early morning clouds and a brisk wind, we had a goodly number of buyers and potential buyers. Finally, at three pm, chilled to the bone and weary, we packed it up and headed home. No more early mornings for farmers markets, no more late night waiting for inn guests, no more dinner rush or lunch groups...much as I loved it all, it is now over. Tomorrow morning I am mistress of my own destiny!!! After I weigh a half a pig worth of pork,clean up todays kitchen mess, deliver a twig settee and a painting to Barrys Bay, take two sheep by trailer to Silver Lake and attend to my writers group the rest of the day IS MY OWN!!!!