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MARKET MUSINGS



By Jan Freedman

The end of July is a wonderful time at the Farmers' Market, full of choice and abundance.

The farmers' tables are laden with a broad range of colourful fruits and vegetables. You can find many different varieties of leafy greens for your salad, along with the hearty greens like kale and Swiss chard, so full of nutritional value.

There are also many varieties and sizes of tomatoes available and the field should be arriving soon. We already have the early Ontario corn, new potatoes, cauliflower and broccoli. There are yellow and green beans and several types of peas, including the delicious edible pod peas.

Some of our farmers have several different types of beets as well as heirloom carrots in their variety or colours. We also have a wonderful assortment of great sprouts and edible flower mixes to take an ordinary salad to extraordinary heights.

When it comes to fruit, there's not much that we don't have yet at the Market. There are still strawberries and raspberries, and we now have red gooseberries, red currants, Saskatoon berries, blackberries, apricots, both cultivated and wild blueberries, and the early Ontario peaches are ready.

For the last two years, the Aurora Farmers' Market and Artisan Fair has been thrilled to partner with the Aurora Public Library on a reading programme for families several times during the summer at the Market.

This year, the first of those days is on Saturday, July 27 when the Library will set up a tent in the Town Park. This is a family friendly day when stories will be read to children and visitors can chat with library staff about the changing face of the public library.

The staff at the Aurora Public Library reflect the increasingly multi-faceted face of our town. They have staff from countries as exotic as Moldavia, Singapore, Jamaica, England and Malaysia as well as from regions across Canada, reflecting the multi-cultural diversity that is growing in York Region.

Some of the many languages spoken at the library include Cantonese, Mandarin, Malay, Hokkien, Spanish, Dutch, French, Italian, Teochew, Russian and Ukrainian.

Apparently there is no traditional path to a career in libraries. Degrees as diverse as criminology and Celtic Studies have led to eventually studying and working in the library. For some, past jobs include theatre performance and software development and workplaces as eclectic as the television newsroom and the Office of the Solicitor General. Others have worked as teachers, journalists, translators and early childhood educators.

For many of the staff at the APL, libraries are in their blood. Several started as library pages, much like the students you see shelving books after school, evenings and weekends. One staff member, who started as a page, can boast that her father served on the Town's Library Board, her sister, sister-in-law and brother-in-law work in libraries, her aunt and uncle met working at their public library and she met her husband, now a librarian, when they both worked at their university library. Now that's a library pedigree!

What the library staff share is a love of books and learning. They are always eager to share that love with anyone who visits the library and that love will be on display on Saturday, July 27th at the Farmers' Market. Please plan to bring your children for what I know will again be an exciting day.

The next Special Event at the Farmers' Market will be Seniors' Day on Saturday, August 3rd. As always, the seniors from the Aurora Seniors' Association will have three booths where they will have crafts for sale from the Knotty Knitters, Sew Much Fun and the Rebels Woodshop.

There will also be an opportunity to sit down and challenge yourself to game of chess. From 10-11.30, the Seniors will be performing for all of us at the bandshell.

After the seniors have left the stage, the market will be hosting a band called the One Percent, who will play from about 12 noon – 1 p.m. This promises to be a great day of fun and entertainment at the Market so do plan to come and join us.

See you at the Market!

 

 


Post date: 2013-07-24 17:19:10
Post date GMT: 2013-07-24 21:19:10
Post modified date: 2013-08-14 15:10:40
Post modified date GMT: 2013-08-14 19:10:40

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