Slow Food... busy weekend

So here is our stall at the Slow Food fair on Saturday morning in Fiskars.  We are sharing with our neighbours who grow cereals and potatoes and other veg.

It was a great weekend.  There were thousands of visitors, both days, so we were literally kept on our toes selling our veg and loading up the stall from the trailer.  The nicest thing about selling food is that everyone is so chatty and friendly, with stories to tell and questions to ask.  We met some really interesting people: some customers, some stallholders and producers like us and other people just wandering around, walking their dogs/children or taking photos.  There were international visitors too, I met some journalists from France and reps from Slow Food Italy.  There were plenty of "Foodies" from local restaurants and small shops and markets.  

The event is getting bigger and attracts people from further and further away.  Even if you don't buy anything, there are things to do and see.  I quickly wandered around all the stalls, tasted lots of things like West Chark's lumikinkku (cured ham) which I love and some cheese from Tenala.  I bought fresh eggs, a cauliflower, some celery...  lots of things that we don't grow ourselves. I also bought some wonderful rhubarb, ginger and lemon marmalade which was voted local product of the year last year.

One highlight was visiting the new microbrewery Rekolan which had an open day.  I got in there early on Sunday morning and had a private guided tour.  it was fascinating and incredible that one person could start up and run such an operation, very impressive.  I went back later to buy some beer! The ginger beer is great - so nice to try something different.

Another highlight was the dinner at the Copper Inn with some of the Slow Food organisers and other stallholders. We had a smoked pike sausage for starters, then a seriously delicious piece of pork, followed by a creme brule with lingonberries.  A very chatty meal and we learnt a lot about Slow Food in Finland and about local producers.

In a couple of weeks our neighbours are going to the biggest Slow Food event in the world which is near Turin in Italy, where the Slow Food movement started.


(Also dug up the globe artichokes, shook off all the earth and put them in shoe-boxes full of peat and filed them away in the rootcellar for the winter.  Still have leeks, kohl rabi, beetroot, sprouts and jerusalem artichokes in the ground.)