Hello lovelies!

More musings from my travels to the Great White North, which thankfully was not so white, but rather many shades of spring. This post has a bunch of snapshots, taken in my favorite Ontario village; read on…

One of my favorite things to do when I visit my relatives in Canada is to spend at least one day in St. Jacobs Country, a community in the Kitchener-Waterloo region of Ontario. This picturesque little village was originally settled by Mennonites who made their way over from Pennsylvania during the late 18th century. The area still has a fair number of Old Order Mennonites who maintain the quiet, traditional way of life of plain dress and agricultural livelihood. Many of them keep farms.

There are fun shops with things for the home, crafts, quilts and local maple syrups. There are quaint little eateries with good German sausages. There are older establishments still making things the old way, like the Hamel Brooms shop which still makes gorgeous corn brooms. There’s my personal favorite gourmet shop, the Farm Pantry, which sells yummy food items.

There is also an amazing market disctrict where local farmers and vendors sell their wares to the public every Thursday and Saturday: an amazing display of grown-in-the-area fruits and vegetables, food stands, fresh meats, freshly bottled maple syrups, baked goods and a little flea market area of cheap stuff. There’s usually a manure smell, since farmers also bring livestock to the market. I’ve come to pseudo-appreciate this smell for two reasons: first, it’s synonymous with Spring in a place that endures several cold months out of the year, and second, as someone who lives in a metropolitan area, this smell reminds me that some people are still doing things the good old-fashioned way. That’s what St. Jacobs is all about. And by the way…you can’t beat produce fresh from the farmers market–check out my bowl of giant strawberries that I got from there 🙂