Community & Alumni Blog
Farmer’s market, pie bake-off add to Fall Festival's ‘country fair’ feel
New to this year’s CMU Fall Festival is the farmer’s market happening in the morning on Saturday, Sept. 28. In addition to vegetables from the CMU Farm, the market will feature a variety of different local food and other vendors.
Megan Klassen-Wiebe, a CMU alumnus who is organizing the farmer’s market, is hoping that participants will include vegetable vendors, a honey producer, jewelry makers, baked goods, and perhaps a fruit producer.
She adds that the farmer’s market is a way to showcase the work being done by the CMU Farm, a collaborative project of the CMU Farmers’ Collective with CMU that seeks to demonstrate hands-on approaches to making peace with the land.
Now in its third season, the CMU Farmers’ Collective is an award-nominated group of CMU students and alumni, emerging as farmers motivated by their faith, who use sustainable practices to provide food to urban eaters.
They operate as a collective, practicing consensus decision-making models. The collective hopes to foster meaningful dialogue while joyfully stewarding God’s gift of the land.
“[Our collective] has been making efforts to make the CMU Farm an integral part of what CMU does,” Klassen-Wiebe says. “In connection to what the farm is doing on food and food justice, having a farmer’s market at the Fall Festival links really well to that.”
In addition to the farmer’s market, Fall Festival will also feature its third annual Pie Bake-Off. Each entrant brings two pies—one to be judged in the competition, and another that is auctioned off in a silent auction.
Anyone can enter the bake-off. People interested in doing so are encouraged to register online before the event. The only rule to follow is that each pie must contain at least two local ingredients and not require refrigeration.
Last year’s bake-off included 20 entries, says Joyce Friesen, events coordinator at CMU, who is one of Fall Festival’s key organizers.
“With all of its different activities, Fall Festival has a country fair feel to it,” Friesen says. “The pie bake-off fits into that sort of atmosphere really well.”
For more information about Fall Festival, visit www.cmu.ca/fallfest.
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