A Lamb Banquet with Ontario Sheep Farmers

It's been a while since we've been on an outing around here! So when I saw a poster advertising the 17th Annual Lamb Banquet, put on by District 2 of the Ontario Sheep Farmers, I told Mr. Ferdzy he was taking me out for dinner. It was a bit of a drive to the Egremont Optimist Club in Holstein (Holstein! There's that place again!) but the room was full. Lots of people are prepared to do some driving for a lamb banquet, I'd say.

In addition to the meal there was a silent auction with items running from the charming and whimsical...

... to the more practical.

Another view of a few of the silent auction offerings and the attending crowd.

As people found their seats and introduced themselves to each other, they were able to snack on lamb summer sausage (supplied by Jason Emke) and little lamb shishkebabs, which appeared in waves as they came off the grill, and so are not shown as they disappeared almost as quickly.

I stuck my head inside the kitchen, where the volunteers seemed to have everything under control just a few minutes before dinner was announced.

A lot of planning goes into this kind of event, with contributions of various kinds from a lot of different places and people, not to mention the planners and volunteers.

After a few very short introductory speeches, we were called up by table to help ourselves from the buffet. Of course we were on the side of the room that got called up last! We have a talent for getting the slowest line in the grocery store, too. We didn't mind the wait though, because shortly after we first sat down, a couple came and asked if the seats opposite us were taken. We said they weren't, and then they sat down and we all looked at each other, and said, "My! You look familiar!"

It was Bill Stonehouse and his wife, from whom we bought our last couple of lambs, some of which is still in our freezer. It was nice to have someone we knew to chat with, and we hardly noticed the wait (which wasn't all that long, after all).

And here's what I ate, minus the summer sausage and shishkebabs, although you can see the discarded skewers. I was a bit amused by the fact that every vegetable seemed to have been chosen as something pre-diabetics should not eat, except for a couple of salads which I'm sure had sugar in the dressing. I skipped the desserts (sob!) and the roll, and just had a small spoonful of each of the veg, including some lovely real mashed potatoes. Oh well, more room for lots of lovely LAMB!

And now I must confess that I am a bad reporter. I'm sure the post dinner time included speeches, and there was something about $5 lamb and mysterious buckets, there was the silent auction to conclude, and, well, I don't know exactly what, because mindful of the fact that our next day was pretty much scheduled and that we had an hour drive to get home, we snuck out before that part started.





Last year at this time I made Garlicky Dill Vegetable Salad.

Posted in: Ontario Food