News
TASTE OF KENT AWARDS – Best Farmers’ Market category
At a celebratory dinner at Leeds Castle on Saturday 26th February, we learned that we were ‘Runners Up’ in the Taste of Kent Awards Best Farmers’ Market category. Janet, our Manager, and Carol, a member of our ‘team’ who had masterminded the voting and entry, attended the dinner in their best bib and tuckers and had a wonderful evening.
We have to congratulate our neighbours ‘Shipbourne’ for winning once again, they did really well – but we still think we’re the best!
Shrove Tuesday
What a great time we had on Shrove Tuesday – it was a wonderful sunny morning – and the market was buzzing with regular and many new customers. It was also the day of our Annual Pancake Races and we welcomed little ones from Fosse Bank School who were really quite bemused as to what it was all about, and older teens from Sackville who all took part with great competitiveness and enthusiasm, as did teams of customers, stallholders, Market helpers and even John the Vicar. (See pictures in the Gallery)
If you were sharp that evening you would have seen us on Meridian News (all ten seconds!) and subsequently in the Courier, which all helps to put Hildenborough and our great Market on the map.
COOKING FOR KIDS - August
This is the third year running we have held this very popular event. The first week in August saw us making Eton Mess – and what a mess – cream, meringues and strawberries into tall glasses, this was a great morning and quite a breakfast treat for some of our earliest visitors – yum.
The second week saw us producing sweet and savoury biscuits with all sorts of toppings – who would have thought beetroot and cream cheese would be popular. The great sweet favourite were Dutch biscuits from Marika (one of our stallholders) sandwiched with mascarpone cheese and decorated with cream and Dutch ‘sprinkles’.
Our third week was very grown up when we made 32 lots of pasta (in 2 hours!). Everyone mixed their egg into flour and kneeded it to a smooth pliable dough before feeding it through the pasta machine 4 or 5 times. Unfortunately,we didn’t have time to cook and eat it as well, but it was carried home triumphantly in their plastic boxes ready for lunch. A great morning.
The fourth week it rained and rained and as we had planned to be making pancakes on portable electric stoves, we had to postpone this until the following week. But the show went on the next week and our young visitors, always anxious for free food, turned out hundreds of pancakes (or so it seemed) to which they could add a variety of toppings.
We always enjoy this summer activity with the kids, but we think we might take a break next year, and do something different, so if anyone has any bright ideas, just let us know.
MACMILLAN COFFEE MORNING – 20 September
Again, this is the third time we have held this in conjunction with our Market.
Once again our stallholders and customers did us proud. Our stallholders provided some magnificent prizes to raffle (and bought tickets) and our customers came up trumps with buying lots of tickets, drinking lots of coffee and making donations. We were able to send the grand sum of £400 to Macmillan which is a superb total in just 2 hours. Thank you everyone.
