(Parham, Ontario)

With a tournament cancelled this past weekend, we decided to go for a small local road trip. After a rescheduled birthday lunch in Napanee, our route took us through a number of small Lennox & Addington County communities to the slightly larger village of Tamworth.

Tamworth was in the local news recently because its last remaining bank branch had just closed. However, it is still well served by cafes and second-hand shops, so I enjoyed an unexpectedly large ice cream cone at the snack bar in the Black Cat Cafe. We saw somebody kitted up in authentic cowboy gear…but thought nothing of it at the time. As it turned out, this was a clever bit of foreshadowing.

We then took the mysterious Mountain Road from Tamworth to the small village of Parham. Some maps don’t even show this road, while others show it as “unsurfaced”. Fortunately, it does exist and is now completely paved. The road goes through rocky and swampy country that is unsuitable for farming, and there were very few homes along the road. Little remained from the original settlements of the late 19th century. We felt much farther away from the city than we actually were.

Eventually, however, we arrived in Parham.  I often passed through Parham on the way to childhood cottage vacations, but never spent any time here. Much to our surprise, the 127th annual Parham Fair was being held. We spontaneously decided to attend, having no idea what was on offer. While there weren’t any rides like at some larger fairs, the Parham Fair seemed to have largely retained its focus on agriculture.

In the exhibit “Palace”, we saw many fine examples of crafts, cooking, and produce. There were prizes in categories such as the best pickling cucumbers. But there was another category that caught my eye: the “Freaky Vegetables” category. This was where people could submit “unusually formed” vegetables. The winner was a tomato that appear to be a fusion of two tomatoes (one green and one red) at totally different stages of development…and possibly were not even the same kind of tomato.

We then settled in to watch the horse pull. Our verdict: horses are very big and very strong. Even though there were only two horses per entrant, and the combined weight limit for the horses was just over 3000 pounds, they had little trouble pulling loads well in excess of that.  Just to be safe, I didn’t get too close…although I also didn’t want to trigger my horse allergy!

The fair food was reasonably priced, and most of it was locally made.  We heard part of the band’s set (appropriately, it was straight out country music), but unfortunately missed out on other events such as the demolition derby and the cattle show.  

Before the unexpected visit to the fair, I had planned to write a lengthy post about some of the travel planning I’d been doing over the past few weeks. I’ll defer the details (and some of the photos from today’s trip) until my next post, but I can say that I will be having a “bucket list” international experience in November…and I am very excited about the European ski destination I have now chosen for the end of February.