While the Swiss system of government might already be familiar to some, what is less well know is that Switzerland has a longstanding tradition of valuing and protecting small farmers and their farmland and insisting on its use solely for agricultural purposes. In doing this it takes stringent measures to prevent farmland becoming an investment tool or falling to industrial or suburban development. The country recognizes the importance of preserving its agricultural heritage, ensuring food security, and maintaining a sustainable environment. Swiss law protects the nation’s farmland, and actively promotes local family farms and is enshrined in the Swiss Confederation Constitution which explicitly states that the Confederation and the Cantons shall ensure the preservation of agricultural land.

We can see how the developments in mass production of food and its accompanying decline in the quality of the food, create in turn the demand for “morsel-production”: the limited production of high quality food. Morsel: tasteful food, be it lettuce, bacon or shiitake mushrooms, incorporating in taste and texture the unique qualities of the soil on which it is produced and the singular way in which the farmer has accompanied its development. Morsel production: yielding those unique products, sold by a farmer who is like no one else, to a group of people who know that these products will feed their bodies in a delightful way.

Chicken feet. Sure, I know it is done, either in other parts of the world, or in commercial production where in the pursuit of monetary profit, nothing is wasted but the squawk. But, Deanna? I didn’t know that I might have preconceived ideas of what a person who cooks chicken feet looked like. Maybe a person who comes in from the yard with dirt under her fingernails and a pencil stuck through her hair for a hairpin, like me. I somehow didn’t picture someone as put-together and beautiful as Deanna canning chicken foot broth. Yet, there she was and there I wasn’t.

Before attending the full blown event in the afternoon I did slip out in the morning to get a few photographs of the scotch cart and the spring van I knew would be there. Truly I marvelled at the work involved in turning out such pristine outfits and more than that the achievement of presenting a horse and cart in the razzmatazz of such a day.