Aberfoyle is a place that I have done gone went and not even been through for so many years that I would have to take both of my shoes off in order to count the number. Now I know that is a mouthful of garble that is going to raise my editor’s eyebrows, but it is actual fact.
I know I have quite a following of readers down that way, but the reasons and opportunity to travel in that southerly direction have just not arisen. But that has just changed. I feel highly honoured to be invited by members of the Aberfoyle Agriculture Society to attend the 170th Aberfoyle Fall Fair on Sept. 11. So, folks, I’m a gonna be there, with my new blue jeans on, in the Market Tent, from 9am to 4pm.
What I am going to be doing there is the same as I have been doing in quite a number of local fairs for several years now. I will be showing a display of the bat and birdhouse kits that the members of our environment group, Greenspaces for Wellington, voluntarily make up for workshops spread quite widely over the country. For ten loonies, you can pick up a birdhouse, and for the same number of toonies, you get a bat house. There is no better deal and fun way for you to control the insects in an environmentally friendly manner around your home. Become a “bird watcher.”
In addition to that, and you have probably already guessed, I will be displaying my published books there also. Each book, titled The Best of Bits & Pieces, contains two hundred each of the so dated formerly published weekly columns.
Book One is from one to 200. Book Two is from 200 to 400. Book Three is from 400 to 600, and more will follow down the line as fast as I can get them through the spell-check of my computer.
Do the math; I have now started my 27th year of weekly columns, and there will be quite a number to tumble off of the presses in due time to come. They are simply a valuable keepsake of memorable memories that each and everyone can relate to. I know you will enjoy them.
In the meantime, folks, I have reached the wave good-bye point where I must be vacating my present location, in a cute little vine-covered stone cottage that the Little Lady and I fell in love with and moved into about ten years or more ago. It was in this town that I was originally born, and though raised in the country from the age of four, and having raised our family there also, we moved back to our urban hometown in the neighbourhood of 30 years ago.
As a result, I have been packing for months and am now getting a little tired of living out of boxes, and vacuuming dust bunnies, but that will soon end. I will have moved lock, stock and barrel up to the pleasant surroundings of my son’s family farm with an address of RR1, Markdale, sporting an N0C 1H0 postal code.
But before I fill all of my allotted space jabbering about what you already know, let me remind you once again about the upcoming 170th Aberfoyle Fall Fair on Sept. 11. I think it is done gone gonna be a fun, fun, fun-filled day. I have hopes of seeing the entire population of Wellington County there.
Take care, `cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105