We arrived about three hours before the market opened and none of the vendors were around, so we parked in a corner of the Lost Kitchen parking lot and toured the grounds. They have done a great job renovating the Fredom Grist Mill and have even added a 35Kw hydroelectric turbine to power the building and sell the excess back to the grid. There is also a modern bridge across the dam between the mill and its parking lot. They even built several guest cabins so that restaurant patrons may have somewhere to stay if they are coming a long way for dinner.
The Lost Kitchen is an incredibly hard reservation to get, but it is somewhat democratic. You must send them a postcard between the first day of Spring and May 15th requesting a reservation for the current year. After the request period ends, they select postcards at random and call the sender to set up a date from those still available. Once all the tables have been filled it is mostly over until next year. If someone cancels, they will pick a card from those left to fill the open table. They have no trouble selling out for the summer-only season…and that is at $250 a person, before beverages and tips for a five hour meal.
Enough of that. After touring the grounds, we returned to Speedy for coffee and cranberry-walnut bread and to wait until the market started. We were soon greeted by a fellow (who turned out to be the husband and co-owner of the restaurant) who told us that we were parked where the market was set up. We chatted for a bit and he directed us to the parking lot at the church next door. We moved over there to wait until noon.
The lot started filling up around 11am and we wandered over to market lot about 11:30 to see what was there. It was a true farmers market. All of the vendors were selling locally produced edible goods (except for the flower seller). There were fruits and vegetables, meats, seafood, cheeses, baked goods, maple syrup and honey, probably about 20 stalls in all. In addition, there was a mobile wood-fired pizza oven in a smaller lot down the hill at the street corner.
When the market opened we pounced, buying maple syrup, honey, cheese, fresh strawberries, garlic, lettuces and a stack of shortbread. We reluctantly passed up the scallops, microgreens, cookies, scones and flowers. The raw milk and fermented vegetables were never on our list.
After returning to Speedy to pack away our haul, we headed to the mobile pizza place. We were about 10th in line and it about a half-hour to get our Oyster mushroom pizza. It was crispy, thin and delicious. We topped it off with a cup of honey and pecan ice cream for Ellen and brown butter and caramel for Steve. By the time we got our pizza, the line was about four times as long…as were lines of cars parked along the road. The chuch lot was filled by the time the market opened and by the time we finished our lunch the lines of cars stretched off probably a thousand feet ineach of the three directions from intersection in front of the mill.
With Speedy’s larder and our bellies filled, we gave up our perfect parking spot and headed north. Our next stop was Cobscook Bay State Park, not far from the Canadian border at Calais. We were to meet up with Ellen’s brother there. Bob and Beth have a new campervan, a Winnebago Revel, and this was there first outing in it. They started the day in White River Junction in Vermont, an eight hour drive for them and we were driving about four hours, but we both arrived at the park within minutes of each other.
We were able to get adjoining sites for the night and had a nice outdoor dinner as it had stopped raining. We will be off to Canada tomorrow.
We should have some photos soon as we have more time and decent internet bandwidth.
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