There were only six booths at the recently established farmers’ market at the Hockley Resort Sunday, but you could buy anything from wild boar steaks to butter tarts – and it seems there’ll be a lot more at future markets.

“There were two other booths over there,” said Laura Jean Speers of Speers Farm as she offered sausage-sized allbeef hot dogs on large wholewheat buns at the Speers Farm Amaranth display, where you could walk away with beef that had been aged 21 days.

The Laura Jean and Wayne Speers booth was adjacent to that of Sue Lowery and Tony Toivonen’s Wild Boar Reserve one where Mono resident Laura Baker was buying some unusual steaks, filling out petition to keep small slaughterhouses open, and recommending her favourite eatery at Mono Centre.

In an interview after the market, Mr. Toivonen said new regulations coming down the pipes are likely to force closure of small abattoirs in favour of the large ones.

This, he said, would have an adverse effect on specialty farms. “We would be pushed out along with other small producers because the large abattoirs are not interested” in the volume.

His observation, oddly enough, comes at a time when the federal and provincial governments are discussing ways to allow inter-provincial trading in meat. The question that arises is whether the federally inspected slaughterhouse is safer than the provincially inspected one next door or, apparently in some cases, within the same building.

While Sue and Tony were discussing abattoirs, artist Carol Gregg was concentrating across the way on some paintings she was completing while offering others for sale. There were a few buyers in the early afternoon, but the majority of customers had come early in the morning.

The best positioned booth Sunday might have been the butter tart display as you entered the market. From a quick scan, it appeared that ever kid was urging the parents to buy them a tart.

The operator said almost all of his stock had been purchased by the early morning crowd.

One might say it was a Sunday of contrasts in Mono.

Over at the Orangeville Fairgrounds, there were about 180 displays of firearms. That was a smaller number than on most Sundays when, said Dennis Wright, there are usually about 230.

But it was the Civic Holiday weekend, and even the vendors need to have a holiday from time to time.

On the abattoir issue, the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association is viewing the move to inter-provincial trade “as an important first step in maintaining the competitiveness of the beef business in Canada,” according to Farm Credit Canada.

Hitherto, provincially inspected meat from, say, Ontario could not be marketed in Manitoba and vice versa. Only federally inspected meat could be traded across provincial borders.

The problem for Canadian producers was two-fold: Country of Origin Labelling was driving the costs of exports higher with a resultant loss of business; and the U.S. had no restrictions on movement of meat across State borders.