[ccfic caption-text format="plaintext"]
By James Kinneen
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Dover and Sherborn share a middle and high school, so there isn’t a huge need to create situations for the kids in the two closely aligned towns to come together. For seniors, however, that’s not the case. To remedy that situation, the Dover and Sherborn Councils on Aging hold an indoor picnic in at Powisett Farm, open to seniors from both towns. This year’s iteration of the event took place last Thursday afternoon.
Attendees were encouraged to bring their own sandwiches - though there were sandwiches available for those who did not - and there was a table full of desserts for once the meal was finished. However, from a food perspective, the highlight was undoubtedly the salad the farm provided. While the event is intentionally kept the same, year-in and year-out, to maintain a comfortable atmosphere, the salad changes every year, depending on what vegetables and herbs have been grown over the summer.
“Depending upon what’s in the garden, they’ll make different vegetables for us, and we do a lot of cooking classes here, so this is just an extension of that," Kathy Horigan explained. "But it’s more about community, not uniqueness; it’s comfortable because they can do it every year, and they get to see old friends and be in a community.”
It is this idea that the seniors of both communities should be together that permeated the picnic. So, while the food was fantastic and everyone was extremely grateful for the fresh summer salad, Horigan was very clear it was about the company more than the food.
“It’s not about the food, necessarily," she said, "it’s about community and putting these two communities together. The farm makes the salad, everybody brings a sandwich, and if they didn’t, we’ve got some. We offer desserts, we offer watermelon. It’s just once a year to get the two towns' sets of seniors together.”
And it appeared to be working. The room was almost full, with Horigan noting that the Sherborn to Dover ratio looked to be about fifty-fifty, despite Powisett Farm’s Dover location. While Dover and Sherborn share a middle school and a high school, on Thursday, as happens every summer, the towns' seniors shared a nice meal.
