Edith's Place, Where You Can Buy a Cow and Eat One Too

By Donovan Kelly

The “Good” in our official Crummy But Good restaurants includes a mixture of good food, good fun and good atmosphere. It’s like a three-ring circus with everything happening at once. Usually “Food” is in the center ring, but not always. Edith’s Place at the Farmers Livestock Exchange in Winchester is a great example.

The restaurant is really called EMD Catering, but Edith is the “new” silver-haired owner, manager and waitress who has been smiling and joking over hamburger steaks and ham steaks here for 20 years. Regular customers have their favorite waitresses and seats. We learned this after a large smiling gentleman started to sit down with us, until he saw the microphone on the table. “You’re sitting at his regular table,” Edith whispered with a smile. We ate faster.

Edith's Place, aka EMD Catering.

Edith herself.

The arena before the event.

Spectators and "spectees" -- bulls-to-be-bid-upon.

I like the food because it reminds me of youthful summer spent on the farm and hearty meals cooked and eaten quickly to allow everyone to get back to the haying and milking. The vegetables tend towards the northern bean and creamed peas side of life, things you can grow and preserve and can yourself. The meats are simmered not to taste but to be ready whenever the crew arrives. Edith’s crew to feed includes hundreds of farmers who are buying and selling livestock. They begin arriving on Mondays at 6:30 in the morning and keep arriving past 10:00 at night, when she usually closes the restaurant doors. “Sometimes the sales have gone until 7 the next morning and we would stay open. But no more. I’m getting too old for that,” she said, with a smile that wasn’t old at all.

The sales are the thing. The restaurant shares the second floor of the Livestock Exchange Building with a Roman amphitheater. Instead of gladiators struggling in the sawdust-covered pit, more than a thousand head of livestock, mostly cows but also goats and sheep, will march through every Monday, each having their two-minutes of glory while the auctioneer chants. Instead of Roman citizens in togas giving a thumbs up or down, weathered farmers in flannel and blue jeans give slight nods or a shake of their hand to bid on a particular animal. Part of the fun is to figure out who is bidding and what exactly the auctioneer is saying, all while holding your own hands and head perfectly still. I could imagine moving my hands too much and coming home to tell the wife, “Look who I brought home for supper,” while pointing to a 600-pound calf.

Almost as fascinating are the stock pens. They can be viewed from sturdy catwalks at the restaurant level, about 20 feet above the action. And there is plenty of action. Trucks are constantly being unloaded, cattle sorted and weighed and put into what looks like a hundred individual pens holding small herds of mooing, bawling and baaing. We asked our guide, Scott Stickley, manager of the Farmers Livestock Exchange, what the technical term was for this area. “The barn,” he said with a grin, eager to pull the leg of some obvious greenhorns. He proudly described the history of the 59-year-old exchange and how farmers from Virginia and bordering states depend on it for their paychecks. “Shoot,” he said, “We just sold some cows to Oklahoma.”

“The sad thing is that you would probably have to drive ten miles from here to see a real cattle herd,” Stickley said, referring to all the urban growth around Winchester. “We’re like a farm island here, but we’re keeping up with the times.” He proudly explained how most of the cows now have a computer chip in their ear tags “When we weigh them we can also read their bar codes and know exactly when and where they were born.”

Outside the restaurant a group of older farmers stood like a Greek chorus. How’s the food,” I asked. “I ate about a half hour ago,” one said. “The others are waiting to see if I fall over before they go in.” Then he looked at my partner who was obviously not dressed for farming. “Have you ever seen a cow before?” he asked with the barest of grins.

So if it’s Monday, you’re in the mood for creamed peas, the smell and sound of the farm and ready to be kidded by some gruff-looking but friendly people, give Edith and the Winchester Farmers Livestock Exchange a visit.