FARMERS’ MARKETS & COMMUNITY
Words Victoria Cosford
Photography Allie Godfrey
Is there a better distillation of community than a farmers’ market? Where once people grouped together in churches, they are now turning up at their weekly markets, joining friends, exchanging recipes and ideas, chatting with the stall-holders, gossiping over coffees.
Up and down the Tweed Coast and dipping into the hinterland, our farmers’ markets have become our gathering ground. There’s Murwillumbah’s every Wednesday morning, Duranbah Road’s at Tropical Fruit World each Saturday, Tweed Harbourside’s on the first Saturday of every month, Uki’s every Saturday morning. Further south there’s New Brighton’s every Tuesday, award-winning Mullumbimby’s on Fridays and Byron Bay’s each Thursday.
Distillation of community spirit – but also distillation of the very best this fertile region has to offer. High rainfall, sub-tropical climate, loads of sunshine and rich red volcanic soil all provide ideal conditions in which produce can – and does – flourish.
Bordering Mount Warning, on the steep mountainous slopes behind Murwillumbah, Caldera Farm’s Matt and Will Everest are fifth-generation farmers who produce a cornucopia of glorious fruit and vegetables. No sprays are used, the excess mangos and bananas gobbled up by their happy free-ranging cows. Bananas are also the star at Mount Chowan Organics, Burringbar. Another farm on a mountain, it’s run by Lance Powell and has been in the family for over seventy years. Also from Burringbar comes Gourmet Salad Hut and their intoxicating displays of greenery: salad mixes and lettuces and herbs in vast bouquets, all of it hydroponically grown. Burringbar is home to Deb Allard’s Cheese Loves You business, the milk coming from the herd of Jersey cows she and husband Jim have happily roaming the farm. There’s more local cheese to be found at Nimbin Valley Dairy, home of the award-winning Nashua Washed Rind and Tintenbar Triple Cream, hinterland wonderland where their goats and cows also wander freely, where there’s a café for families to witness where the cheeses come from and how they’re made and to taste the results.
At the farmers’ market you’ll be running into people you know, or faces familiar from earlier visits. Everyone is relaxed, drifting tranquilly from stall to stall, happy to wait if there’s a queue. There’s none of the tension and the impersonality of the supermarkets with their sterile atmosphere, squalling children and anxious parents. Instead there’s Dave Forrest, organic farmer extraordinaire from Forrest Organics, patiently explaining what’s the best thing to plant right now, or Ryan from Summit Organics telling you that brassicas are coming into their own now so the best vegetables to buy. You find yourself striking up a conversation with a woman in the line for Woodland Valley Farm eggs, although she’s buying their gorgeous velvety fresh pasta, and telling you the sauce she intends to serve with the spinach fettuccine: you come away with a new recipe, as well as the tip that, if you love pasta but have no time to cook, the lasagne from Heart & Halo is one of the best around.
There’s live music. A young bearded father tosses his toddler into the air; a woman with purple hair sways her hips from side to side. The fragrance of freshly ground coffee beans, of spicy Asian food, of aromatic Chai and, in season, of strawberries, lush ripe red-hearted strawberries from Monty’s stall. Once a roadside stall near Tyalgum, he’s now a regular feature at the markets, beloved by all and especially by children. Apart from those berries he sells fruit flats, rainbow-coloured works of art, sugar- and preservative-free, ice-blocks in a range of flavours.
Jumping Red Ant vegetables and Crabbes Creek Woodfired bread (oh the Kharasan!); Shroom Brothers’ exotic mushrooms and Byron Bay Cane Juice on a hot hot day; Church Farm soaps and condiments and curry mixes – these are the farmers and producers you will encounter at the markets coastal and hinterland, dazzling customers with their utterly fresh, local, seasonal, regional, mostly organic fare. Community is also about supporting each other and the farmers’ markets are the fertile fields wherein we can all do this, to mutual benefit: we enable the growers to continue growing, and our lives are more nourished and enriched as a result.
Almost palpable, that sense of community can be felt the minute you arrive.
Victoria Cosford is a writer, food columnist, chef and cooking teacher. Living in the Byron Shire for over twenty years, she is author of the gastro-memoir ‘Amore and Amaretti’, published in 2010, based on the four years she lived in Tuscany cooking in restaurants. For the past two years she has been writing weekly stories on local farmers’ market stall-holders.
