It was going to be a very hot Saturday so Friday night I watered the garden and gave each of the three vegetable boxes a good soak. The beans, peas, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, kohlrabi, lettuce, onions, and a dozen other kinds of vegetables, are all being picked for our table and evening meal each day.
As I have written before, there is something magical about the freshness of your own vegetables. (Click here to read previous articles on home and garden). Not that we cannot buy fresh vegetables. Early Saturday morning we went to our local farmers’ market where two hundred farmers bring their produce for sale from their stalls set up under the shade of their tents. Despite our early arrival hundreds of people were already inspecting and buying.
Most of them practice organic farming (i.e. farming without using chemicals and insecticides). Everything is clean and fresh, and the meat from local farmers and abattoirs is delicious. Sample biscuits display all the varieties of cheeses, jams, spreads, pickles, apples, citrus, and scores of other fruits and nuts.
The BBQ’s have samples of the lamb, beef, chicken, sausages, venison and other meats on sale. Other farmers sell wool from sheep and alpacas, leatherwork, truckloads of potatoes, wines from local vines, plants and shrubs, and a dozen different handcrafts. There is fresh honey from the hives and fresh breads from the bakery.
People ask questions of the farmers who seem delighted to find people interested in their products and methods. Customers want information about cooking, trying new tastes, and putting a face behind their vegetables or meats. As Nick Galvin reported in his recent SMH article, “Increasingly those city folk are seeking to reconnect with, and support, the local people who produce their food.”
There are now about two dozen farmers’ markets in the Sydney suburban region, many of them weekly, and more in the Hunter, the Illawarra, the Central Coast and other regional centres. They have become a major factor in food retailing. (One of our grand-daughters sells at the Everleigh markets, for a lady who makes homemade Christmas puddings in her kitchen. Just before Christmas she sold in one day $10,000 worth!)
If you ever have the chance visit the Salamanca Markets in Hobart, you will just stare in wonder at the beautiful vegetables grown and displayed by the Hmong people who went to Hobart as refugees from the mountainous regions of Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and particularly Burma and who now display their traditional arts of perfect vegetable growing and display.
Set on Hobart’s historic waterfront, Salamanca Market is Australia’s biggest, brightest and best outdoor market. Every Saturday, the Georgian warehouses of Salamanca Place look down on a bustle of colour and music, as visitors and locals come to meet, eat and pick up a bargain or two.
Market stalls and vendors sell everything from hot baked potatoes to antiquarian books, from hand-carved craft in Tasmania’s specialty timbers to sheepskin boots. The fresh fruit and vegetable stalls are simply superb – this is the place to grab the makings of a perfect Tasmanian picnic. The market is the outstanding cultural experience of Hobart.
Nearer at hand are the vegetable gardens of Sydney, located in the Hawkesbury region. Two hundred years ago this year, in November 1810, Governor Lachlan Macquarie recorded this diary entry: “Mrs. Macquarie and myself were quite delighted with the beauty of this part of the country; its great fertility and its picturesque appearance . . . ”
The farmers of this region became the food providors for the colony. The regular flooding of the Hawkesbury River provided rich alluvial plains for vegetable growing as did the Hunter River at Maitland.
Much will have changed since Governor Macquarie traveled through the region but the sheer fertility and abundant beauty are still a pleasure to see. A number of farmers have joined together in a co-operative called Hawkesbury Harvest, which also runs the farm-gate trail that brings so many visitors to the farms.
“Hawkesbury Harvest began in 2000 and has grown steadily ever since, expanding east to the Hills District from the original area and then south to the Penrith Valley and the Wollondilly. Secretary Alan Eagle says the aim was simply to give farmers a better deal and allow consumers to buy local food. But the basic premise remains the same – allowing consumers to satisfy their desire to put a face behind that carrot or cauliflower.”
There’s a shift in what the consumers want. People like organic but it’s about having a connection with the farmer. Consumers want to know that what they are buying and eating is fresh and that it’s grown with the least environmental impact.
Most consumers know that apples purchased in the supermarkets have been sprayed with preservatives and may be a year old since they were picked. It is the same with other vegetables. This is all part of the Slow Food revolution, the antithesis of the Fast Food Industry.
One farmer says, “If farmers have more direct access to the consumer and in return gets a better price, they are more inclined to maintain the quality of the land. “The whole principle of organics is soil. An organic farmer doesn’t grow vegies, he grows soil and it’s the soil that grows the vegies. If you have good, healthy soil you’ll grow healthy vegies and, likewise, eating healthy vegies makes healthy people. It would be good if everyone could feed their kids organic food and vegies but a lot of families can’t afford it. But if we can make a good return selling something at the farmers’ markets for the same price as in the supermarket – why not?”
Growing your own vegies means you have lots of green waste. I put every piece of waste plus kitchen scraps into our two large compost bins, mix it with lawn clippings, shredded paper from my office, garden prunings, and chook and duck poo from their sheds, and turn it over every couple of weeks, to make the most beautiful compost. Barrow loads of that compost go back onto our gardens and into the large vegetable boxes, built waist high so there is no bending in digging, weeding and harvesting. What we are growing most of all is good soil which produces good food which in turn continues the cycle.
We have no desire to be self-sufficient, but we do desire to eat fresh. We recycle all of our water which you can read about in “Practicing what I preach”. Some farmers have stopped sending their food to the wholesale market at Flemington, and instead have become a purely farm-gate operation. Their packing shed has become a cafe and shop selling their own fruit and produce plus that from other nearby farmers often smaller hobby farmers.
Their biggest enemies are developers who want their land for housing estates, and local councils who can see a bigger return in rates from houses and so want to force the farmers out by rezoning areas. The present State Government plans a further 5000 homes to be built in the Hawkesbury agricultural area by 2030. Hawkesbury Harvest points out that Hawkesbury Council’s recent strategic plan doesn’t once mention the word “agriculture” and accuses the council of wanting “rural-living theme parks” at the expense of real farms.
The Hawkesbury Harvest group recently made a submission to the Council which said in part: “When the sands and gravel are gone, the hydrology buggered, the microclimates changed, the landscape turned into fodder for a mower sales and repair industry and when people transit through it faster than they do now because there’s nothing of real interest to see and do, will our kids and their kids thank us for this?”
“These small farmers cannot feed all of Sydney but would you, say, knock out Tuscany because it can’t feed Rome or the Loire Valley because it can’t feed Paris?”
By going to the Farmers’ Market and spending our money there we are not only getting good, fresh fruit and vegetables and wholesome meat and cheese, but we are doing our bit against climate change and helping preserve the environment, and our delightful growing areas for future generations.
Reference: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2010/01/05/1262453584366.html
Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC