Living in the depths of the south, I had made the pilgrimage to the Farmers Market at EPIC a couple of times and decided it was not sensible to do an 80km round trip to buy local produce as a regular thing. Life intervened and I never got around to going to the Southside Farmers Market until this morning.
The Southside Farmers Market is smaller than its Northside counterpart and appeared to have a number of its regular vendors absent this week. Markets are at the Southside Campus of the CIT (the old Woden High School) every Sunday, nominally from 9-12. I arrived about 10 to 9 and found everything in full swing. Even allowing for the diminished number of stalls, there was a nice range of produce and some things were really quite cheap. I bought 6″ pots of herbs (thyme, oregano and marjoram to replace those destroyed by the neighbour’s chooks) for $2 each and a tray of 30 white peaches for $10.
There were lots of good local and/or organic fruit and vegies, olives, cheeses, smallgoods, bakery items, nuts and eggs. I gather there are usually some meat vendors, but not this week.
Other than one place selling coffee, there were no stalls selling hot food or snacks; I imagine this was just because of the reduced turnout. If not, there is definitely a niche waiting to be filled.
Hopefully the south of Canberra can now support a venture of this sort (the Northside one seems to be doing very nicely) and it will continue to grow. A market on Sunday might be a bit of a drag if you want to have a local produce feast for friends over the weekend, but I’ll certainly be back to buy ‘picked this morning’ food, rather than the stuff I am offered at the supermarkets.