Buying Local Produce - A Visit to the Market

Last Thursday (28 August), the hubby and I got up early and visited the Byron Bay organic market. It was well worth the early start! A steaming cup of locally grown Myocum coffee (beans grown and roasted by hand by this single family) and a roll of Bangalow smoked bacon and organic egg with tomato salsa easily chased away the morning chill.

Located in a local oval, the farmers and growers set up their stalls in two fairly orderly lines, and the produce was incredibly good - fresh, in season and affordable. It was obvious that broccoli, kale, tatsoi, turmeric, ginger (but only for a fortnight more), and strawberries were in season.

I loved the fact that some stalls sold only a single thing - as in just eggs, or just sprouts, or just limes (more on this later), or just homebaked sourdough bread (in wheat and spelt flour), and quite unusually, just sugarcane juice. Well, this is sugarcane country after all. There's nothing quite like freshly squeezed sugar cane juice with extra ginger - not overpoweringly sweet as I expected it, and another first time food/drink ticked off my tasting list.

Speaking of limes, these babies are incredibly expensive at the moment - up to $35.00 a kilo in shops, and around .50 cents each at the growers market. We had a chat with the stall owner selling only limes and asked why it's so expensive, and it's because it's not in season. Out of 900 trees they have, she said they would be lucky to get maybe 20 kilos of limes in the off season. We also tried and got some of their handmade freshly squeezed lime juice cordial, with a little bit of sugar syrup as the sole preservative. Only in local markets!

We rounded up our numerous purchases with a taste and buy of some local cheeses and again all handmade and from a head of 100 cows milked twice daily - yummy haloumi cheese and incredible marinated fetta cheese. It was also nice to be able to share one of my recipes with the cheese makers - roasted chicken with labne or yoghurt cheese.