This morning I headed along to the John Scott Park in Samford Village.
With little fanfare or preceding publicity, the Samford Local Growers were holding their first local produce stall.
Samford Local Growers is a community group established in September 2008 by people in the wider Samford Dayboro area.
Considering that it is the middle of winter here in Brisbane, there was quite a good selection of vegetables and herbs on display.
I came home with a Japanese pumpkin, a lettuce, coriander, turmeric root. sweet potatoes and some nasturtium seeds.
Now I’m looking forward to the next market on July 25 and hoping this great local initiative takes off – the variety of produce on offer will only improve as Spring comes around.
Here is how Samford Local Growers describe their activities:
The group aims to cultivate a food system incorporating local hobby growers, only from the region surrounding Samford & Dayboro and consumers seeking locally grown food.
The group has been meeting fortnightly for about 6 months to trade locally grown produce, seeds and ideas on growing food in the region.
In June the group decided to open up its activities to the general public by commencing a local food stall at John Scott Park, in Samford, starting on 11th July and held fortnightly thereafter.
In helping to transform the food system by giving consumers open disclosure, food growing methods, time from picking and distance travelled will be revealed on produced via a rating scheme. Consumers should expect to pay very reasonable prices and are asked to be patient as this community endeavour grows.
Growers are not likely to be certified organic, however all growers would be expected to use organic practices in their food gardening.
The group is keen to support any hobby food grower in the region by providing an organised way of selling their excess produce.
Growers may seek to use this as an opportunity to make money or to provide food or monies generated to other community groups and people in need.
The stall will be a new avenue of local micro economic activity for the Samford Dayboro region and from a cultural perspective, hopefully a long term part of the ambience of Samford village.
For more information please contact Peter Kearney peter@cityfoodgrowers.com.au or visit the Samford Local Growers Google group page:
Hello, from the other side of the planet. Tat looks like a nice market. I was involved in starting Skibbereen Farmers Market. We started with about 8 syallholders 5 years ago, now there are up to 80 in the summer. Great oaks……
Madeline – thanks for dropping by. I had a quick look at the Skibbereen market website – really impressive. There is a very successful market more along the lines of Skibbereen in central Brisbane (Northey St).
With Samford, the idea is more for backyard growers to sell excess produce rather than organic farmers etc selling direct to the public.
Still there is still a lot of potential for it to scale up once word spreads.
James
This is the first I’ve heard about it but sounds fantastic!
Usually I go to Northey St, but hopefully I’ll make it out that way soon and check it out
Wonderful to see local economies forming, especially around quality produce, everyone wins!
It sounds like a great idea, but I’m a little sceptical. The main problem is while the basic methods are the same, there’s a different mindset to producing food in a home garden for a family or so to producing large scale for sale at a market.
For example, if you have a cherry tree, in a good year you’ll probably have enough for yourself, some friends and to make some preserves for the winter. If you try to sell them at a market however, you’ll sell out with 4-5 customers. You probably need at least 5 trees to even think about making it practical to bring to market, something most of us don’t have in our garden. If one year you have a crop failure, there won’t be anything to sell, and a lot of work and garden space will be wasted.
Producing food for market really takes special skills and dedication, and it’s not something everyone has. It’s very hard to even just make enough money to cover your own costs. While I understand in Australia you don’t have very much in the way of farming subsidies, in most places in the world something like this can’t really be made to work without at least a little government support.
I wish you luck, and it’ll be great if you can make it work!
Patrick – I’m not a member of the local growers group so I can’t really speak for them. However my sense is that the motivation for the market is to add something worthwhile to the local community and to be a social event for the backyard growers. I don’t think the financial side of things is a motivation. The idea seems to be to share a surplus that would otherwise be potentially wasted.
James
We have a local group called Healthy Harvest, I don’t know if you’ve discovered my other blog. My husband and I are trying to get a local farmers’ market started in our little community. What we’ve discovered is everyone wants home grown, organic vegetables but there is no farm of any size to grow for it. We decided to motivate folks to learn to grow vegetables sustainably through teaching local, free seminars, and encouraging them to sell or share their surplus. I do believe every little bit helps.–Sage
http://www.friocanyonhealthyharvest.blogspot.com
[...] has the stated purpose of producing fresh vegetables for a local homeless soup kitchen. James recently posted about an initiative in his community to encourage hobby gardeners to offer their excess to others. I [...]
Sage – I’ve had a look at the Healthy Harvest blog & it seems that your group has a lot of common ground with what Samford Local Growers are hoping to achieve here in Brisbane.
On my blog, I’ve set up a new blogroll group titled ‘local food growing’ and included your site there.
Have you caught up with the discussion going on at ‘Bifurcated Carrots’ on the worth of backyard grower’s markets?
http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/2009/07/amateur-foods/
James
Samford Local Growers Market sounds like it’s off to a great start. Our local growers weekly market (Healesville Organic Market)started about 5 years ago with 3-4 regular stalls and it’s gradually getting bigger each year. We now have 10+ stalls each week, even in winter. To make a trip to our market worthwhile stalls sell a wide range of local products. In addition to fruit and vegetables, stalls have organic bread, honey, olive oil, pasta and seeds. We also encourage growers to specialise in different plants so that everyone is not trying to sell the same products.
Our customers really appreciate the quality and freshness of our food (usually picked within 24 hours). I’ve written about our market on my blog under the heading Healesville Organic Market. There are so many benefits from local organic markets apart from providing good food. There are health benefits for growers and consumers, environmental benefits, positive social interaction, potential for supplementing incomes, networking and education possibilities and the development of more resilient communities.
Andrew – thanks for your comments. I will certainly try and get to the Healesville market if we get down to Victoria – sounds great. The equivalent in Brisbane is the Northey Street Market which continues to grow from strength to strength.
The idea with the Samford market is really for local people to exchange surpluses from their backyards, so I can’t really see it ever becoming a Healesville or Northey Street….but there is no doubt that community food groups are a growing phenomenon and that Samford should have a bright future.