Colour Collaborative: September: Market

Photos from last week's local farmers' market in town.  I do like farmers' markets.  There's always something different and always a real flavour of the area.  Ours isn't the trendiest, but it's still well worth a visit on the two days each month when it's held.  There's also a much bigger food fair from time to time.  I'm always glad to see local food for sale.  It's just a shame that it's a once in a while novelty.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if this was how we shopped every day?

I know food from markets tends to be more expensive, but sometimes I like to have less of something, but enjoy the fact that it's local.  I think we appreciate it more, and it's never ever wasted.  Cheeses are a favourite, and the odd jar of chutney or pickle.  I like to find seasonal fruit as well, plums picked when they're just ripe, instead of the hard balls at Tesco that came here from Chile weeks ago.  Nothing like a plum they are.  Apples of different varieties that you'll never see at the supermarket.  Strawberries that will only last a couple of days because they're so real and delicious.

I like to wander through the market looking at the changing produce as the seasons roll on.  At the moment there are the first vivid orange squashes and creamy white cauliflower curds.  There are slender green and white leeks, and the dusty greens of apples grown through a long season without chemicals.  Nothing bright or shiny here, the skins are the dull oranges and olive greens of pippins and russets.  The plums veer from purple to pale yellow, with a soft bloom shading their thin skins.  The greens are deep and healthy, cabbages grown in our west country rain and beans from our dark fertile soil.  As winter moves closer the palette will narrow to the whites and oranges of root vegetables and the hearty bottle green of kales.  But right now as the Autumn equinox passes it is harvest time, and the market is filled with bounty.  If I can't grow or make it myself, this is the place I most like to buy it.

To visit the other Colour Collaborative blogs for more of this month's posts, just click on the links below:

               Annie at Annie Cholewa                       Gillian at Tales from a Happy House

               Sandra at Cherry Heart                          Jennifer at Thistlebear

               Sarah at Mitenska

What is The Colour Collaborative?

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.