Another Lovely Local Market

Yesterday, about 10 miles away from our little local produce market, there was another, bigger producers market taking place and as I am a very curious sort of person, some might even say nosey, I was interested to see what it was like. So, after I had set up my stall and provided a breakfast of fresh-from-the-oven cheese and sausage puffs for the rest of the stall holders, I set off to go and have snoop. At Crocadon Farm, near St Mellion in Cornwall, in addition to the monthly producers market, it holds a variety of different markets such as a pig and poultry market, a garden market and brocante market. It's in a beautiful setting with rustic barns arranged around a very lovely courtyard with a whole host of fabulous looking stalls selling a whole array of different things from jams, cakes, fish, scrumpy-style cider and beers with weird and wonderful names to decoupaged furniture and large framed photographs of arty things. 

It's actually very similar to our market, just on a much bigger scale but, unlike our market, where we are open three days each week, the markets at Crocadon are only held once each month which would make it difficult to use it as a regular food source the way the locals use our market, as part of their weekly food shopping. Quite frankly though, as far as I'm concerned, anything where food is more local, has less food miles, is less processed and is more natural has to be a good thing. I feel very strongly that buying local is the right thing to do and for me, it's certainly been the best thing in so far as it has encouraged me to go back to cooking "proper" meals rather than opting for the type that you just bung into a microwave, something that I was finding myself doing more and more often. Now I know where my food is coming from. I know that it's as fresh as it can possibly be and I know that it hasn't spent 2 weeks sitting in a warehouse somewhere or travelling hundreds of miles in a refrigerated lorry before I buy it and for me that's important. 

I have to say though that the market I am most looking forward to at Crocadon is the Brocante market. I'm much more of a flea market kind of person and I love things old and vintage so I have put the date in my diary and will be baking something delicious to take to the market in the hope of persuading the other stall holders to let me sneak off and have a good old look around.