Honeysuckle...signs Of Market Life
Newcastle Herald
Wednesday March 15, 2000
ONCE a month you will be able to taste test your way through the best the Hunter Valley and Regional NSW has to offer at the Hunter Valley Original Fine Food and Arts Market at Honeysuckle.
Bring along your biggest shopping basket. Not only will a range of different produce from macadamia nuts to the hottest relishes be on display, everything will be for sale from olive oil to bush tucker, sourdough bread, buffalo meat and cheese.
And the person behind the counter will not just be a salesperson. You will be buying straight from the farmer, baker or fisherman and have the chance to talk about the product.
Organised by Ms Leanne Mavin-Thomson, Mrs Sarah Heathcote and Mr Kevin Eade, the first market will be held on Sunday, March 26, from 9am to 3pm, and is intended to be a monthly event. Come the warmer months, the trio hope it will be a fortnightly event.
`Quality is the issue, all these people are the producers, not the middle man so you will get the best produce and the best advice,' Ms Mavin-Thomson said.
`There is so much potential in the Hunter Valley, these products don't just come out of Sydney.'
The market follows on from the successful regional farmers and growers' market at Morpeth that Mr Eade organised.
After that market he decided to expand the concept and hold it in a more accessible site completely undercover, hence Mr Eade and the market's move to Honeysuckle.
He approached Mrs Heathcote and Ms Mavin-Thomson to help organise the market and renamed it to include arts and crafts as well.
There will more than 60 stalls featuring everything from hand-made rocking horses and hand-painted pots along with live silver perch swimming around in a tank from Blakefield Fish Farm.
`We want people to come along, have a look, then buy their lunch and have a picnic on the foreshore,' Mr Eade said.
`Or even come and do their fresh food grocery shopping for the week,' Ms Mavin-Thomson said. H ELMUT and Vivien Panhuber normally take their jams, preserves and chocolates down to the St Ives markets to sell, but next weekend will be setting up closer to home at Honeysuckle.
Trading as Kore Farm Produce, the former CSIRO food researcher and his wife have about 100 different varieties of fruit trees growing, some of which they turn into the most wonderful jams, sauces, cordials and chocolates.
It started about six years ago with an abundance of limes. The price for limes was low so Mr Panhuber decided to make some lime cordial, rather than sell all his commercial fruit crop at low prices. Jams quickly followed and now the couple has many different products available, including plenty of low-sugar jams.
Alongside the raspberry jam, rosella jam and tomato and passionfruit jam, the couple will have plenty of fresh fruit like tamarillos, rosellas and limes for sale.
Fill up on the jams, but leave room for some of Mrs Panhuber's wonderful fruit-filled chocolate truffles. M RS Barbara Barlin, the secretary of a north coast native bush food cooperative, is looking forward to the chance to educate consumers and maybe change some eating habits at the market.
Through her company, Barbushco, the cooperative sells a range of products all using Australian native spices rather than introduced European spices and herbs.
`We hope people will change their eating habits from introduced spices to Australian natives,' she said.
With all the hundreds of different Australian bush spices, she said that it was a shame that many people still used introduced flavours in their food.
The spices grown by the cooperative include lemon myrtle, aniseed myrtle, Dorigo pepper and wattle seed and there is also a range of essential oils, sauces and syrups.
As well, Barbushco features a range of fettucine including bush tomato fettucine and warrigal green (Australian native spinach) fettucine as well as sweet jams and chilli sauces.
`This is the first time we have done anything in Newcastle. We did the last Darling Harbour markets, but this is closer to home,' Mrs Barlin said.
A S well as exotic fruit and jams and Australian bush spices there will be plenty of food for thought at the markets.
There will be wine, nuts, grain-fed lamb from Mandalong Lamb, Roann free-range chickens, coffee, tapenades and chutney from Pure Greed, chilli products from the Chilli Man, rabbits from Chef de Lapin, organic sourdough breads from La Tartine, Clarry's Oysters, macadamias and plenty of vegetables.
Bring an esky along to keep your food fresh for the journey home.
There will be limited cold storage areas available to shoppers to store their purchases while wandering around the markets.
For further information about the markets or to get involved contact Ms Mavin-Thomson on 4942-6009 or 0414 51-6695.
© 2000 Newcastle Herald