Why ‘farmers’ markets make me suspicious

I’ve long harboured suspicions about “farmers” markets. Picture: istock

Call me a joyless cynic, but I’ve long harboured suspicions about “farmers” markets. I study the fruit on the pop-up stalls in local parks, wondering if the apples have been bought from Coles by some unscrupulous brigand who bounces them on his kitchen floor to bruise some authenticity into them, then prices them to make his one-day-a-week job financially viable.

My wife is more trusting (and in every way more agreeable) than me, and enjoys chatting to the vendors about their “passion” to grow muddy potatoes and misshapen carrots, while I skulk and sneer in the background, nose twitching, ready to detect and call out a fraud.

Real farmers, though – I can’t get enough of them. Growing up in a post-industrial urban wasteland I didn’t see much farming; but ever since, I’ve been drawn to the skills that coax food and a livelihood from earth and animals. Not so much that I want to get my soft hands dirty, you understand, but I’m always eager to peer over the fence, chewing an imaginary piece of straw, and never more so than when the farming elements come together in an agricultural show.

Last Saturday we were in the depths of Tasmania’s South East for the 121st Bream Creek Show, invited by old friends from the nearby Southwood Wines.

Crowds gather around the Bream Creek Show wood chopping arena in 1936. Picture: Mercury Historical Archive

It might have something to do with the bottles of their pinot noir, but I haven’t had so much fun in the open air since my scofflaw jaunts during lockdown.

There might be the odd mainland blow-in, but otherwise Bream Creek’s show is as traditional and rural as we old nostalgia bores could ask for, with bullock teams, abundant local produce, a variety of animals and a fierce competition between would-be iron men who would destroy me in every event except the beer-sculling leg, where my journalism training would see the youngsters off. More than 5000 visitors in the crisp autumn sunshine, ice-cold drinks, hot toasties, meat pies, an exhilarating lawnmower race – and woodchopping.

David Foster, as a member of the Australian Woodchopping team, in action at Woodchop Arena during the 1997 Sydney Royal Easter Show

Like many Nancy-boy city dwellers, I’ve always imagined I’d be reasonably competent at swinging a big axe, but up close those dreams are hacked apart. The power and precision of the competitors’ blows are frightening (I presume there are very few non career-ending injuries in the sport) as they halve a log between sandshoe-clad feet.

A first prize in the cake competition for Mrs A. Spaulding, aged 89, in the 1936 Bream Creek Show. Picture: Mercury Historical Archive

This weekend I will be further indulging my lumberjack fantasies at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, which runs until April 2 and boasts the biggest woodchop competition in the land, among its myriad other features (I’ve written before about my showtime adventures in the world of pig judging, and hope to rub snouts with a few porcine pals after hoovering up a full lease of oysters in the fresh food dome).

Mention axemen anywhere in the world and the name David Foster swiftly follows. The giant Tasmanian won 21 consecutive world championships and more than 1000 competitions in his astonishing career. I was thrilled to meet him a few years ago at the Sydney show after he’d made a speech, during which he had referred to himself in the third person, as celebrities sometimes do.

It would be amusing, I thought, to tease him gently about this little affectation, until I got close and realised he could probably chop me in half without bothering to use his axe. Steve Waterson reflected for a moment on his mortality, then decided Steve Waterson wasn’t bold enough to challenge David Foster about anything, least of all David Foster’s speech patterns.

So by the time you read this I will be sporting, against all the dictates of good taste and aesthetics, a broad-brimmed old Akubra hat, time-honoured moleskins and modestly buffed RM Williams boots (the great JP Donleavy once advised that a gentleman’s footwear should never be too shiny), thereby exposing myself to the cockies, bushies and landed gentry as an interloping impostor.

Happily, and in keeping with the traditions they uphold, those people live by a code of country courtesy that would never permit them to be rude about my pretentious outfit (to my face, anyway). Just another reason to love them.