Twenty years ago, a handful of local food and drink producers took their places behind rustic stalls made of old wine barrels on the Matakana riverbank, on the site of a former timber yard. Neither they, nor the site owners Richard and Christine Didsbury, knew if their concept of a farmers and growers’ market would prove to be a winner, but they all shared a passion to provide people with good food grown locally. Besides the Didsburys, the prime movers were permaculture champions Joe Polaischer and Trish Allen, of Rainbow Valley Farm, who had seen how successful such markets were while teaching in Japan.
“All the produce was being sold by the farmers themselves, it was all grown locally and each stall had a big picture at the back of the stall showing the farmers on their farm. So when the Didsbury family asked us to help set up a farmers market, we adopted that philosophy,” Allen says. “And we also adopted the philosophy of it being zero waste from the start, which it still is today.
” However, even she couldn’t have foreseen the huge success that the market has since become, consistently attracting thousands of people to Matakana every Saturday morning. “It’s phenomenal how popular it’s become. In the early days it was mostly locals, many in shorts and gumboots, who came shopping.
That has changed. Now, the locals come early when the market opens, get their shopping and leave before the crowds of visitors arrive,” she says. “Back in those days, Joe and .
