Every Saturday morning, in halls and fields from ‘Maritzburg to Mooi River, you’ll find people gathering for their local weekly Farmers’ Market. Stalls abound offering produce from fresh fruit and vegetables to organic herbs or meat and poultry - alongside home baked treats and confectionery. And at many a market you’ll also find local crafts folk, potters and needle-workers, selling their wares. So much a part of country life have each of these markets become that they’re now a favourite social event where townsfolk gather to catch up on the latest news and gossip almost making redundant the ubiquitous community newspapers. Enterprising caterers arrive and set up kitchens early in the morning to serve robust healthy farm breakfasts, usually the busiest part of the place. Informal tables and benches give one the opportunity to meet and greet the neighbourhood, and the community spirit is palpable – something I never experienced in forty years of big city life. They bring to mind latter day versions of those colourful Brueghel paintings of rural life (with more blues).
I found it quite a challenge to try and capture the colour and the atmosphere of our local market. Overall one gets the buzz of the busyness, yet the scene is made up of many smaller pastiches of social activity that captured individually and statically somehow don’t convey the air of the occasion. 
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