South Gloucestershire | Archive | 2005 | September | 23
From the archive, first published Friday 23rd Sep 2005.
FARMERS and local food producers have risen to the challenge of a Yate resident who claimed there was nowhere to buy home-grown food in the area.
Elizabeth Stone, of The Glen, phoned up a local television programme to complain that she was unable to obtain local meat, cheese or vegetables in Yate Shopping Centre.
And so the gauntlet was thrown down to "bring back the taste of food" to Yate.
Never ones to turn down a challenge, farmers from across the area set up the very first farmers' market held at the shopping centre last Wednesday.
Organiser Jim Wilkie said: "The challenge from the television programme was could it happen? "But when filming took place the team did not realise that Chipping Sodbury Farmers' Market - less than a mile away - had been running for five years."
Nevertheless, stalls selling home-grown products were set up in the shopping precinct much to the delight of shoppers who queued around the block to pick up goodies.
Marketing manager for Yate Shopping Centre, Beverly Organ, told the Gazette that the day had been an enormous success and that most of the stalls sold out.
"The phone has been ringing off the hook with shoppers asking when the next market will be and hopefully the market will be an ongoing thing," she added.
Yate shoppers who have a taste for freshly produced food are invited to visit the next farmers market in Chipping Sodbury by the clock tower on Thursday (9am-1.30pm).
© Newsquest Media Group 2008