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Farmer’s Market
Farmer’s Markets are characteristic of Holland. You can find them everywhere, from the big cities to the smaller villages. They’re all over the place. Down town Gouda has a big Farmer’s Market twice a week, on Thursday morning and on Saturday.
In the cities—like Gouda for instance—many suburbs even have their own weekly mini markets. The suburb I live in is no exception and has a mini market every Wednesday morning. When I say mini, I mean mini. I buy my cheese and vegetables there. It’s really, really small. Nothing fancy, I’ll slap up a few snapshots I took a little while ago.
Is having those suburb markets a typically Dutch thing, or do other countries have them as well?
This is art. At least I think it is. I hope it is, what else would it be doing here? Though I’m not entirely sure what it’s supposed to be.
This is the back entrance of the mall near my house. It’s small but has everything we need. From a bank, a pet-store, hair salon, video rental shop to a super market, florist and butcher shop. The second story are apartments.
Here’s the butcher shop inside the mall. Though I prefer one of our butcher shops downtown, this one is pretty good as well. I’ll take a few more photos inside the mall in the week to come, just to give you a feel of what goes on around here. These were some old shots I still had lying around.
This is my main reason for going to the market: the amazing vegetable/fruit vendor. I buy fresh veggies, fruit and herbs twice a week. And cheese, but I forgot to take a shot of the cheese stand. I’ll make it up to you soon. Promise!
There’s a flower stand that is way overpriced (for Dutch standards). Normally things are cheaper at the market, but here they manage to charge more than the florist inside the mall does. In the back you’ll find a bakery named ’t Stoepje’, they sell the most amazing ‘gevulde koeken’.
There’s also a fish stand, where I haven’t bought a thing since the last time they sold me rotten kibbeling (deep-fried fish), about 3 years ago now. I’m still recuperating and feel emotionally damaged. The black building you see in the back ground is the library.
Unfortunately one the most important stores around here is the one that also sells toys. Geez, how could that be. I can’t begin to tell you the amount of time I spent trying to drag my son away from the window. His b’day is coming up… feel my pain.
Please tell me this stops. Eventually. Before he’s 16?
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I really like these postings in which you share more about your home town!
Aww, now you’ve gone and made me a little ‘homesick’ for California. Here’s why: http://www.farmersmarketla.com/
As for the toys – it never stops, I still find myself lusting in the windows of certain stores full of toys. The difference is, they get more expensive and tend to have logos like “Apple” and “Ferrari” on them!
@Nick:
Ahhh boys will be boys, right :)
Kay, I just LOVE when you show pictures of Holland! Amazing place!
I´m from Brazil, and we do have very similar suburb farmer´s markets here, but they seem to be a bit bigger than yours.
@Mari:
This one is really small, there are suburbs here with much bigger markets! I’ll take a few more Holland shots over the weeks/months to come! It’ll be fun to share more about my country.
I love reading your stories about the Netherlands. Your pictures are terrific. Would love to hear alot more about life “over there”
Thanks so much sharing.
Oh, by the way, they never quit window shopping, it just gets more expensive. (electronics, cars, etc)
It kinda depends on where in the US you are, there are some cities that have a lot of suburb farmers markets, and then some where you’re lucky if there is a main one for the entire city… I was wondering is organic a big thing in Holland? Organic in the US is getting bigger, and thats why a lot of people (I included) shop at farmers markets.
@Daniel:
Well, even in our supermarkets for every standard product, there’s also an organic version. Especially where it comes to vegetables and fruit.
I plan to come to Holland some day so I’m loving the posts of your local scenery. I noticed coats. Heavy coats. It’s obviously still cold there but when are the best weather months?
@Janie:
No, it’s pretty warm here, we’re not really wearing coats anymore. I shot these back in February, I think, and decided to just slap them up now!
It gets really hot here during summer. I think May and June are weather-wise the best months here.
I like the photos of your hometown, too…and of your beautiful son. Thank you for sharing.
We have lots of Farmers Markets here in Maine, USA! It is totaly embraced here and people love them. I help run the markets in my area, and we have a HUGE variety of items. I for example, sell my homemade soap. In addition to many veggie farmers, selling fresh eggs, milk, seasonal veggies and fruits, we have 2 cheese makers, sweets and bread bakers, lobster & fish vendor, mushrooms, fresh prepared Greek, Italian, Afganistain & Chinese foods ready to eat, a woman that sews aprons, one woman knits washclothes and sweaters, local meats (like chicken, turkey, beef, lamb), sausage and cured meats, an Alpaca farmer that sells Alpaca yarn and Alpaca scarves, a woodworker, salad dressing and much more! We try to keep it all related to farm, kitchen, food. We also make sure that everything is either made or caught (fish,lobster) by the vendor themselves. The winter market that I was part of this year had 52 vendors! It was amazing! You can visit my blog, if you would like, to learn more about our market, I recently posted some photos from the market
http://www.cascobaysoap.blogspot.com
and I put together the blog for our summer farmers market
http://cumberlandfarmersmarketassociation.blogspot.com/
Thanks for sharing your experience and great pics