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FIEST
18 THE RURAL VOICE
Lorraine Benham and her Flesherton=area
neighbours get up early every Saturday,
sometimes in the dark, to pick and package
the best products of their farms. While
their urban neighbours are still asleep, they
load their trucks and vans with meat and
vegetables, with maple syrup and honey,
and head off down the road. They are
among the hundreds of producers who sell
their fruit, vegetables, meat and more,
directly to the public at the burgeoning
number of farmers' markets across Ontario.
The job may be time consuming, the work
hot, but the vendors say it's a great way to
get off the farm and meet people. Not least
of all, the financial rewards can also be
considerable.
Open air markets used to be a fixture of
town and city life across the province, the
places where farmers took whatever was in
season, for sale direct to customers. But
over the years, faced with the relentless
pressure of supermarket chains, year-round
imported produce, and ever -faster
consumer lifestyles, many of the markets
dropped by the wayside or shrank to almost
nothing. Today, however, far from being
an anachronism, new and revived farmers'
markets are popping up almost monthly.
One of the major reasons for the revival is
Robert Chorney, an amiable OMAF
marketing specialist based in Sault Ste.
Marie.
He spends his year covering thousands of
miles of highways and back roads, armed
with car phone and briefcase bulging with
papers. In his role as farm market
organizer, he provides people like Bertham
with some resources and plenty of ideas to
kick-start their market. Chorney may be
the catalyst, but he makes it clear that it is
the local people who have brought the idea
alive and it is their job to make and keep
the market successful.
Chorney works for weeks in advance hel-
alb 11110,-