New venue for Cardinia Ranges Farmers' Market

From February, the Cardinia Ranges Farmers' Market will be held outside the Pakenham Cultural Centre at the Lakeside housing devlopment, rather than the Pakenham Racecourse.
There have been some misgivings about the suitability of the venue but hopefully the move will revitalise the market which has been slowly dying for a couple of years.
It has been a good little market, with some loyal customers - but not enough of them. It's rather disappointing to spend five hours or so (plus travelling) on the second Saturday every month to end up taking a heap of produce back to the farm.
When it started, Cardinia Ranges Farmers' Market was magnificent but since then, many so-called Farmers' Markets have popped up and consumers are getting jaded.
The market in its new venue will be operated by Rotary and, as long as it is promoted well, patronage should improve. Hopefully the name will also change to the Pakenham Farmers' Market because of confusion when the Cardinia market is mentioned on the radio with no indication that it is in Pakenham. Another point of concern is that the organisers don't appear to be interested in accrediting the market with the Victorian Farmers' Markets Association.
If it turns into just another market where people sell anything they like even if they haven't grown it or made it themselves, we probably won't be involved for long.

Easter break has pushed demand up still more

The demand for free range eggs seems to be never-ending. We have been unable to meet all additional orders this week - even from our regular outlets.
Some of the pressure may ease a bit when our new flock of Isa Brown pullets starts laying (hopefully in the next few days) but it really doesn't seem to matter how many eggs we have - it's never enough.
A big part of our problem is tourism. It's just not possible to keep everyone supplied when the local population jumps by 100,000 people over a weekend like Easter.
It's actually worse for us than the Christmas holidays - because over the summer holidays we know there is a peak period of around six weeks when demand will be excessive and we can try to increase flock sizes to meet those requirements. But there's no way we can do anything about a sudden jump in demand for one weekend (even though we know it's coming).
I'll be at the Cardinia Ranges Farmers' Market in Pakenham tomorrow (Saturday) but unfortunately those customers who don't get there early are likely to miss out on eggs because I will only have about 50 dozen.