About Us

About Uscarlg2022-09-08T11:19:32+10:00

About_Us

Our Story

Mullumbimby Farmers Market began in April 2010.

It was set up by the North Byron Farmers Market Association (operators of the New Brighton Farmers Market) who saw a need for another farmers market in the north of the Byron Shire.

The vision was to expand the traditional farmers market model to include small businesses adding value to locally grown produce. The market would provide a wide range of food and food related products, from fresh fruit and vegetables to artisan food products, seedlings and garden products.

The market would support and encourage local food production, foster the establishment of small, local food-related businesses and strengthen local food security.

It would also help revitalise Mullumbimby’s beautiful showgrounds.

The market received massive support from the community from day one, and has firmly established itself as both a thriving marketplace and a social hub for the local community.

nosmoking2

No_Dogs_Please_Mullum_Farmers_Market

Market Rules

Due to council requirements the market is a dog-free and cat-free venue, with the exception of guide-dogs. No smoking on the premises.

Why Shop With Us

Here are just a few reasons to shop at Mullumbimby Farmers’ Market

Meet directly with the people who grow your food

Make a real connection to your food and how it is produced

Have access to produce you know is fresh and nutrient rich

Enjoy food grown seasonally, as nature intended

Buy produce that’s hard to find commercially such as exotic fruits and heirloom varieties

Buy healthier, unprocessed and unpasteurised foods like milk, cheese and fermented foods such miso, tempeh, olives and sauerkraut

Buy meat and smallgoods that have been produced ethically and without chemicals, using traditional techniques

Support small-scale and local farmers and producers

Do your shopping in a picturesque location that has a fun and friendly atmosphere

Meet with friends, listen to live music, let the kids play and feel part of a community

Know that the money you spend is supporting local farmers, the community and a more sustainable future

Support your bodies dietry requirements for Whole Food plant Based, Vegan, Vegetarian or other specialty lifestyles

Our Team

The North Byron Farmers market Committee comprises of four farmers and 4 consumer members

About_Us_Commitee

Farmers

Rod Bruin

(Summit Organics)
President

Leone McRae

(Nudgel Nuts)
Treasurer

Rebecca Barnes

(Playing With Fire)
Market Member

Sue Mangan

(Forrest Organics)
Market Member

Consumer Members

Wally Waldron

Vice President

David Hall

Market Member

Dee Spice

Market Member

Donna Rayner

Market Member

Administration

Allie Godfrey

Market Manager

Gavin Powell

Assistant Manager

Melissa Butters

Photojournalist

Ben Godfrey

Illustrator

Kellie Knight

Web Designer

Samantha Lakeland

Bookkeeper

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

To receive the latest market news, special discounts and prizes

Thanks to all our lovely customers and their littl

Thanks to all our lovely customers and their little ones for embracing the rain today!

Our fabulous annual event with local schools calle

Our fabulous annual event with local schools called ‘Grow Your Own Lunchbox’. This took place at our markets last Friday. Here’s a few highlights of the morning.

GROW YOUR OWN LUNCHBOX 2024 Growing wheat, turning

GROW YOUR OWN LUNCHBOX 2024
Growing wheat, turning it into flour then making bread. Creating seed-raising pots out of newspapers. Constructing hotels for bees and frogs. Raising crops of rain-fed rice. Making beeswax wraps and chook tractors.

These are just some of the exciting, innovative ideas that local primary school children have come up with over the past eight years as part of the annual Grow Your Own Lunchbox
event.

An initiative of the Mullumbimby Farmers’ Market, it was launched in 2015 and,
barring a three-year break necessitated by Covid and the floods, has been eagerly
anticipated – and planned for – each year since then.

Around seven Byron Shire schools participate, coming together on the day to show-case the hard work and preparation they have poured into it. The brief was to encourage schools to create gardens in order that children could grow their own food, understand its provenance, find ways to transform it into meals or preserves or pickles. The actual day culminates in the Grow Your Own Lunchbox challenge, whereby groups of students compete good-naturedly against each other to come up with a healthy lunch box on the spot, using as ingredients the produce sourced from their own gardens.

Here, too, over the years, the results have been impressive: frittatas, Vietnamese rice paper rolls and orange polenta cupcakes have been produced alongside lamb on rosemary skewers with flatbreads, cassava cake, sweet potato crisps with ginger and turmeric hummus, mulberry muesli bars, herb-infused salts and oils.

In addition, the schools must compete in categories for a box of vegetables from the school garden; for preserved, pickled or dried products; and for garden fund-raising ideas.

Over the course of a Friday morning in the glorious grounds of the Mullumbimby Farmers’ Market, these resourceful children – future farmers? future chefs? – engage in amicable rivalry, share the fruits of their kitchen gardens and their stories, and highlight the importance of healthy, local and fresh food.

This year’s event is on Friday 6 September 2024 at Mullum Showgrounds 8.30-11am

Spring is in the air at Mullum Farmers Market. The

Spring is in the air at Mullum Farmers Market. There's plenty to share with you all!

McMAHON’S APPLES Vanessa, presiding over the tab

McMAHON’S APPLES
Vanessa, presiding over the table of apples and pears, weighing the contents of the metal bowls as the steady stream of customers, mostly regulars, file up to her, has just given me two magnificent tips. “When you hold an apple up to your ear and tap it with your finger,’ she begins, ‘the higher the pitch, the crunchier the apple will be.’
She explains how, at this time of year, mid-season for apples, they change a lot from week to week and this little exercise ‘really helps determine the crunch level.’

Her second tip is about pears, the pears you tend to dismiss in favour of those big sexy Pink Ladies, sweet sweet Fujis, useful Granny Smiths – pears which, according to Vanessa, ‘are amazing!’ She tells me they sell out every week. ‘After three days they’re heaven’, she says. ‘Generally someone will buy just one then come back the next week and buy five.’ Pears, it transpires, ripen from the inside out, and ‘when the stalk pulls out,’ she tells me, ‘they’re ripe, they’re ready.’

It’s either Vanessa you’ll find at the McMahon’s stall – where she’s been selling apples for more than eight years – or her sister Eleanor, two gorgeous girls with a font of knowledge about the produce they so enthusiastically sell. ‘What I love about selling apples,’ Vanessa says, ‘is that they sell themselves – I never have to pitch them. Because they’re local and they’re organic, and everyone has their favourites.’
She agrees with her sister that Pink Ladies are the most popular – ‘it’s as much because people know them,’ she says, ‘as that they’re so good!’ But all the apples have their charms, their individual characteristics – the Sundowners ‘a lot crunchier and a lot more tart than Pink Ladies’, the intensely sweet Royal Galas and Red Delicious.

#certifiedorganicapples #organicapples #organicapples🍎 #mullumfarmersmarket #mullumfarmersmkt, #supportlocal #supportlocalfarmersmarkets

Everything looks so much better when the sun shine

Everything looks so much better when the sun shines!!!!

Life is sweet at the farmers market. So much delic

Life is sweet at the farmers market. So much delicious, locally grown produce and artisan products.

3 TOP HONEY I’m doing a little taste-test. From

3 TOP HONEY

I’m doing a little taste-test. From each of the three jars of honey before me I have removed a modest sample. Jotted down first impressions, like the true professional I’m not. Decided that ‘Small Batch’ was a bit tangy, ‘Coastal Bloom’ floral and ‘Iron Bark’ delicate and very sweet.

These are the three types of 3 Top Honey currently) available at Tom Warren’s market stall. Tom is young but he was a lot younger – 14 years old – when he was given a bee-hive for his birthday by a neighbour. That was the start.

He tells me it was ‘just a hobby’ up until the time he qualified for university, when he realised that he ‘just wanted to work on the farm’. In his gap year he’d come down from Brisbane to ‘do the bananas’ on the property of relatives – who just happened to be the Everest family. ‘I really liked it,’ he says, ‘so I didn’t go to Uni!’

3 Top is the name of the mountain next to Mount Warning, at whose foot extends the Everest property –so 3 Top was the name Tom chose for his fledgling honey business. He’s adorned the stall with lovely old equipment – smokers to smoke the bees (in order to induce honey production); copper drums – which originally belonged to a friend’s father. I listen, fascinated, as he explains his honeys to customers. One woman is requesting Yellow Box as she prefers a lighter honey. ‘Lighter honeys,’ Tom tells me later, ‘tend to be more sought after – one exception being Manuka’ – which he’s hoping to produce ‘further down the track’. There’ll certainly be more varieties: ‘It’s all seasonal’, he says. Iron Bark is his most popular. ‘That’s a first-grade honey!’

3 Top Honey is at Mullumbimby every Friday from 7 – 11am and New Brighton every Tuesday from 8am-11am

#honey #honeybees #beekeeping #localhoney, #northernrivershoney #mullumfarmersmarket #mullumfarmersmkt #supportlocalfarmers #northernriversfood

There's nothing quite like curling up on the couch

There's nothing quite like curling up on the couch with a hearty plate of sausages, mash, and gravy when the weather outside is frightful. And let's not forget the importance of a good, homemade stock as the base for that perfect gravy!

These aren't just strawberries; they're a taste se

These aren't just strawberries; they're a taste sensation! @summitorganics Strawberries are pure, juicy perfection. Bursting with flavour and sweetness, every bite is a heavenly experience.

#organicstrawberries🍓#certifiedorganic #locallygrown #Mullum #Mullumbimby #mullumfarmersmkt #mullumfarmersmarket #northernriversfood #localfarmers

These aren't just strawberries; they're a taste se

These aren't just strawberries; they're a taste sensation! Summit Organic Strawberries are pure, juicy perfection. Bursting with flavour and sweetness, every bite is a heavenly experience.

#organicstrawberries #organicstrawberries🍓 #locallygrown #locallygrownfood #CertifiedOrganic #mullumbimby #mullumfarmersmkt #mullumfarmersmarket #LocalFarmers

Our guest Chef, Hoang, the culinary maestro behin

Our guest Chef, Hoang, the culinary maestro behind Green Destiny, is a passionate advocate for plant-based cuisine. Hoang has transformed everyday ingredients into extraordinary vegan dishes. He will be at the market for the next few weeks.

#vegan #veganlife #VeganFood #plantbased #locallygrown #mullumfarmersmkt #localveganfood

It doesn’t matter that I have a floor-to-ceiling

It doesn’t matter that I have a floor-to-ceiling bookcase of cookbooks, a collection of sad home-made ones and subscriptions to food magazines. Nor that I am able to access pretty much anything I might wish to cook via the internet. The fact is, I cannot resist a recipe when I see one – so the sight of recipe cards complete with sumptuous photography at the Church Farm stall fills me with joy.

Church Farm has been a presence for nearly ten years, its humble beginnings a roadside stall at Billinudgel where Andrew Morris and family started selling the surplus herbs, chillis, tomatoes and cucumbers from their property. That its products are now distributed nationally by three distributors – ‘health food stores, grocers, delis, butchers, gift shops – you name it!’ Andrew tells me – is testament to the commitment by him and his team to producing ‘great products for our customers who appreciate quality ingredients and pantry staples that don’t contain any additives or other nasties.’

Everything, from the commercial kitchen at Mullumbimby, is hand-made, bottled and packaged in small batches, a range covering sauces and curry pastes, the wildly popular tomato passata and a honey and pepper-berry mustard. ‘I have a passion for food and cooking and am self-taught’, Andrew tells me. ‘I love to learn from different sources, especially from some of my talented chef mates.’

With the soaring cost of grocery items, it’s a welcome solution to feeding families: glorious flavourings, locally sourced ingredients, meals made easy by the simple addition, in many cases, of protein or plant. Inspired by one of those cards, I’m planning to whip up baby beef rendang pies, first making then cooling the rendang, pre-baking puff pastry bases in Texan muffin tins, filling them with the rendang, topping them with little pastry lids then baking till golden brown. Divine!

Church Farm is at New Brighton every other Tuesday from 8 – 11am and Mullumbimby every Friday from 7 – 11am

Victoria Cosford

#sauces #pastes #localingredients #nopreservativesfood #nopreservatives #supportlocal #supportlocalbrand #mullumbimbyfarmersmarket #mullumfarmersmkt #farmersmarket #artisian

Gluten-free bread lovers rejoice! Nadia from Bread

Gluten-free bread lovers rejoice! Nadia from Breadicine will be joining us at the market this week.

#glutenfreebread #glutenfreebreads #glutenfreebreadmaker #glutenfreebreadmaking #glutenfreebakery #glutenfreesourdough #celiac #glutenintolerance #wheatallergy #foodallergies #mullumfarmersmkt #mullumfarmersmarket #northernriversfood

OLIVER’S HENS If it weren’t for the support o

OLIVER’S HENS

If it weren’t for the support of the Mullum Farmers’ Markets, Oliver Bora, egg and bone broth purveyor extraordinaire, might not be on his current upward trajectory.

He’s also an inspiration to potential young farmers, a 20-something year old whose free-range, pasture-raised hens, from the relatively modest number of 450 when he first started out, now number close to 4000. Thanks to a crowd-funding campaign while he was still at school, Oliver was able to launch his business and eventually relocate to The Farm, increase the number of hens and broaden his customer base. ‘I’m struggling to keep up with demand!’ he tells me. ‘I wish the hens would lay more eggs!’

Increase in this demand has much to do with the prevalence of bird flu and the resultant rising costs of supermarket eggs. Byron Bay’s Bay Grocer used to order 70 dozen eggs a week and that’s recently soared to 120 dozen. ‘It’s also to do with the food security of having eggs in the Shire, produced in the area, raised on organic feed’, he tells me.

The other success story for Oliver is his bone broth. ‘It’s a really big seller,’ he says, ‘especially through this winter. It’s nutritional, anti-inflammatory, gut-nourishing. Since I started it’s become a big hit.’ He makes it in conjunction with the Coop in Byron Bay, slowly simmering the bones for 18 hours with loads of aromatics.

Never short of projects and ideas, he’s looking at adding two or three more chicken caravans. ‘I’ve been developing my own caravans’, he tells me. ‘They’re purpose-built, with nesting boxes and roosting sticks.’ He shows me the design: to accommodate 600 chickens per van, they’ll measure 9 meters long by 2.5 meters wide. ‘I’ve got quotes and pricing for Australian-made products,’ he says, ‘and over the next month I’ll be developing the prototype.’

Oliver’s Hen's is at Mullumbimby every Friday from 7 – 11am

SHROOM BROTHERS They can weigh up to 800 grams. Th

SHROOM BROTHERS
They can weigh up to 800 grams. They look for all the world like snowy white cauliflowers. And they are enjoying a big blast of popularity at the moment.
They are Lions Mane mushrooms, one of the various exotic fungi grown by the Stokers Siding-based Shroom Brothers.

I’m at the stall chatting to Julia, who’s manning it, who tells me how they are the most popular mushroom at the moment, a fact confirmed by the majority of the customers. The first thing I want to know is what to do with them. A beautiful girl with a nose-ring tells me she slices them then pan-fries them with butter and herbs. ‘They’re really satisfying’, she says. ‘They’re meaty, like a steak.’ Julia chips in to say that she herself cooks them as schnitzels, tossing them in egg and breadcrumbs then frying them. Another purchaser is buying some for her friend, who has cancer. She tells me that Lions Mane is very good for the brain and for memory. Then there’s the customer who has heard you can dry the mushroom out, turn it into a powder and drink it – and while it’s not available at the stall yet, it’s only a matter of time.

Andrew Mohanu, co-owner of Shroom, tells me that in response to lots of requests from customers for this medicinal powder, they have created Mala Wellness, a company committed to selling Australian-grown and certified organic mushroom powder. He says that Lions Mane has two compounds unique to it: ‘it’s shown to improve memory’, he says, ‘and it reduces the chances of Alzheimer’s, dementia, depression and anxiety.’ It's the funniest mushroom I’ve ever seen but if it has all those virtues – as well as being a meat substitute and, like tofu, a wonderful absorber of flavourings – I can quite understand that it’s a big-seller. As I’m sure the Mala Wellness powder will be too.

Shroom Brothers are at Mullumbimby every Friday from 7 – 11am

Victoria Cosford

#mushroom , #lionsmane

New Market Goodies: From @sequel_bakeryYeasted bre

New Market Goodies:
From @sequel_bakeryYeasted breads: Which offer a unique texture and flavour.
3 Top Honey: Honey is always a market staple, but it's exciting to discover a new honey producer like 3 Top.
@mistycreek.agroforestry Chicken & Liver Rillette Pâté: A gourmet treat! Chicken & liver rillette pâté is a sophisticated and flavorfull addition to any cheeseboard.
@sweetnsourdoughnuts Crème Brûlée: A classic dessert given a sourdough doughnut twist? Intriguing! This is definitely one to try.

Catch a glimpse of harvest magic! Organic Forrest

Catch a glimpse of harvest magic! Organic Forrest are working hard to bring you the best produce, straight from the field to your market tomorrow.

#harvesttime #organicfarming #farmtotable #freshproduce #localfood #supportlocal #marketday #healthyliving #eatclean #sustainableliving

It’s a pest and a weed, introduced from East Asi

It’s a pest and a weed, introduced from East Asia and found along most of the east coast, invading pastures and stifling native species. Camphor Laurel, an evergreen, is a tree reviled by many – but to Lawrence Clain it’s the backbone of his business.

Originally from the Blue Mountains, Lawrence relocated here over 15 years ago with the idea of building yurts. He’d become disillusioned with carpentry – ‘I didn’t like the building industry’, he tells me, ‘didn’t like just knocking up cheap pine-frame houses.’

The yurt idea, however, became side-tracked. Working at a local timber mill he met the owner of Le Chop, the former chopping board market stallholder, and started working for him. When the opportunity to buy the business presented itself, Lawrence took it, gradually over the years building it up in the workshop, wholesale and online – and of course at the markets. A year ago he and his partner opened a shop in Lismore, supplying it with tables, shelving, desks, coffee tables – all made out of camphor laurel.

Myocum-based Lawrence loves the whole creative side of carpentry, and especially the boards, attempting as far as possible to minimise waste. The natural holes and knots in the timber he seals off with resin, which is why you’ll see those beautiful seams and layers and panels of mainly blues and greens in the chopping boards. ‘Normally’, he says, ‘people would chuck out the heart of the wood – its very centre – but I started to fill them in with resin.’ He mixes powdered pigments to make the colours. All the carving he does himself – (‘I’m a bit obsessive’) – and he tries to go with the natural flow of the timber. No two boards
are the same.

The other great aspect is the antibacterial and anti-fungal properties of camphor laurel, providing the safest surfaces for food preparation.

Valley of Craftsmen is at Mullumbimby every Friday from 7 – 11am

Victoria Cosford