What Brough Farmers' Market sells
In a county such as Cumbria, the majority of farms are livestock farms, predominantly cattle and sheep. The Market's organisers, to encourage variety, have made a deliberate effort to reduce duplication by not allowing more than two stalls to sell the same product. Wherever possible stallholders should have come from as close as possible to Brough, preferably within a thirty mile radius, though when a particular product is not available from within that range, to allow variety to help attract customers, exceptions may be made.
There are thus four stalls selling meat (and their sausages and burgers), one specialises in lamb and beef and another specialises pork and beef. The third has farmed venison with pates and pies, and dexter beef. As a different form of meat, the fourth stall sells their own oven ready poultry, oven ready ducks, eggs and various marinated poultry cuts.
On a more exotic note, there is a stall home made fudge, and one selling hand-made soap!
On the baking front, there is one stall with home baking (meat pies, quiches and cakes of all sorts) and another which specialises in cakes (some imaginatively and artistically decorated!) thus giving you a choice between makers, and from November we have had a stall specialising in breads and related baking (Danish pastries, Pizzas, Custard pies).
As an accompaniment to the bread, we have a cheese stall with locally made cheeses. Another stall specialises in selling jams and chutneys.
From outside Cumbria, the organisers have managed to find a vegetable grower, vegetable growers in Cumbria proved impossible to find. He is non-organic. However, in accord with the rules of farmers' markets, he does not sell bought-in vegetables and fruit, so shows seasonal variations in what is actually available.
Probably the only stalls whose products you can't eat are the plants and garden goods stall, our village silver-smith's and the occasional pottery stall, though we don't really suggest that you use the soap as food!
Occasionally there may be other craft stalls, or display stalls, and these will be announced in the attractions page for the coming month.
From time to time we have guest stalls whose goods may not comply in detail with the rules of farmers' markets, and one of these has become a regular. We have included Traidcraft who sell "ethically" produced foreign food products, which in our view fit very closely (except for being local and sold by the producer) with the spirit of farmers' markets. And, to the best of our knowledge, nobody in the neighbourhood or probably even in the country can produce tea, coffee and chocolate.