Fresh local spray free vegetables and fruit in season. Eggs, seedlings, seeds, soaps. If the sign is out on the Read more...
Until we started this project, we thought we had a pretty good idea of what a roadside stall was. The thing is, we’d never actually thought about it. Roadside stalls just existed and we stopped at them, bought some produce, took some pics, and carried on. The thing is though, once you start on something like this, you need to define what it is you’re doing. And that got us thinking…what is a roadside stall?
That thing you see at the top, that is a roadside stall. Or farm stall, as they put it. Calling it a farm stall is a good way to describe it. Ideally, a roadside stall will have farm produce from your very own farm that is sold at the farmgate of your property. These sort of stalls are quite common. Let’s have a look at a few below.
Not all roadside stalls will be farm stalls though. Some are from larger properties that sell excess produce on the side of the road. And some live in a grey area between two. For instance, Granary & Grove have an olive grove on the property. They sell olive oil in their roadside stall. They also sell other things, produce from their abundant garden. They owners have day jobs that don’t include being a farmer. And the stall is run by the kids. So their stall isn’t necessarily a farm stall.
Some roadside stalls will have craft in them. Sometimes it is part of their offerings. And sometimes it is the major focus of their offerings. The stalls listed below are all tagged as having crafts available.
This starts to show some of the problems defining what a roadside stall is. It’s not purely a farm stall and it’s not purely a stall with produce in it. It’s not hard though is it? I mean, we know it when we see it right? It’s a small stall with stuff in it for sale and an honesty box for taking money.
Except sometimes it isn’t.
In order to accommodate bigger businesses who are selling from their farmgate, we added the category, farm shop. We added this because there were placed we visited and wanted to include but they didn’t have farm stalls. They had a small shop. Some stalls (like Green Haven) blur the line between what is a shop and what is a stall. Then there are bigger shops like Torello’s Farm that we loved but maybe don’t belong on a directory of roadside stalls. They seem to sell all their own produce though so I reckon, why not include them? I have reservations about Matt & Mates. Their objectives sound good in theory but I feel like they’re buying some produce from the bigger markets. I’m not saying they do, I just wonder at the breadth of produce they sell. It can’t all come from local farms. And it looks uncannily like it came from the Rocklea Markets. And then there is Tropical Fruit World. They’re undoubtedly a farm and sell their own produce. But they’re also a tourist attraction. They have chocolate-coated bananas though so as far as I’m concerned they’re staying in the directory.
Below are some of the listings in our Farm Shop category.
At the end of the day, I’m happy for our visitors and followers to decide what is a roadside stall. If you want to include something in our directory then go ahead and add it. In general, I think people understand what a roadside stall is. We’re all about providing a platform to share and grow this community. If you want to be part of it, then please join us.
