Places · Issue 14
A market in winter
What a street market sells when nothing grows, and who still comes.
In January, the Saturday market on Hollin Row sells what keeps: roots, apples, cheese, and conversation.
The summer crowds leave with the strawberries. What remains, from November to March, is a market for people who cook. Twenty stalls instead of sixty, and every one of them a regular.
Juno Ashe sells apples from an orchard her grandfather planted. By February they have been in the cold store for four months and taste, she insists, better than they did in October. She is right.
Across the row, a cheesemaker slices samples with a wire and argues with customers about rind. Next to him, a man sells only onions: red, white, shallots, and a long pink variety he will not name for fear of competitors.
It is cold, and the tea stall does a roaring trade. Nobody seems to mind.
Juno Ashe sells apples from an orchard her grandfather planted. By February they have been in the cold store for four months and taste, she insists, better than they did in October. She is right.
Across the row, a cheesemaker slices samples with a wire and argues with customers about rind. Next to him, a man sells only onions: red, white, shallots, and a long pink variety he will not name for fear of competitors.
It is cold, and the tea stall does a roaring trade. Nobody seems to mind.
“In winter you only come if you mean it.”
Photographs
Afterwards
We asked every stallholder the same question: why stay open all winter? The answers were practical (rent, regulars, stock that has to move) and then, after a pause, something else. "It is the best part," said the onion man. "In winter you only come if you mean it."
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One pot, one hour, one loaf of yesterday's bread.