# A market in winter

> What a street market sells when nothing grows, and who still comes.

*Places · Issue 14*

## A market in winter

What a street market sells when nothing grows, and who still comes.

![A market in winter](https://t-magazine.clearcms.app/media/market.svg)

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.

“In winter you only come if you mean it.”

## Photographs

![Hollin Row, 8 a.m.](https://t-magazine.clearcms.app/media/market.svg)

![Wire-cut samples](https://t-magazine.clearcms.app/media/cheese.svg)

![Stored apples](https://t-magazine.clearcms.app/media/figs.svg)

![The tea stall](https://t-magazine.clearcms.app/media/bread.svg)

## 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."

*Read next*

## More from this issue

### The last oyster shucker on Pier Nine

![The last oyster shucker on Pier Nine](https://t-magazine.clearcms.app/media/oysters.svg)

Forty years, one knife, and a pier that is about to become flats.

[Read the story](https://t-magazine.clearcms.app/stories/the-last-oyster-shucker)

### Bread at 4 a.m.

![Bread at 4 a.m.](https://t-magazine.clearcms.app/media/bread.svg)

A night shift with the bakers who feed a neighbourhood before it wakes.

[Read the story](https://t-magazine.clearcms.app/stories/bread-at-4am)

### Six soups for a cold flat

![Six soups for a cold flat](https://t-magazine.clearcms.app/media/soup.svg)

One pot, one hour, one loaf of yesterday's bread.