Fresh and best at Woodend

Stock up after the Easter break at the Woodend Community Farmers Market this Saturday morning. The market features about 40 stalls of fresh, delicious and local goodness, with market proceeds going to Macedon Ranges Sustainability Group campaigns and projects. This month the market organisers especially look forward to some special autumn produce from their great accredited stallholders.

Pollards Orchards will be bringing along apples and pears. Apple varieties will be jonathan, red delicious and golden delicious. Pears will be josephine and bosc.

Sandor's Harvest will have new season mushrooms such as shiitaki and oyster, plus kifler and nicola potatoes and end of season summer tomatoes (yellow pear, opollo, tigarella, green zebra), basil, capsicums and eggplants (lebanese and angela). 

Somerset Heritage Produce will have the bumper new season supply of pumpkins such as musquee de provence, tromboncino, galeux d'eysines, gialla, butternut, and will have end of season eggplants, capsicums and zucchini. 

Longinomus Rare Plants will have perennial sunflowers, perennial blue and rare pink delphiniums, drunken choirboy poppies and new season potted rare species bulbs.

Remember the market has free facepaint for the kids with the talented Fiona Fraser in her gorgeous facepaint tent nearby the barbecue. Friendly dogs are welcome to the market on a leash. Please take your own bags, baskets and trolleys as the aim is to keep the market plastic bag free. More info? Call 0407 860 320.

Did You Know...?

* The average plastic bag is used for only five minutes, yet can take up to 1000 years to break down in the environment.

* Australians use over 10 million plastic bags a day.

* Almost half of these bags are given away by non-supermarket retailers such as newsagents, discount stores, pharmacies, fruit and vegetable shops, liquor stores and take-away outlets.

* Plastic bags suffocate, disable and kill thousands of marine mammals and sea birds worldwide each year. When the animal dies and decays, the plastic bag is free again to repeat the deadly cycle.

* It only takes four grocery trips for an average Australian family to accumulate 60 plastic shopping bags.

* Australians throw away about 7150 recyclable plastic bags a minute, with 429,000 recyclable plastic supermarket bags dumped in landfill every hour.

* Plastic bags are considered to be a 'free' commodity, but the cost to households of $10 to $15 per year is added to the price of goods that they purchase.

* The production of plastic bags accounts for some 20,000 tonnes of plastic polymer derived from non-renewable resources. While plastic bags can be recycled, only a tiny proportion of plastic bags are collected and reprocessed.

* Plastic has remained the most common category of rubbish picked up on Clean Up Australia day during the last 20 years. Most common plastic consumer items include chip and confectionery bags, bottle caps and drink containers.

For more information please visit www.noplasticbags.org.au