Castle Hill Farmers & Fine Food Market

Hawkesbury Harvest is a not-for-profit that farmers themselves formed in 2002, at a point when Sydney's western food bowl was being built over and the growers still working it had no direct line to the people eating their produce. The Castle Hill market was among the first they organised, and it has been running at the showground on Showground Road ever since, on the second and fourth Saturday of every month except January.

Over eighty growers, twice a month

The stall count sits above eighty growers and producers, and the range reads like a full shop rather than a specialty trip: fresh fruit and vegetables, meats, fresh and smoked seafood, cheeses including goats cheese, woodfired sourdough, pastries and cakes, fresh pasta and sauces, olives and olive oils, sun-dried tomatoes, jams and preserves, gourmet sausages, pates and deli goods, herbs, plants, fresh cut flowers, confectionery and coffee. Handmade crafts sit alongside the food. The organisation's stated purpose is to keep small local agriculture visible and viable, so the emphasis falls on the person selling being the person who grew or made it.

The Hills District is an unusual place for a farmers market to make sense, and that is exactly the point. Castle Hill was market gardens and orchards within living memory and is now dense suburb, so the market puts Hawkesbury and Sydney basin growers in front of a population that mostly no longer lives near a farm. The showground gives it room for eighty-plus stalls plus parking, which few sites this deep into suburban Sydney can offer. The same grounds carry a second, quite different market on another weekend: The Hills UPmarket runs on the Terraces on the fourth Sunday from February to October, around 45 stalls of a boutique rather than produce character.

Good to know before you go

Second and fourth Saturday, with no January market at all, so check the calendar before a summer trip. Four hours is a short window and the produce stalls thin out towards noon, so aim for the first hour if you are shopping properly rather than browsing. Come in off Showground Road rather than trying the other showground gates. Bring your own bags, a cool bag for meat, seafood and cheese, and both cash and a card, because eighty independent traders means eighty separate payment setups. Dogs are welcome, and the showground has the space to make that comfortable. This is Darug country.