Elwood Farmers' Market

Elwood Farmers' Market is accredited by the Victorian Farmers' Markets Association, which is a stricter test than it sounds: accreditation means the person behind the trestle table actually grew, raised or made what is on it. More than 50 stallholders trade under that standard here on the second and fourth Saturday of every month, in the grounds of Elwood Primary School on Scott Street.

Two Saturdays a month, fifty-odd producers

The range leans hard toward things you take home and cook. Seasonal Victorian fruit and vegetables anchor it, with organic growers, bakers, and the preserve-and-pickle end of the trade filling out the rest. Around that sits the breakfast layer that makes it a morning out rather than an errand: coffee, gozleme, falafel, and enough shaded space for people to eat where they bought.

Accreditation is worth understanding, because it is the difference between a farmers market and a market that sells food. The Victorian Farmers' Markets Association checks that traders are primary producers or genuine makers, which rules out the resellers who buy at wholesale and set up under the same kind of gazebo. Shoppers here can ask where something was grown and get an answer from the grower.

The school-grounds setting does something a car park cannot. There is a playground on site, so the market absorbs families for far longer than a produce run would normally take, and the whole thing has the feel of a school fete that happens to sell excellent vegetables. Elwood sits a short walk from the beach, which makes the market an easy first stop on a Saturday that ends elsewhere.

Before you head down

The 8.30am start matters more than the 1pm finish here, because the best of the produce goes early and the last hour is mostly food and coffee. Scott Street is residential and parking is street-only, so walking, riding or taking the tram down Glen Huntly Road is the easier approach. Bring your own bags, and check the date before you go: this is a fortnightly market, not a weekly one, and the gap between the fourth and second Saturday can run to three weeks.