Gloucester Green Farmers' Market

Local produce for local people! Meat, fish, bread, preserves, herbs & other plants, dairy, veg. Sellers: contact Rob Valentine on 01789 267000.
Gloucester Green, first and now also third Thursday of every month.
Part of Oxford Farmers Markets
There are now 10 regular Farmers Markets in Oxford city and many more in surrounding areas. If you wanted to do all your shopping in local markets, you might now be able to. Many also act as social hubs for their areas, with a particularly friendly vibe and in many there are children's activities. More info
Jen Pawsey December 8, 2006
At both Gloucester Green and Wolvercote Farmers' Markets Renee the lovely Goat farmer can be found. Her yoghurt is deliciously sour and not sloppy, and comes in beautiful glass bottles. If you return them you get a discount on your next yoghurt purchase. And the cheeses are like little patties of goatiness. They're creamy and delicious. I particularly recommend the peppery one. The other excitement is goat cheese cake, but go early if you want to catch it! If you're feeling particularly energetic you could go and visit the goats in their home territory of the Windrush valley.

I have been going to D & B Cox for many years now and have never been disappointed. This great family butcher (Ixhill Farm) in Aylesbury provides the best lamb, venison and chicken sausages I have ever eaten. Their game, (partridges, venison, pheasant or wild pigeon), duck and chicken are always tender, fresh and succulent. And all this wonderful quality for a reasonable price - something I find a rarity in a farmers' market! Barry, one of the owners, is a most helpful and charming butcher. Highly recommended to all students and game lovers ! Tel: 01844 338855
The best bread you can find in Oxford for reasonable prices, great eggs that make a difference in baking (and cheaper than supermarket), lovely pies if you prefer just to eat, fresh meat. It's a precious thing and I'm so grateful that I can get there in my lunch hour. Also some stalls change from the 1st to 3rd thursday like Benson's apple juice and some bread ladies. I love it!
Just brilliant. I take time off work to come about every two to three months. I wish you were on a Saturday or a Sunday.
I wondered around the Oxford Farmers Market on the 17th August and became very excited at my first ever sight of purple cauliflower. I purchased one in haste and photographed the stall. I'm not just saying this, but it was the most delicious cauliflower i have ever tasted, and I would purchase a purple cauliflower from the farmers market again!
There are two crucial pieces of preparation for a visit to Oxford's Farmers' Market: get a bank loan and hire a porter. For you will inevitably buy a great deal more than you intended.

Your correspondent goes for the unpasteurised milk and cream from Hurdlebrook Farm, rich creamy dairy from happy cows, not spoiled by cooking. But that's just one stall among many. The following description is not complete, as some stalls were just setting up and I had to return to honest toil in the Daily Info salt mines, but it should give you an idea.

I saw three cheese stalls, two cow (Skett + Gorsehill Abbey) and one goat (Windrush), the latter also offering delicacies such as goaty cheesecake and yoghurt drinks.

Two stalls offered eggs, one vegetables (carrots, leeks, kale, cabbage, purple sprouting, onions and potatoes). Another has an amazing selection of mushrooms, big flat ones and boxed assortments of exotic ones. Three or four have plants, two do bread and cakes, and one has honey and all kinds of honey products, from beeswax to candles.

Another sells trout, fresh and smoked, and yet another, Bensons, has many varieties of pressed apple juice.

Then there's a great number of meat stalls. Ranger's organic beef, Acorn Herd pork, Little Wittenham lamb, D&B Cox providing pigeon, rabbit, pheasant and venison. Eadle's Farm sell bacon, eggs and sausages, and torment passing vegetarians by frying their wares and serving them in baps on the spot. And if said vegetarians wish to flee the smell of sizzling meat by moving to the other end of the market, they will find no respite. For there lurks the infamous "roast pork and apple sauce bap" stall, the downfall of many a waverer.

The list is not yet complete. Godwin's Ice Cream Farm have a driveable stall, as does The Soupery. And there's at least a couple of people with interesting stuff in jars: chutneys and curds and marmalades and patés and the like.

As I left a man was putting large pies onto a table. Resolutely I strode on.

There's also a large arts and crafts section. But you can't eat those.
To this I just want to add that in particular the bread stalls make your trip there worthwhile.

As I don't find much variety in Oxford's bread supply (apart from a few, totally overpriced bakeries...), this is the place to go to. They have several kinds of rye bread, sourdough breads, wholemeal, crusty... delicious anyway. They also have "lardy cake" which I know some people seem to be crazy about (it sounds funny but tastes quite nice if you're up for a little treat...)
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