Farmer's Market and Car Boot Sale

Armidale has a pretty good sized Farmer's Market on the first and third Sundays of the month.  Pretty busy too!  Unlike in the States, the produce was mostly cheaper than in the supermarket.  I'm glad that we'll be able to support the local farms every couple weeks, as long as they've got produce to sell.  There was a mishmash of specialty stalls (macarons, baked goods, smoked fish) as well as little garage-sale stalls.  Hence the car boot sale, I guess.

We picked up tomatoes, zucchini, parsley, green bell peppers (always called capsicums down here), kiwifruits, and dragonfruit.  (Unfortunately, the dragonfruit wasn't nearly as good as the dragonfruit from Miyakojima.)  Haven't tried the kiwi yet--it's a bit crazy to me to think that all this is grown in the area.  Kiwis came from Coffs Harbour--we're headed there next weekend, on the coast.

Bonus: there was even a biodynamic farm!  Unexpectedly, but why not?  Also, the honey guy looks like the mayor from Portlandia.

In addition to produce, we splurged and bought coffee and pastries and went to an open part of the park and sat around, enjoying the nice weather.  It was windy and the magpies came over to investigate our crumbs.

I finally got a picture of the white birds we see flying around, and hadn't seen them close up until now either.  I'd originally thought they might be Sulphur-crested cockatoos... but they sure don't have the big crest like the ones on the wikipedia page.  More mysteries until we get our field guide to birds.

They make a pretty terrible noise, but they're real pretty when they fly around in the flock--white against a blue sky.  All of the ones we saw in the trees were roosting in pairs.  They were pretty cute.