Canning Vale Market

Stymied by the lack of U-Pick produce farms and far-off farmers markets, I headed out this morning to an airplane hangar.

Well, it looks like it anyway. The Canning Vale Market. Monday through Friday it caters exclusively to the wholesale trade. On Saturday morning, the gates of the agricultural version of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory open to the public. No more glamorous looking on the inside than out, I am a kid in a candy store with the offerings made available to me.

The cavernous shed is divided into huge wire cages. Inside each a wholesaler sets up pallets loaded with boxes and plastic tubs of their offerings. If it is in a box, that is the quantity you are buying (yes, I will be able to do something with a bushel of rutabagas), in plastic tubs or humongous cardboard cartons are individual items or bags to choose. I imagine that at opening-5:30 a.m.--everything is quite orderly, neatly set-up and the prices (written on the ground near the pallet in white chalk) are easy to read.

Of course, at that hour, the selection is best. At around 8 a.m.-two hours before close- a slight whiff of dealer desperation is in the air. Prices come down, product movement between containers entirely more fluid and hysteria builds within the shopping ranks. The clientele here is very mixed ethnically and I suspect that some wholesale transactions do take place. Or is that tiny Vietnamese family really going to eat three bushels of red bell peppers and 50 pounds of carrots this week? I wonder if the young Italian guys shout out prices of their goods during the wholesale week.

Hop over to the next hangar for the meat and fish. Another zoo. The numerous fish here are not artistically displayed in beds of ice. Fish are tossed onto shallow metal carts, labelled with a whiteboard and lined up against the walls and center island. Looking beyond the retail area towards the loading dock is a man working a band saw. Wearing rain boots, heavy oilcloth apron and dragonhide gloves, he is running shark through the blade effortlessly. Scoop out a few innards and staffers run the new offering to the now empty metal cart. Once the House has been served, the fish monger takes care of customers who are lined up outside the loading dock waiting for their turn to have their purchased salmon, ocean trout or frozen mackerel quickly sliced for them.

The meat store is less chaotic. Everything is prepackaged in fairly large quantities. I do like the whole lamb and goat carcasses hanging by the door. Must be some luau to have one of those on a spit. The whole goat was unusual, as the butcher told me that African immigrants like their goat already cut into chunks. No slaughtering done here, those houses are in Gingin, just meat processing.

So what will I do with my red peppers? I will make/can some pepper relish and make some roast red pepper soup and eat some just the way they are.