Yum Yum - it's Little Common Farmers' Market

There was plenty to snaffle up at St Martha's church hall this month with stallholders doing their best to tempt shoppers still recovering from festivities.

Tom Van Den Bergh from Tunbridge Wells had on display a number of cheeses produced in the south of England - Ashmore, Winterdale Shaw, Buttercup, Golden Cross, Flower Marie, and Lord of the Hundreds were all made in Sussex or Kent.

"Normally I do reasonably well here," commented Tom about the Farmers' Market.

"And Christmas is always busy."

On the next table was Beryl Gebby who has made her own jam, marmalade and chutney under the name Axon Preserves for four years.

"A friend of mine wanted to do the market at Rye Harbour and didn't want to do it on her own. So we shared, but it got a bit cold over there and I wanted to be warm.

"It's worth coming to this market - we do get quite a lot of people through here, and we have quite a few in the one in Parkhurst Hall as well. But it would be nice to get a few more stallholders interested."

Melanie Jones of V.J Game had an enormous variety of produce to please carnivores - including black pudding, ostrich steaks and venison medallions.

She said: "It is a bit quiet today but I had a great time at the Christmas one. I expected it to be a bit quiet today but normally it is worth coming. You have got your regular customers - if it was not for them there would not be a market. It is nice to see them come through the door."

Also there was the Happy Pig Company, run by Keith Barnett and Andrew Dyer-Wright - recently nominated as finalists in the Food Producer of the Year Awards run by Sussex Enterprise, and pleased with their recent success in the South East sausage competition in which they finished tenth out of 148 entries.

Another success story represented at the market was Farmhouse Kitchen, which is run by Lee and Kirsty Smith who took over the business five years ago and gone from strength to strength.

Market organiser Councillor Stuart Wood said: "I was a bit concerned about the weather - I thought we might have to cancel and it remains to be seen if we get any people in this morning. We did very well in December with sales but I dare say we are going to feel the recession as much as anyone else, so we will have to watch out and hopefully we will keep the market going."

Bexhill Farmers' Market will be held at Parkhurst Hall, in Parkhurst Road, on Thursday January 22 from 9am until noon.