As you drive north from Taree, it's not hard to see that the Hastings area is a dairying region. Those rich green river flats dotted with black and white cows gives the paddocks a one-thousand-and-one dalmatians effect. And the milk churns at the farm gates are always a dead giveaway that you have entered serious milking country, although most are recycled now, serving as letterboxes, and the Dairy Fresh signs are the real cue that this is where your daily milk begins its journey.

So I was not surprised to encounter Sean and Kristine Edwards at the Hastings Farmers' Market, located at the Wauchope show grounds, one of the more recent additions to the bursting calendar of grower's markets around the country.

The Edwards once ran the tantalizingly named Udder Cow Cafe and Mountain Retreats, at Comboyne. Now Sean manages a coffee consultancy and the smell of his coffee permeated the building where many of the stallholders had set up their displays.

In fact Comboyne and nearby Kendall were so well represented - a biofarm, local wines, mixed vegetables and fruit, jams and eggs, potatoes, farmed rabbits - that I shelved any plans to drive there to check out the local foods. The producers were all right here!

Which is, after all, what a farmers' market is all about. Trevor Sargeant, Hastings Council's Economic Development Officer, as part of the Hastings Food and Agricultural Opportunities Program, realized that such a market works best when the produce is local and as fresh as only just-picked can be.

The first of these monthly markets were held in February 2002, and the locals have learned that they must be out bright and early, shopping bags at the ready, from 8am when the gates open on the fourth Saturday of each month. Go later if you like, but the eyes will have been picked out of the dewy flowers, fruit and vegetables.

As I wandered around the stalls, an enthusiastic band appropriately rendered 'The Happy Wanderer'. I felt happy as well when I found jars of blackberry jam, and the maker who was proud to show her scratched arms - proof that she had done battle with the blackberry bushes - just so I could have the pleasure of slathering the results on my toast.

But while we naturally think of peas and potatoes, farm eggs and cheeses when talking about country markets, the reality is that farmers deal with much more. The day I visited one stall featured natural spring water from Wauchope and another had Australian native foods converted into teas and sauces. Then, at others, there were proteas and waratahs, alpaca products, live chooks, orchids, plants and seedlings, handmade soaps and compost worms. Even a local Appaloosa stud got in on the action, making something from selling the inevitable results of owning horses - horse manure.

Many of these had set up around the grounds under canvas awnings, but the more perishable foods were located inside the main building. Here I found the magnificent cheeses from the Hastings Dairy, and fresh pasta and bread - including a special 'market bread' rich with macadamias, bananas and honey, baked by Port Macquarie's Portofino Pasta Co. There were farmed silver perch, organic chickens and mounds of bananas, for this is where the north coast banana-growing region begins.

On that first market day in February, 5000 people swarmed in to see what the council had been brewing up. Months later, the numbers are still high, and those locals who don't mind a bargain are delighted.

Farmers' markets - you could say, they are growing popular.