Markets

This is Norwich market.

It's a busy place that sells different goods

from all over the world.

But markets have been around for hundreds of years,

and they didn't always look like they do now.

This is how Norwich looked

about 500 years ago.

In those days there were no planes or trucks to transport things,

so farmers took their own goods to market.

We'd have had to got up incredibly early in the morning

to harvest crops and then maybe load them into baskets to bring them in,

maybe walking up to ten miles to get to a market.

This is an important

once-weekly activity or occurrence that we just have to do.

It's how we survive.

And this is what the market might have looked like in those days.

Usually a market would have developed

around a crossroad between hamlets or villages

and people would have met there and bartered and exchanged product for product.

I bring along a chicken, you bring along some apples,

we can swap them.

As a civilisation we soon learned that you didn't have to be able to

grow and manage everything yourself,

that you could specialise.

Many of the peasant farmers would have more products

than they needed to survive and feed their family,

so the excess they could sell or exchange.

They didn't have the same variety of food we have today,

but some things were the same.

Life was based totally around the seasons of the year.

Everything was seasonal.

Carrots were usually purple or white.

The orange carrot doesn't come in for another few hundred years.

The market would have been a very vibrant, colourful and smelly place,

a lot more animals and livestock around,

being walked to market as well.

You certainly at the time wouldn't take meat to market pre-cut,

you'd actually take the animal,

and possibly slaughter it at the market as well.

COW MOOS

If you had an outlet perhaps to the sea,

you're fairly close to one of the major ports

where ships from around the Mediterranean came in,

you could bring in all sorts of exotic products to that market

and to that region,

they would have come across as luxury goods.

Markets became important places,

which over time grew into towns.

Other sorts of trades and shops would have soon built up

around the market.

We're likely to find old taverns, inns and coach houses

where the coaches and horses would have been able to have been stabled.

The market place will also be a place of punishment.

THEY JEER

A town at the time would have to have stocks or a pillory.

-CROWD MEMBER:

-Let the crows have his eyeball!

Ultimately, the town itself builds up around the market.

So if our farmers from the past visited Norwich market today...

..they'd be amazed at some of the things they'd find.

This market has been here for over 1,000 years,

it's survived rebellions and revolts,

plague, fires, wars, famines,

and yet it's still here today,

it's still as vibrant and as popular as ever.

Although a lot of our food

comes from all over the world, this farm in Surrey grows food

for the nearby towns and villages.

We have 150 acres here, we're market gardeners,

we produce around 90 to 100 different crops every season.

A lot of our produce gets sold through local farmers' markets

and other local independent retailers.

We're trying to have as short a time as possible between picking

and when it reaches the customer,

so we tend to pick everything today,

for delivery first thing tomorrow morning.

The vehicles leave any time from midnight

almost through to about seven o'clock in the morning.

This morning we had produce going off to various places,

including a van going to Guildford Farmers' Market.

That's a very local market to us.

The idea behind farmers' markets is that everything

must come from within a 50-mile radius of the market itself.

It takes about ten minutes, about five or six miles, to Guildford.

Guildford Farmers' Market sells a lot of locally grown food.

We're selling basically fresh vegetables and baby salad leaves.

There's beetroots, carrots, purple sprouting broccoli,

pumpkin, squashes, kale, rainbow chard,

and it's all seasonal produce.

That's £6.30, please.

Thank you.

The carrots have sold very well,

and the beetroots, the mixed baby salad leaf,

and we've sold a lot of squashes as well.

Here in Leicester market,

many of the stalls sell food from all over the world.

Obviously try and encourage English local farmers, English produce,

but at the moment it's difficult.

The majority of the stuff at the moment's coming from Spain.

Bananas from Costa Rica...

..pomegranates from Egypt,

kiwi from New Zealand.

Satsumas, pears - English,

and Royal Gala from France.

We've been specialising in Caribbean food for nine years now.

We've got plantains, which you fry,

um, the yellow ones are more ready to fry,

lady fingers...

We've got soursop.

We've got breadfruit, which comes from Mauritius...

..apple bananas...

..which are small baby bananas.

They're absolutely sweet.

When they ripen,

they taste of apples.

COCK CROWS

It's early in the morning,

and this farmer is taking his cattle to market,

-so there's plenty to do.

-COW MOOS

..5! 2-5, 2-5, 2-5,

2-10, 15, 15, 15, 15, 20...

AUCTIONEER CONTINUES

..4, 24, 6, 26, 26 bid, 2, 28, 30 bid...

AUCTIONEER CONTINUES

In this craft market near Wimbledon in London,

they sell everything from jewellery,

to toys, to pottery.

'I'm Stephen Llewellyn,

'I'm the potter here at Merton Abbey Mills,'

I've been potting for 35 years,

and in that time I've probably made something like

half a million pots.

You just put the clay on the wheel,

you have to work the clay to make sure it's smooth and even

and properly centred, otherwise you'll end up with a very wobbly pot,

and then, using plenty of water,

you're very slowly and gradually squeezing the clay

to thin it out to whatever shape you might want to make.

MUSIC DROWNS SPEECH

Mine turned into a snail!

You can make, obviously, plates,

which are very thin and flat,

you can make vases, which are tall and thin,

you can make flowerpots, jugs, mugs, bowls,

whatever you want.

I suppose you're really only limited by your imagination.

Another market stall makes and sells hand-painted glass.

I'm Julie Childs and I'm a glass artist.

I hand-paint glass gifts and sell at Norwich market

and to other shops all round the country.

I get most of my inspiration from architecture -

historic properties, cathedrals, that kind of thing -

nature, flowers and also whatever's in fashion at the moment.

I mix all the ideas together

to create the effect that you might see here.

I would say that the creative process evolves from practice,

so you just keep trying new ideas,

not be afraid to try new ideas.

You can have your set pieces that you know work,

but always branch out and think of something new.

This stall makes soft-toy monsters...

out of socks?!

Hello, I'm Gerri and I have a craft stall at Merton Abbey Mills market.

A sock monster is just a sock

made into a funky, weird creature, like an alien.

To make a sock monster you just get a sock, you lay it out flat,

so that the heel is on the front of the sock,

as that's going to be the mouth.

You snip across the top,

about two inches down the toe of the sock,

and that will become the arms.

Now you put a two-inch cut down the top of the sock from the toe,

and again at the bottom -

the bottom will be the legs and the top one will be the ears.

You sew round all the edges,

except for one of the feet,

cos you're going to put the stuffing in there.

So then you turn the whole thing inside out again.

You put the stuffing in, draw it up through the leg

until it's all filled up, his ears and everything...

Then you can decorate him any way you like.

You can get buttons for eyes,

three buttons if you want him to have three eyes,

one big button if you want a big alien, or anything you like.

You could have a red tongue hanging out

or some big white buck teeth.

Just basically have fun and make it your own, your very own creation.

Everything we eat can be split into different food groups,

and a market is a great place to see them all.

Here's some meat and fish.

My name's Nathan Shaw, I'm a butcher in Leicester market.

We sell a range of meats,

lamb, pork, beef, chicken,

and we make our own sausages on the premises.

These are all fruit and vegetables.

Going round the corner you've got satsumas and plums,

again pomegranates, but smaller.

And then it's just a mirror image of what the side is,

it's satsumas, pears - English,

and Royal Gala from France.

We've got tomatoes here,

this is the salad side,

cucumbers, spring onions, peppers,

courgettes, aubergine, carrot.

All the way round the side we've got veg - broccoli, potato,

red or white onions.

This stall sells sugary sweets.

We sell old-fashioned sweets, candyfloss, toffee apples.

Fudge sells very good,

candyfloss sells very good, toffee apples...

..pear rock, that's a local thing.

What we've got on there sells.

The cereals group

includes bread, as well as pasta and rice.

And there's dairy produce such as milk, butter and cheese.

We all know that it's good to eat fruit and vegetables,

but did you know that we eat different parts of the plant?

These are all roots.

The root is the part of the plant that grows under the ground,

and takes in water and nutrients from the soil.

The field we're in at the moment is a field of carrots

which were planted late in the season,

so that we have them going into the winter.

So the carrots, as you can see,

they've got this very lovely green top,

the top is the part that you would see first of all on a carrot,

and then after that the root starts to form,

which is all growing underneath the ground.

That's the bit you see when you buy them

and that's the bit that you'll eat.

These are all leaves.

Leaves are the green part of the plant

that helps it make food from sunshine.

So here we are in a field of winter cabbage.

Cabbage is a crop that grows above ground.

You have the roots, so as the plant is put in

the root structure will form.

This is where it will get all of its water, all of its nutrients from,

it then gives rise to these outer leaves,

and after about a month and a half it'll start to form a head,

and the head above the ground is the part we all eat.

So after the cabbage is cut we would discard a lot of these outer leaves,

the ones that are there to protect...

..this bit here which, as you can see, is a lighter green colour.

If we cut into it...

..you see, it's a lovely sort of milky yellow colour,

and this bit in the centre

is the delicious bit you want to eat with your Sunday roast.

These are all fruit.

The fruit is the part of the plant that contains the seeds.

So here on Secretts Farm we grow various types of summer fruits.

Unfortunately it's coming pretty well to the end of the season.

Here we've got strawberries, so we're coming right to the end of these.

The plants here, they're grown in these grow bags,

they've been planted in early spring,

when the plant would then start to create its foliage,

it would also send off runners,

which is what we can see here.

This would create a new strawberry plant, but you take these off

so that the plant can concentrate all its energies on producing the fruit.

Market traders have to be good at mental maths.

Eight plums, a pound.

Three for a pound...

And they have different ways of pricing their goods.

This one sells everything by the bowl full.

We sell most things a pound a bowl.

We've got tomatoes here,

this is the salad side,

cucumbers, spring onions, peppers,

courgettes, aubergine, carrot.

All the way round the side we've got veg, broccoli, potato,

red or white onions.

So if all the bowls cost a pound,

how much does each item cost?

On this potato farm in Norfolk,

the farmer needs to know

how much money he'll make selling his potatoes.

We grow about 150 acres of potatoes under our own name,

and we also harvest for our neighbour 80 acres,

so in total about 230 acres.

Generally, our fields would generate between 20 and 30 tonnes to the acre.

Early in the season, when conditions are good,

we can do about 300 tonnes a day.

When conditions get wet and soggy, and we're starting to fight the land

to get the potatoes up like now,

we're doing about 60 or 70 tonnes a day.

Prices fluctuate every year.

Generally, last year for example,

we were getting 5p a kilo off the fields,

this year we're about 10p a kilo off the fields

and for us to make it work properly we'll be happy with about 15.

Stephen Llewellyn makes his living

making pots at a London craft market.

If you take, say, a mug which you might sell for £5

or something like that,

the clay would probably only cost you something like 20 pence.

If you add the firing costs and all the other things like that,

it probably doesn't even add up to 50 pence,

so providing you can work quickly and efficiently,

you can make a reasonable living out of it.

During the course of the average working day,

I would throw maybe 150 to 200 pots.

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