Bandon Farmer's Market nearly here

Posted by Conor O'Neill on Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Bandon Farmer’s Market

Begins: Sat, 01 Apr 2006 at 10:00 AM

Ends: Sat, 01 Apr 2006 at 2:00 PM

Entry fee: 0

 **Location**:      <span class='location'><p>The Old Market Garden

Bandon, Co Cork

Ireland

Update 1: The times above have been confirmed and here is the official flyer. I'll definitely be there.

bandon_farmes_market_flyer02

If this infringes any copyright, let me know and I’ll take it down

It had been thought that the sad passing of Peter Crowley, who had been the main driving force behind the setting up of a Farmer’s Market in Bandon, would result in the plan being shelved. However, I was thrilled to read in the current edition of the Bandon Opinion that the organizing committee have not given up and Peter’s daughter is now involved.

The plan is for the market to take place in (what would commonly be known as) the Mace Carpark in the middle of town. The first one will be on Saturday April 1st and will run on the first Saturday of every month up to and including September.

I’m sure all food producers in the area know about it already but if you don’t and you are interested in taking a stall, please contact Dianne Curtin or Veronica Neville.

This is genuinely a great leap forward for Bandon. As a historical centre of food production for centuries with very productive agricultural land in the area and as a market town, it is only right and proper that we should celebrate Bandon’s local food producers and provide them with the opportunity to sell directly to the public.

I am convinced that Farmer’s Markets do not reduce revenue for local businesses, rather they increase business due to the larger number of customers attracted to the town who might otherwise go to Clon or Cork.

Now all we need is for someone to open a micro-brewery and I’ll be a very happy man.

For those of you wondering where the Mace Car Park is, follow this link to Microsoft Windows Live Local. I was very surprised to discover that Microsoft Maps is far superior to Google Maps for rural Ireland.

This is the structured version of the previous post and highlights how some of the most important information is presented in a way which is easily collected by automated systems.

I have a few observations of my own on the hCalendar structure and the Wordpress plugin:

[1] The Address Fields are very U.S. centric

[2] It would be nice to have a “Map” field to highlight the specific location

[3] There is no facility for repeating events. I know this is a major topic of conversation among the developers of the hCalendar format. But to me it is critical for any Calendar structure.

[4] The Tags don’t get hyperlinked over to Technorati

[5] As mentioned in my first review of the Structured Blogging plug-in, we lose all rich text editing when using it.

These issues are all fixable and do not detract from the advantages offered by the addition of structure.

Tags: Farmers Market, Bandon, Peter Crowley, Mace, Structured Blogging


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