All images by Alessandra Magnani
As regular readers will have noticed we are right in the middle of election time and with only a week or so to go before the elections on 25 May, the pace is hotting up and local politicians can be seen in evidence in almost all of the piazza’s.
It’s meet and greet time but there was one event this morning which almost passed under the radar and had much more to do with than just handshakes and asking for votes.
It was the opening of a new vegetable market in Fornaci di Barga which aims to cut out the middleman and allow local growers to sell their produce directly to the public.
There has been a strange situation over the last few years where local growers had to send their produce as far away as Florence to sell it and local fruit and vegetable shops also had to make the same trip all away to Florence (an hour and a half by road if all went well but sometimes a good deal more) to buy fruit and vegetables to bring back to sell here in Barga.
Just as a side note, anybody in Barga posting a letter to somebody else in Barga would have to wait a couple of days ( if all went well) for the letter to arrive as that too is sent all away to Florence to be sorted and then sent back to Barga.
From this morning at least the vegetable growers and buyers can rest in their beds a while longer as the new Contadino Market should provide them with an easier way of buying and selling.
As you can hear in the short interview (in Italiano) this morning with the Mayor of Barga, Marco Bonini, it is also hoped that the new market will also give a sign of encouragement for people to grow their own on their own allotments if they know that there is an easy way near by to sell their produce.
