Wild Oats Farmers Market

Wild Oats has run on Saturday mornings at Sedgefield since 1997 and is generally reckoned the best producers market on the Garden Route, largely because of a rule it enforces: stallholders sell what they have grown, caught, baked or made themselves, and reselling bought-in goods is not allowed. The result is a market of actual smallholders - vegetables, free-range eggs, cheese, honey, oysters from the Knysna lagoon, bread, preserves and plants - rather than a craft fair with food attached. It opens early and the good stalls sell out, so arriving at seven or eight is not excessive. Sedgefield itself is on the lagoon between Knysna and Wilderness, was declared Africa's first Cittaslow town in 2010, and the Scarab craft market runs on the same road, which makes a Saturday morning stop here easy to justify.

What you actually see

• A producers-only rule - stallholders sell what they grew, caught or made.
• Real smallholders - vegetables, eggs, honey, cheese and lagoon oysters.
• An early market - good stalls sell out by mid-morning.
• Slow town - Sedgefield declared Africa's first Cittaslow town in 2010.

When to go

Saturday morning, from seven. Two to three hours. It does not run other days.

Honest expectations

Saturday only - the rest of the week there is nothing here. Parking on the N2 verge is chaotic. It rains often on this coast and the market is partly open. Popular items are gone by nine.

Nearby

Knysna is east; the Wilderness lakes are west.