Life Down Wattle Lane v2 - Market Day & Update

Sorry for the lack of posts. It's be crazy over the last couple of weeks. 

Further dramas with council and trying to get a consent for our new house, I've been experiencing bad nausea due to Parkinson's or medication (I might have morning sickness), and I've also been busy preparing our food registration and our first farmers market.

Just quick update on the house, we're really struggling with the council. The never ending request for "Further Information Required" is a nightmare. I was about to throw in the towel at one point, and threatened so, but the thought of living in a portacom for any longer than is required has given me a little more motivation to carry on. I just want my house. There is a bit of blame going back and forwards between the council and designers. I feel some common sense needs to prevail several contractors have advised me the council is being extremely pedantic with our consent.

I won't bore you with the food registration, but just to say, there is a lot of paper work, fees are crazy expensive for such a small operation that we have, but it is done and we can operate.

What that means, is that we can now have our own sheep processed by a MAF approved abbatoir, packaged by a licensed butcher, and we can store it here on the farm to sell. We are also approved to prepare and sell Gary's amazing Satay!

29th November was the big day! My big 42nd birthday, but also our first big market, promoting Down Wattle Lane. The home of:

• Arapawa Wool & Meat Products
• Unicorn Fibre Cleaners
• Gary's MY Satay 

It was a very busy week, but an extremely busy 2 days. Essentially we were starting everything from scratch, and finding our way, but well all the hard work paid off.

Saturday

1. Collect Gary from Airport at 8.30am.
2. Collect carded wool from Green Acres Fibre Processing Rolleston 9.30am.
3. Drive back to Rangiora to collect everything for food preparation.
4. 12pm to 6pm off to Rangiora Baptist Church kitchen preparing Gary's Satay.
5. 7pm test run of Satay Grill, with family.
6. 9pm start packing car/trailer for following day.

Sunday

1. Up 6am to depart 7am to Rangiora Racecourse, North Canterbury Sunday Market.
2. 7.15am half way there turn car & trailer around to collect forgotten pot.
3. 7.30am arrive at market to prepare stand by 9am.
4. 9am all is go, trading to 2pm.
5. 2.30pm car and trailer is packed and we depart for home.
6. Unload and wash down everything!

Monday

1. Return Gary back to Airport to meet 6am flight to start his working week in Auckland... whilst I went back to bed for a little 😌

All in all it was a good day. Feedback was great, Gary's MY Satay was a hit, someone asked him if he has a restaurant, and another guy said it reminded him when he was in KL for 2 weeks, he fell in love with Satay and hasn't had the same experience with it in NZ until Gary's MY Satay.

We also received some great feedback on the presentation of the stand and I had some great conversations with people. The community here, Rangiora & Loburn at home is amazing. So warm, welcoming, friendly. This has really blown me away, I'm truly amazed. Kiwis are a friendly bunch but this is next level!

We have plenty of room for improvement however. We were a table short, and we needed to be cooking more satay sticks as there was lost sales.

We had one indirect complaint about the smoke from the charcoal. Startup is smokey, even with the best charcoal, but once the embers were hot there was hardly any smoke. We did have a plan to avoid any issues, however we were let down by the metal fabricator in Christchurch. We had a Satay house designed with a chimney, designed to direct the smoke up out of the market area, but the guy really let us down. I will keep working on that.

The other letdown was our bank/eftpos setup. The promised 2-3 day setup was rather misguided. We're over a week down the track, and still no payment terminal. Paper work is done, just no device. Very frustrating.

We sold about 70% of the Satay sticks that we prepared, some fresh lamb, and the little hand made knitted teddy bears that I had. No wool sales, but I demonstrated the spinning wheel and had some good chats.

So will we do it again?

YES... we can't withhold Gary's MY Satay from the people.