We finally did it. We finally made it to a local market, to push away our fears and see what we could sell in one day. Both our moods were flying high this morning, but neither of us could predict how the day would go. Well, go it did. We had a great day, and returned home with barely anything worth talking about.
The day started early. Tooooooo early to be honest. My body doesn't like to get up anytime before the sun, so 4.30 this morning was about two hours before my body wanted to move. I'm a late night owl. Happy though is another story. His body clock is non existent. I blame it on the fact that there are no working clocks in the pacific, and the only time the islanders move at any speed beyond slow is when the church bells ring. He was up and at'em while I was trying to hide the fact I couldn't work out what I was doing out of bed.
All good though, and only leaving home an hour too late, we realise we had forgotten two very important things. Loose change, and fat note change. Hmmm...at 5am it's not likely we'll find a bank anywhere to help us out. Do you know how hard it is to be sexy at this time of the morning, and also be able to convince a muslim indian that he really should be nice and perhaps swap my $100 bill for some small notes?
By the time we finally get our UNCOVERED TRAILER to the markets we discover a line of cars at least 100 long. We're the last in the first line, and then watch as over 200 more cars start snaking lines around the car lot. It's dark, the sun is barely making a dint i the sky, and we're sitting in a crazy wet paddock with possibly 1000 other people freezing our buns off. For the next two hours, nothing happened. Apart from cars queing, NOTHING HAPPENED. We sat and wondered what on earth we had got ourselves into, and how long before someone was going to get the show on the road.
At 7am! they finally opened the gates to the casual stallholders (us). We inched forward, went through the gates, paid for our stand and then was directed to our spot. With only an hour-ish to get organised, we unpacked and sorted, and moved and titivated all of our lovely produce until we thought the gates would open. Then we stood - and stood - and stood a bit longer - then stood some more. An hour passed before we really had any real customers.
From then on the day ran hot. With happy at one end and me at the other we both worked our sections with barely a moment to talk. We picked, we priced, we cajoled, we joked, we passed out cards, we worked the crowd and by golly we sold farm fresh locally grown produce! Not only did we sell the farm fresh we had a few taste testers by way of pickles and lemon butter, which we hawked like there was no tomorrow. I knew if I could get a punter to taste my Uncle Al's Gourmet Pickles, then they would have no good reason to not buy a bottle. And it worked! it all worked.
By the end of our very long day, we had sold all but about 6 boxes of produce and only have a few jars left for next week. We offloade 40kilos of chillis to boot. When we did our tally up, we made more from the market than we would have selling to the fruit shops direct. When we sell to the fruit shops direct, we make more than if we sell to the centralised market. It was a good thing.
Are we going back? You betcha! Both happy and I are born salespeople. His charm and charisma, along with his good looks gets the sales, and my ballsy show stopping conversation brings in the others that may just walk past. We make a great team.
As of today, Field to Feast is now a going concern. Woohooooooo
