Upmarket at the market

We have upgraded our presence at the Sunday market as from last Sunday. We've added proper branding to our market stall, making it easier for the public to identify what we have on offer.

Because the farm is still not producing saleable product year round we are always looking for complimentary products to add to our line up. We have just added a new product to our line up that is going very well for us. They are called SoapNuts and are a natural alternative to using chemical based soap powders.

SoapNuts grow on the Sapindus tree that is native to Northern India and Nepal. The fruit of this tree contains natural saponin which is nature's form of soap. In fact the word 'soap' is derived from saponin. In the days when people made soap from fats, oils and wood ash most everybody knew that the chemical reaction that took place when you mixed the oils with the alkali (wood ash) was called saponification. It's easy to see where the name for that reaction came from. Those soaps of old were gentle mild soaps that rarely caused skin problems.

Modern soaps, such as those you buy in your supermarket, are made mostly from artificial compounds and, unsurprisingly, many people have skin reactions when they use these soaps. The same is true of laundry powders. How many of you have noticed skin rashes, itchiness, or allergic reactions after putting on your freshly washed clothes? The reason for that is simply that your clothes come out of your washing machine laden with chemical residues from the soap powders, the whiteners, and the fabric softeners the marketing gurus tell us we should use.

SoapNuts contain only natural saponin and leave your clothes clean, fresh, and naturally soft. Aside from the obvious benefits of not dumping large quantities of residual chemicals into the waste water stream, nor leaving chemical residues in your clothes, SoapNuts are also extremely economical to use. $15 of SoapNuts lasts us almost a whole year.

Anyway, I'm not trying to sell you any because you all live on the other side of the world from me. But if you can find them at home, buy some and try them out. I know you'll be impressed.

We have put in a small lot of 50 trees here but it will be ten or so years before we'll be harvesting from them. It's likely that we'll be the only supplier of certified organic SoapNuts in New Zealand and, possibly, the world. Maybe I should have put in 5000 trees instead?



I am still looking to add more products and I have started making soap bars, using only natural ingredients. The first lot of 45 bars of Rice Bran and Palm Oil Lavender Seed soap should be ready for resale in about two weeks. Now the hunt is on for even greater diversity and one possible product is reselling Redmond Rock Salt imported from the USA. This salt is one of the purest and most nutritious salts available. We've been using it ourselves for some time now. If we can get a distributorship for this region we'll add this string to our bow as well.

Who would have thought that I would become such an entrepreneur? And in that department there is more to tell but it will keep for a later blog entry.

Musical Interlude

Some of you may know that when Jenny and I moved to Wairarapa we found out that there wasn't a Folk Music club here. Since folk music is a real passion for Jenny and I love music of all sorts we started the Wairarapa Folk Club which has now been active for about 2 years.

In that time we have gotten a core of active playing members who come to most club meetings. From that core we have formed a gig band, tentatively called Vox Populi. During the summer months we play every Saturday morning at the Farmers Market in Masterton. Week by week our sound is improving and there are now quite a number of people who come to the market regularly to listen to us.

Some people like us so much that we have been asked if we have a CD out yet and we're also playing at a wedding on the 30th of January.

Last Saturday we learned that our bass player isn't able to make it to the wedding. So it has fallen to me to try and learn to play the bass in two weeks. My normal role in the band is that of "knob twiddler" which is controlling the sound desk so we sound good and occasionally playing harmonica.

I'm certainly no musical genius and while I can produce some sounds vaguely resembling music from most instruments I am not a master of any of them. In fact the only instrument I play reasonably well is the harmonica. And that is mostly because you pick the harmonica that is in the right key for the song you're playing. The great thing about that is that it is really difficult to play a wrong note.

So ... I am practising like mad at the moment trying to get this bass guitar playing up to a standard that is acceptable enough to play at the wedding. Which also means that I'm playing the bass at the Farmers Market ... in public ... for the first time this coming Saturday ... GULP!!!


Back to the practising now!

What a long time between posts!

Gosh, we must have been busy! I just looked a few moments ago and noticed that it has been nearly two months since I last posted an entry. So this is going to be a BIG one.

In the intervening time we've had all sorts of fun! It started with the mountain dulcimer workshop I organised in Wellington.

Earlier this year I got in touch with Neal Hellman who is one of the world's foremost mountain dulcimer players (see, read and hear more about Neal on www.gourd.com). Neal wanted to come over to New Zealand in December/January and was looking for gigs so I took it upon myself to organise a workshop in Wellington for him.

With the most incredible help from Peter Denee in Wellington, who moved mountains for me, we got the workshop organised and had a fantastic Sunday afternoon with Neal.

There were several brand new players there and the spare dulcimers that Jenny and I had brought along were pressed into service. Neal was so supportive of the new players that all of them became 'converts' and are now either already the proud owner of a dulcimer or are looking to buy one.


In the weeks leading up to the workshop I spent most evenings in my workshop pulling out all the stops to try and finish building another dulcimer. I managed to do so on the Saturday evening (very late evening) before the workshop. I still have some finish polishing to do and the string spacing needs a little tweaking but one of the new players had a grand old time playing my brand new dulcimer at Neal's workshop.


After the workshop Neal, Peter and his wife Phillipa, Jenny and I went out for a meal at Leuven. This is a Belgian beer restaurant and everybody ordered massive plates full of mussels (apart from Jenny and I because we had vegetarian meals). It was a wonderful way to finish off a wonderful day. Many thanks are due to Neal and Peter for making the day such a success.

And suddenly it was Christmas already, followed very shortly afterward by New Year's Eve. We celebrated both New Year and a neighbour's 50th birthday at his place with mountains of food, loads of laughter, playing music, a bonfire and fireworks.

And here we are nearing the end of the first month of 2009, having made hay on two friends' properties and our own. With making hay always comes the saga of getting the hay baler set up right. This year that took several weeks and the application of over $1100 but at least the baler ran very well with only minor breakages. Now all we have to do is sell most of our hay to recover the repair costs.

We also had lovely times soaking in the river on the days when it was 35+ degrees and I was busy making hay at home. We took the dogs with us and just sat on the river bed and let the cool mountain water wash over us.


We're looking forward to a more productive year; the potato crop looks good, our other vegetables seem to be doing well, there is the possibility of another haying job (a big one that should pay quite well) and we're about to start cutting and selling firewood.

Oh, and somewhere in amongst all of that activity I installed a satellite dish and receiver so we can finally get half way decent TV reception. I used a decent size dish (75cm) to make sure we don;t get too much rain fade. I've also protected the dish as much as possible from the very strong winds we get here by mounting it on the side of the house rather than on the roof. It's only taken nearly three years of living here to get around to fixing that.


So that is a quick and rough catch up of the last couple of months. More, and more regular, posts soon.