February 13th, 2009 Martin
Its been a while since my last post, after a rather nice Christmas and new Year it all went a bit rubbish, after last years appalling weather meant we couldnt put away some cash for our quiet period ( Jan / Feb) so things have been tighter than they ever have before, to the point we were within days of closing the business and giving up, but after a sit down we realised that even though we were skint we were still managing albeit with difficulty.
The main problems were the rising cost of all our ingredients and the power with which to dry them. We’ve streamlined a few things, for example at big shows we will be weighing out the jerky to order which will cut the cost of packing, also far less waste going into land fills from empty packets so a good move all round.
We have also decided to start a new business to run in conjuction with our current one and we have called it A Taste of History, we have built 5 “medieval” trading booths which are canvas and wood but will stand on cobbles as well as grass so they are fully free standing, each one will have a trader in them selling historicaly based food stuffs i.e a stall of only historical sweets, one dried and cured meats etc, and each trader will be able to do a demo on their chosen product, I will be doing smoking displays, skinning/ dressing and drying venison in historical costume that was worn in 1804 on the Lewis and Clark expedition, or cooking a meal the same way and using the same ingredients as Scot of the Antartic ( before they stareved) or making pemmican the same way as the Chippewa Indians used to do.
We will have a list of displays we can do and the aim is to do the demo’s so our pitch fee’s will be greatly reduced, we have booked 3 shows already who have waved the pitch fee in exchange for good displays. We will also be able to rent the stalls out when we aren’t using them.
We are feeling very very upbeat about the coming year , far more than we were last year, as soon as I have pics of the stalls I will be posting em on here, so fingers crossed for a bit of good weather this year
Martin and Suzie