Market gardeners

Helen Harvey finds farmers' markets aren't the way to make a million, but there are compensations all the same.

Patricia Blatti harvests some of her produce every Saturday. She goes hard out all day, picking, cutting, washing, packing.

Next  morning, Ms Blatti and partner  Richard Sheldrake are up at  5.30am to get ready for the  farmers' market in New  Plymouth.

By the time the market opens, a queue has formed at their Natural Lea Organics stall.

As well as the more common varieties, Ms Blatti tries to grow vegetables that no one else at the market has, so they don't all sell the same things.

"When the market started, fennel was very slow-moving. People didn't know what to do with it. Now we never have enough. There is a huge demand for it. It's really good."

She also grows chicory, globe artichokes, kohlrabi, chokos and tomotillos, which are from Guatemala and Mexico. A relative of the tomato, tomotillos are eaten green and used in salsa.

Yakon is another unusual vegetable that is slowly gaining a following, she says. "It is very sweet. You bake it like kumara and potatoes."

Yakon and Jerusalem artichokes are good vegetables for diabetics because the sugar doesn't convert into starch.

"This year, Organic New Zealand and other magazines had articles about yakons, so people would come and say, Have you heard of yakon? And we can sell it to them. It's great - they have never seen it before."

People only brave new vegetables if they are given recipes, which she hands out at the market. Otherwise, they don't know what to do with them, she says.

Ms Blatti cooks a lot of her produce.

"I make pickles, chutneys, sauces, jams, jellies. I dry things, dehydrate things . . . But I can't sell it, because I don't have a commercial kitchen. It's something that is always at the back of my mind, because I give such huge quantities away. And the money side would be better."

No one gets rich selling wares at a farmers' market.

"You couldn't live on it unless you lived on absolutely nothing. But if you only had that, you wouldn't starve. You could exchange vegetables for meat - I don't eat meat - or goat's milk."

So, while Miss Blatti works full time in the garden - "It's more than full time, actually. I could do with a few clones." - Mr Sheldrake, an IT consultant, goes out to work. His job for the garden is to make labels and the boards for the market and build structures around the garden, such as the chook house.

They have five chickens and a rooster, two cats and two donkeys. "We take them [the donkeys] for walks. It's a great way to meet the neighbours."

The donkey manure is used for compost and the donkeys are grazed all over the property.

There are 2.5 acres - a little more than a hectare - with "lots" of apples, pears, plums, quinces, peaches, feijoas, tangelos, oranges, lemons and one nectarine tree.

"We also grow raspberries and strawberries."

And vegetables cover more than half an acre.

There were only the feijoa trees when the couple moved down from Auckland five years ago. Ms Blatti is originally from the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Her father was a dairy farmer who immigrated to Taranaki. She lived here from 1984 until 1999, when she moved to Auckland.

Mr Sheldrake is from England, but lived in Belgium for 20 years, so speaks French. He and Ms Blatti met in Auckland.

They made a few trips down to New Plymouth to look for the right bit of land, Ms Blatti says.

"We wanted something that wasn't all finished and all beautified, so we could do it to our own design. In hindsight, we should have got something bigger. We've sort of run out of room."

They grow food for themselves and the farmers' market, where they sell their produce most weekends, skipping a few in July and August.

They get a lot of requests to sell from home, but they won't because of the time factor and also because they wouldn't have enough for the market on Sunday.

"We think the farmers' market is very important and it's short of produce. There are a couple of other stalls selling fresh produce, but it's never enough," Ms Blatti says.

Mr Sheldrake, who is a trustee on the Farmers' Market Taranaki Trust, says the market will move back to Currie Street from the Huatoki Plaza on November 1. The market has been going for four years and this year, the number of stalls is expected to increase.

The largest markets last summer had between 20 and 25 stallholders. Some stallholders come occasionally, others are seasonal, and then there are the regulars.

Growing enough to sell at the market every week is hard and some people get discouraged. So some stallholders only last a few Sundays and then don't come back.

Everything sold at the market must be grown or raised or made in Taranaki with Taranaki ingredients, Mr Sheldrake says.

"We get a lot of applications from people who want to sell Hawke's Bay apples or things like that. They say: Why? No one else is selling Hawke's Bay apples.

"But that is how farmers' markets work and we are quite hard on that."

People always comment that Taranaki's market isn't as good or as big as other places around the country, Mr Sheldrake says.

"People say, Why isn't your market as big as the one I saw in Parnell?"

There are a million people up there, he says.

Places like Hawke's Bay, Matakana and Nelson have famous markets, he says. But Nelson's is not a true farmers' market because it sells craft and farmers' markets are just food.

"Hamilton's is bigger than ours,  but look at the population base. We  are actually doing quite well. We  are a small province with a small  population base . . .

"The reality is we are never going to have Currie Street jam- packed with stalls or jam-packed with people. We've been there four years, but people don't know about it."

And there is no money for advertising, he says.

"The average stallholder pays $20, while the smaller ones pay around $10 or $11. Then there is insurance to pay, canopy repairs . . . no money left over."

There's a myth that farmers' markets are rich, he says. "They're not. We're a not-for-profit trust. Most of the guys at the farmers' market are small scale.

"They don't make money - they do it for the love of it."

In October, Farmers' Market New Zealand is running the premiere of a film called Food Inc.

"It's about all the things that go into how food is produced and what goes into it. People will realise we aren't sort of weirdos, just normal people.

"If you really want to know where your food was grown, what seed was used, what compost was used, that's what you come to farmers' market for: Everything you need to know about your food."

Natural Lea Organics is certified organic and has been for the past two years, Ms Blatti says.

"I sow seeds by the moon, because you get much better strike rate and better seedlings. We're not biodynamic, as such, but we use some of the preparations they use."

Biodynamics works with the moon and natural forces, she says.

"We used to weed my father's farm - thistles, ragwort and all that - by the moon. It makes a difference to the rate weeds come back or not."

Last week, she was out at the beach collecting seaweed. Back home, she puts it in big drums, covers it with water and leaves it for two weeks.

"And then you water the compost with that. I make hot compost, so I assemble the pile all at once, I use layers - green layers, dry layers - and water it with seaweed. You can throw in some seaweed if you like. It is very, very rich and has all sorts of trace elements and minerals."

Ms Blatti has always been interested in organics and horticulture. She used to work in the corporate world, but didn't like it much.

She enjoys working by herself, she says. "It's quite therapeutic. It's quite tiring, physically, but I think it is good for the soul, for me. I like that you see the process from start to finish. In an office, you are moving papers around, but you never see the end of it. It is endless, starting over and over again, but here you do the whole process."

And there is always more to learn.

"There are so many things involved: The weather, all the pests and diseases and how to go about treating it. I like learning new things."

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