From The Salt Barons Desk

Hey there Salt Fans!

I hope you are all surviving winter and turning your minds to Spring which is just around the corner.

While production has been hopeless here at the Taipa Salt Farm, we have still been very busy indeed.

As you may have seen from some of our recent social media postings, we have just completed construction of a one hundred and sixty six tray salt evaporator that will immediately double our overall production. A special Congratulations goes to Abby Bagnall, the winner of our naming competition, for giving life to...

"Gertrude the Glorious'

Gerty’s location is ideal to catch the sun and even now in the middle of winter the results are great. We transferred some of the tanks we had left over from our last water run at the start of May, from the big tunnel house unit at the bottom of the property up to the new evaporator about a week ago.  While the tanks were already about two thirds complete, the new evaporator did in ten days what would have taken at least until the end of August in the main house.

Needless to say we are really excited about this development.  Extending our evaporation season will allow us to attend more markets for longer, and help us expand our supply network.
There are more construction projects underway as we speak, and I will let you know how we are getting on with those projects in the coming weeks.

One of the activities we still do regularly is to visit our favourite beach in all of New Zealand, and the source of our water, Puheke Beach.  At this time of year, the place is deserted and you can spend hours wandering the beach without meeting another soul. My faithful companion Jorgi the dog always comes for a blast on the beach.  This year she embraced her inner Northlander and donned her Camo polar fleece to brave the cold winter breeze. She may have been channeling her inner Pig Dog, but she wasn’t brave enough to dip her toes in the water.  The beach looks great as usual. We saw some small blue jellyfish washed up on the beach, which must mean the water temperature is still quite high. But even deserted places like Puheke beach can’t escape the problem of plastic in the water.  At least on this trip there wasn’t a huge amount to pick up and take home for disposal.

The next month is going to be super busy.  At the start of the month we are planning another water run to stock up the new evaporator and get ready for the new season.  At this rate we may even be back at market at the end of August, but don’t hold me to that.

We will also be stockpiling salt for our first show in the big smoke… Auckland!!!!!  We have been invited to attend the Taste Auckland show at Queens wharf from 31 October to 3 November and we have decided to go. What could possibly go wrong, a couple of Northland novices mingling with the foodies of Auckland, should be great.

We’ve also been lucky enough to find two great local organic suppliers who should be able to meet our requirements for citrus zest and garlic.  I’ll let you know more about that once production starts up again toward the end of August.

OK I’m off now to light the fire, put my feet up and have a try of some salted caramel cookies Yasmin has just made. 

Stay warm and I’ll catch up with you next on the first day of spring.

The Pig Says Cheers!

James