From The Salt Barons Desk - July 2023
I’ve been a bit quiet lately!! Unusual I know, but Ive finally found some time to update you on the “Pig from Taipa”, and what weve got going on.
Let’s start with the weather. It’s been terrible. Its raining again today and it really feels like it has been raining for at least a good six months. Storms, Cyclones, roads closed it’s been one thing after another, and to be honest like a lot of people right around the North Island I think we are all sick of it. I can’t remember a year like this since we started. Looking back, we had a dream run. Long sunny days helped make salt making seem like a walk in the park, but this year what a challenge it has been. It’s simply been really hard to make salt and as a consequence right now we are as low on stock piled salt as I’ve ever been. The perfect storm of bad weather, an appearance on 7 Sharp and RNZ 9 til noon, coupled with a fantastic developing relationship with My Food Bag meant we got swamped with orders to the point that we virtually got cleaned out. A nice problem to have but nevertheless stressful when you are worried that you may not be able to fill the next order. As a consequence, we’ve just gone quiet, and while I’m still confident we can fill whatever comes in, right now, and until the sun climbs higher and gets a bit warmer, there isn’t much point in aggressively chasing business.
So, what to do when you are trying to stay quiet, the answer of course is to focus on infrastructure. We are making great progress on getting our new stand-alone salt house finished, and I know the Salt Baroness is looking forward to finally getting me out of her kitchen. Our visitor “meet and greet” facility, affectionately known as “The Thirsty Whale” is out of the ground and waiting on a break in the weather to be finished off. We’ve also just ordered our second solar evaporator unit that will be used to finalise the construction of our flat pack integrated water and salt farm system. So, you could definitely say we’ve been busy!!!!
But of course, it doesn’t stop there. After our appearance on 7 Sharp we got an influx of people interested in joining the “Salt Pig” revolution as I’m calling it. It’s been no secret that we’ve wanted to expand by way of establishing a regional network of salt and water farms, and well it looks like that expansion has well and truly started. We are well underway in planning a new site somewhere between Raglan and Kawhia, and we just got back from a trip to meet some prospective salt and water makers in the Opotiki region. Exciting times indeed and we can’t wait to see where this plan takes us.
On the water front, Zarv and his team have cracked the sparkling water conundrum we had, and we now have a product that is fantastic. So good it won a silver medal at this years Outstanding Food Producer awards. In addition, it led to the development of a new product for the restaurant trade. We now have available a 750ml sparkling or still water option that works on a swappa crate system. It gives us the ability to re-use the glass bottles we supply the water in, making it an even more sustainable product. In addition, in these tough economic times it’s meant we can offer restaurants a re fill at the cost of the water only, meaning already tight margins are much improved. We’ve entered that product in this years NZ Food awards, so let’s hope we get some recognition for this new product.
The baroness has taken over the copper still I got for my 60th birthday, and with the help of our other neighbours is now working on perfecting the perfect Gin recipe. The uniqueness of this product is based around the use of Oceanwater to produce New Zealand’s first seawater-based Gin. Watch this space, once we have got the recipe sorted, Gin may well be our next offering to market…
Well, that’s just about all the news for now. The fire is roaring, and Jorgi is curled up after her big walk on the beach this morning. Hopefully the promised warmer weather comes soon, and we can get all of our plans finished and ready for the coming salt season. Oh, and when we do finally start to get some more salt in the bins, I promise we will have some new exciting flavours for you to try!
Until next time, happy seasoning!
The Pig says cheers!