City Girl in a Country World
Me with Alex, Richard, James & Seeker the dog
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Archive for January, 2013
Five sleeps until school goes back.
And yes I AM counting.
The money has run out – as has my patience – enough of this lazing about, let’s get this 2013 show on the road.
But before school can return there’s the school supplies to buy.
Just when you thought you were broke you find the booklist. Hello overdraft.
The past 10 years have seen a massive change in the way fruit and vegetables are traded. The majority of sales used to happen in the central markets. Buyers from large chain stores, right through to operators of smaller community fruit and vegetable shops, used to walk the markets in search of the best produce on offer that day.
But slowly more and more business has been happening outside of the market. The chain stores have been seeking ‘direct supply’ from large growers, essentially cutting out a stage of the supply chain, making their system more efficient, consistent and reliable.
It makes sense that such large customers would want to do this, but it has led many in the industry to wonder, ‘What’s the future of the central market system?’ I recently interviewed Andrew Young, the CEO of of the Brisbane Central Market. He says the future is bright and believes the markets produce trading system can co-exist with the direct supply model.
In fact he says growers now have a broader range of options for the sale of the produce than ever before.
Hello 2013, hope you’ll be a good one.
We’re back on deck after a relaxing beach holiday. My body is back, not sure my head is yet returned from holidays … small steps.
Our New Year was low key. We took the boys to the beach to watch the fireworks on the Gold Coast, then made the silly decision to head into Surfers Paradise to see the family-friendly Superhero fireworks display at 9pm. We’re suckers for a superhero in our house. Not so keen on the new year traffic in Surfers mind you. Nearly thought we’d be welcoming 2013 from the car park where it took us 1hour to escape!
The rest of our holiday was spent going to the beach, eating great food, drinking awesome coffee, hanging out as a family and catching up with old friends.
James and Richard even found time to have holiday haircuts. James asked for ‘spikes down the back like a Stegosaurus’. The hairdresser did her best. It’s a bit like when I go armed with photographs of Elle Macpherson and say, ‘I want to look like this.’
While I was away ABC Country Hour ran a story about rural blogs. Mine was mentioned.
You can listen to the story here – I was featured along with other Queensland rural bloggers Ann Britton, who has a beautiful Outback Photography blog and Terry O’Leary, a watermelon grower who writes a blog called Melons Cause Insomnia.
I think that’s what I love about blogging the most – the insights they offer into other people’s lives. Blogging is such a simple way to tell people your story in your own words. For farmers and anyone in rural production who better to tell your story than you? The rural blogging community is growing all the time and it comes together every Tuesday night on Twitter via the #agchatoz discussion. The Facebook Ask an Aussie Farmer forum is also going gangbusters and is a great place to stop in if you have any questions about how and why farmers do what they do.
Last year was a good year for us and this year is shaping to be great too. Looking forward to sharing stories with you about all the interesting people I meet on my travels.
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