We’re just back from the mighty Waikato after spending 4 days last week at the National Fieldays.
It was the third year we’ve done this event, a massive undertaking.
This year we did all our prep in the lead up and arrived with nearly everything done.
In previous years we’ve done the 8 hour drive (heavy trailer + kids) then spent half the night scrubbing potatoes and making chips. This time Dutchy made them all just before we left, we brought half a tonne up with us and made an extra 60kg on the last day and completely sold out!
Our bakers James and crew at Kiss and Bake Up were up at midnight the night before we left baking hundreds of buns for us. Our organic salad guy Alan from Kapiti Organics down in Te Horo got geared up and picked us 7kg of salad on his day off. APB Electrical met us at the yard so we could pick up the chiller trailer early. Andrew the Waikanae Butcher stocked us up with a mountain of beef and bacon, Turks, efficient as usual had all our free range chicken delivered nice and early so we could get it in the marinade. Commodities NZ had been by earlier in the week to stock up our charcoal and Brown Acres Market of course always coming through with a steady supply of the right potatoes.
It takes a village! We are stoked to have access to and be able to support these local suppliers, it’s why we started this thing <3
Support these local businesses, they are working their asses off! Tell them we sent you.
Another contributor to the awesome time we had was the Facebook job listing feature, we did a job add and boosted it targeted to Cambridge/Hamilton - we had 20 applications and ended up with 2 absolutely dynamite staff for the event. Your people can make and/or break you and we hit the jackpot! Definitely recommend using that if you are looking for people. Student Job Search is good as well, we’ve used that with good results in the past.
So with all this help and all this prep, we had our most successful Fieldays ever. We also had the most sleep we’ve ever had during the Fieldays!
Watch this space mates, Dutchy might just be getting organised after all 😀
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A glimpse at a Fieldays day for Dutchy’s
0430 - alarm goes off, snooze
0440 - SNOOZE
0450 - sno.. uurrgh getupgetupgetup
0500 - coffee on
0530 - out the door, in the truck
0600 - arrive at Gate 2, Mystery Creek
0605 - jump in trailer, George FM on the radio giving life
0615 - coffee on
0630 - dredge southern fry chicken bits (flour them so they are good and crispy), light the grill, light the fryers, so much chicken.
0700 - set up the outside of the trailer, get all the stock ready to go, slice tomatoes, fry off tonnes of bacon for the double happys, banter with the neighbours, set up the benches with prep and packaging
0715 - coffee on
0800 - eat something before opening the window
0830 - open the window, attach signage, jump back in the trailer and watch the mist come down
0830-1000 - sling double happys and the occasional Big Boy and chips
1000 - whole crew arrives
1030/1100-1500 - get absolutely slammed, avoid looking back to the end of the line, work your ass off to get as much food out as fast and delicious as possible
1500 - feed the crew, the crew go home
1500-1700 - keep chugging along but at a slower pace, banter with the neighbours, eat crepes
1700 - close the window, clean down, do the dishes, cut buns for the morning
1730 - set up two stations, one station whipping up new Garlic Mayo and Southern Fry Mayo the other weighing and pressing beef patties
1830 - finish up prep, do the dishes, clean down benches and kitchen, douse the grill, GTFO of there
1900 - mish to the supermarket to replenish tomatoes, cheese and drinks
1930 - scour Cambridge for the best wontons and chicken fried rice
2015 - arrive back at the farm to wolf dinner
2100 - either watch a movie or take a few panadol and collapse in bed
0430… repeat x 4
