Heading to the Valley

It's not a valley ... it's a delta, but Texans call the Rio Grande Valley "The Valley" and expect it to be accepted as truth.

We've finished our work season, and although bits of paperwork, spreadsheets, and finance still need to be addressed, we can safely leave the bakery work-site in Todd Mission, TX, and head home to the orchard. As self-employed people, we never really quit working, but we've fashioned a life for ourselves that allows us a space in which to escape. Rather than take vacations over the past several years, we've sunk the money into a funky little house in a (now organic) orchard on the Mexican border in Texas. By the time we're feeling caught up with our work expansion enough to think about any traveling vacations again, the house will be paid for, and we'll have that sweet grounding spot available as we grow old together.

This year we'll make the final payment on our bakery (Queen's Pantry) at the Texas Renaissance Festival. The mixed blessing of an arrangement that allowed us to pay over 4 years was that for 4 years we haven't actually been able to take home any of the net from that show. The house in LaFeria allows us an easy and comfortable frugality of picking fresh grapefruit for breakfast, making guacamole from our own avocados, and hanging out in Sky Chairs in the orchard while listening to songbirds.

While we're making big plans for 2010, both at our NY show, and our TX show, I'm looking forward to getting away to a slower and easier pace of life.

Construction and sign making for our summer and fall shows will come soon enough ... The construction for the fall show will begin in early spring. If we don't run away now, our winter break will come and go before we can even catch our breath.

Time is fleeting ...

It is unfortunate that during the time of year when I might have more interesting things to write about ... I can't seem to find time to get any blogging accomplished.

This week, in addition to our normal weekend hours, we were open on Tuesday and Wednesday for 2 days of school field trips. We were busy. We short-staffed for the smaller traffic flow, and the fact that some of my employees were in school during the workday.

Then twice as many students arrived. We were in the weeds most of the 9 til 4 day. Then we had to stay late and do our regular Tuesday and Wednesday prep chores of Scotch Eggs ... and then the plumber came in and cut two giant holes into my floor in trying to find the greywater leak that showed up after he snaked my drain line last week.

Today I'm trying to get the leak fixed. (Apparently the snake found a formerly-duct-taped cap under the floor ... so he never fixed my leak ... he just made another outlet for the greywater.) The joys of owning a 30 year-old hippie-built kitchen.

This weekend is Halloween. Traditionally it's a big weekend at the show. I'm headed back to "The List".

Opening TRF

I'm in Todd Mission, Texas, opening our shops at the Texas Renaissance Festival. I have a great crew, and now that it's my 4th year with the bakery, the opening chores are becoming more of a routine. The Hubby is enroute from our summer show, which closed last weekend. The van and the Wells-Cargo trailer are totally overloaded, so it's slow-going.

When he gets here, we'll have another batch of signs to hang, and we'll set up the solar array and tent at our newest fruit location. We've got the first stand-alone solar-powered food booth. We already tend towards healthier food items than most festival vendors (pay no attention to the pastries behind the curtain). This new shop is no exception. Of course Ghirradelli decadence enrobes the fresh strawberries, but nutritionally it's still several steps above a funnel cake.

So we're midway through the craziest part of our work-season. We're hoping that by hiring more help, we can cut back from the 80 hour work-weeks that The Hubby and I tend to experience from August through November. (Fingers are crossed.)

The Texas Renaissance Festival opens on October 10th, and runs weekends only, including the Friday after Thanksgiving, through November 29th.

Mid-show NYRF

Well, it's almost mid-show anyway. We just completed the third weekend, which traditionally is when attendance begins to build. We're playing a weather game this rainy summer; so we've got customers when it's not raining, more than along any normal traffic patterns.

I missed the second weekend (August 8-9) at NY, because I flew to the Texas Renaissance Festival to partake in their hiring fair. Woo Hoo!!! It was *amazing*. I can't believe I didn't do it sooner. At TRF, prospective employees were seated in The Globe Theatre audience, and at 9am, the Vendor Coordinator made a presentation, which included introducing show staff. Then the Entertainment Director gave a great pep-talk about how the workers at the festival are setting the scene and the mood of the illusion, and are, in fact, an important part of maintaining the atmosphere that our guests are expecting. Then each of the employers who were looking to hire were given 5 minutes on stage in which to describe their work-culture, shop themes, and specify what they were looking for in employees. One of my competitors stood up and said she was only looking for people fluent in French or German. I'm pretty sure she actually found people qualified. We all announced where we would be located to take applications as part of our presentation. This meant we got to go wait for applicants that actually had an intention of working at our specific shops, rather than just randomly hoping to work somewhere at the festival. It was marvelous.

I was hiring for my Scottish Bakery, and for The Hubby's Spanish-themed fruit shops. I had 56 applicants, for 24 positions, so I really got to be particular. The Scottish booth employees will begin their dialect classes this week. Today I'm organizing everyone's paperwork, and making an information packet for festival management, so that the photo-IDs for the festival can be produced before I get back to Texas.

Audit Dance

This morning I had an audit from the NYS Worker's Compensation office. Every few years, I have to prove to them that our restaurant's payroll is not similar to other restaurants with 20 employees, because we are only open for 8 weekends of the year. Apparently they don't have a little check-box on their forms for our version of the food-biz.

They wanted to audit us last fall, but we were in the middle of our Texas show at that point. Doing the deed long-distance involved copying and sending about 477 pieces of paper. So I skipped it, knowing we'd be back in NY the following summer. I knew it might get messed up, but really, how bad could it be?

Well, in January I got our first Worker's Comp bill at the assumed rate. Uh ... OUCH. One month's bill was equal to my entire year's bill in former years. And they kept coming. As soon as I got my office set up in NY, I called to schedule an audit, in hopes it would happen in the 2 months I'm here.

Today I spent the 2 hours of the inspector's visit, digging through files to meet the requirements for the 2 year audit. In a few weeks I'll find out what our credit is, although they don't normally provide refunds. I may be paid up for the next several years, as what they had billed me for the year was equal to my entire NY payroll last year.

While I knew that the audit was for my benefit ... I was still stressed about meeting the paperwork requirements (there was that moment when we thought we'd have to reschedule so that I could fly to Texas and get the 2007 pay-stubs).

All's well that ends well, I suppose.

Summer Jobs

I've been hiring people for their summer jobs for the past 20 years. We have food shops at theme parks ... "Grab Shacks" would be the industry term, since we don't really have dining rooms. We don't sell typical grab shack fare, because we're in "Themed" theme parks ... Renaissance Festivals. So we're selling Bangers & Mash, or Scotch Eggs, or Fresh Fruit Tartlets, depending on the venue and the jurying process at that venue.

For a restauranteur, it can be a dream. All of the manic problem-solving and the 85 hour weeks are wedged into a section of the calendar year; so recovery time in the off-season is part of the deal. However, the hiring process can be intense. It's opening a restaurant and hiring 35 people twice a year, in two different markets. What works in one, may not work at all in another. (For example, Craigslist is considered a shopping site in Texas.)

So today I'm hoping to get some new hires from the NY festival's hiring day. Many of last years' employees have moved away for college, or their phone numbers have changed. It's not unusual for teenager's phone numbers to change, but apparently in this age of cell-phones, people are discontinuing their land lines in their homes. Parent's phone numbers had always been my fall-back connection, and some of my key people have been hard to find this summer.

I only need 8 weekends from someone ... you'd think it would be easy to get a commitment. It's not. In fact, this year I'm going to give a bonus of $1 per hour, at the end of the festival, to every employee that has been on time, every day they were scheduled to work. We'll see how it goes.

July 9, 2009

We're heading north to Ithaca, NY this weekend. We sell chocolate covered strawberries, cheesecake, and bananas (amongst other yummies) at a great music festival called the Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance. I first went several years ago, when I was in town visiting our good friends Loretta and Eric. As any festival vendor will tell you, seeing a show before deciding to participate is crucial. Well, maybe not crucial ... but highly recommended.

The festival has a Healing Arts Tent, and my first participation was in teaching a class there. I still volunteer part of my time in that tent, as I fine-tune what the offerings of the Lemonade Brigade might be in our goal of easing peoples fears around the breast cancer issue. (That's obviously another post entirely ... I promise I'll get there.) Joanne Kingsley does a beautiful job of orchestrating the varied offerings of donated time by alternative health practitioners.


We stay in Trumansburg, in a 200 year old barn that has been outfitted with summer bedrooms. It is one of the most magical places I know, and we have admitted that one of the major reasons we do this show is the gift of living in that space on our friend Ruth's property. Not to mention the magic that is Ruth herself.

The Hubby is designing a solar powered show booth. We're practicing with it in Trumansburg, but it will be launched officially at the Texas Renaissance Festival. While he's watching battery power levels, I'm packing our personal needs for the week. While I'm excited to be giving the solar booth a try, and excited to have scheduled an extra 3 days for visiting friends while upstate, I still have to hire at least a dozen people for the NYRF show, and I'll have to hit it hard when we return to Tuxedo on the 20th.