This time last year I thought I was a busy chap. Looking back I was on holidays!!!
Let's start with Friday... I start early helping in the butchery and race out getting flyers printed up for the weekend markets, then head back to load up all the market trucks full of lamb for the two days of markets... nearly 2 tonnes of lamb is loaded out in neat packaging ready for the early starters.
Although I was packing trucks alone, the butchery was still a hive of activity with our team of packers still at it, packing up the fresh sausages that we have become so famous for.
We got out of there before 10pm and I sauntered into the place I stay at when on the Gold Coast where my housemates insisted we go out as I had become 'Mr Work and No Play', so I relented and off we went.
Saturday was my first day of not doing a 4am start at a market for bloody ages and boy didn't I need it!!! From 9am I was in setting up our new offices, a demountable rental hut that is costing under $80 a week... an absolute bargain. Then after hearing one of my market staff had hurt her back, I headed up to Marina Mirage to help her pack up, then headed back to the butchery to unpack and repack the trucks and get to bed by 10pm ready for the 12:30 am start.
Heading up to Brisbane I dropped off lamb deliveries and a refrigerated trailer to another of my marketeers at North Lakes then pressed on to Noosa. Due to the heavy rain on Friday and Saturday, our turnover was down by half so it was full steam to make sure we all sold more lamb on our Sunday markets than ever before. Thankfully we all did way better then any Sunday before and considering all of us were doing each market alone - to assist with cost-cutting measures - it was no small feat.
After doing more deliveries and picking up the trailer, I made it back to the butchery to unload all the trucks. Unfortunately, there was still a heck of a lot of lamb returning to the butchery... and mate was it heavier than all the lamb I loaded on Friday night.
After unloading the trucks, it was time to work on the website and finally crash into bed and wake up eight hours later rejuvenated to do up all the cash reconciliations and ensure everything was kosher, do the banking and then help Tim complete the setting up of the office computer and printer network, made a little harder by the fact we didn't have ceiling lights in the demountable just yet....by 1:30am we were buggered.
I drove Tim back to Brisbane and by 3am was beyond counting sheep!!! Crawling out of bed at 8am, I jetted around getting a new PC and office supplies then made it to Burleigh for an appointment to sort out remuneration with my business partner. To my massive disappointment he didn't show up, so I went ahead with the meeting with the business advisers anyway.
Working such massive hours without proper pay is hard enough, but when you can't sort out an outcome it really gets you down... Ha! I had no time to get upset, I was racing around getting chicken and lamb for a new pet food company I am getting involved with back in Brisbane.
After delivering the fresh meat, it was a trek through Brisbane's nut cracking traffic to Morningside on the opposite side of the city to pick up gluten free sausage meals so we can keep up with the insane demand for our gourmet lamb sausages.
Well, I'm in Kangaroo Point now at a mate's for a bite to eat and a bit of a yarn session... and in a half hour it's back to the Gold Coast to ensure everything is ready for tomorrow's 6am start and head back yet again to Brisbane to attend the Queen Street Mall markets, as well as deliver more fresh meats to the pet food company and also attend a new night time market at Rocklea in Brisbane's South Wes with another market team.
So there is the past six days... and all I keep thinking with every kilometre I drive and every minute past midnight I work is that nothing is going to keep me from my dream of living happily ever after on my own farm.
I just wish I could get back out there and enjoy sleeping in my own bed at night to the sounds of my happy sheep grazing.