The sweet taste of commercial success

WE USED to pack our crop of table grapes into sturdy 10kg boxes and send them overseas to Singapore and Bangkok – markets we lost to competitors from Chile and South Africa when the Aussie dollar started its steady upward movement a few years back.

Our customer base is now people who spot our roadside signs and take the time to travel down our driveway to purchase fruit directly from us. It takes longer to sell our produce this way and we had to increase our cool room capacity but it is very satisfying to sell good quality, freshly harvested fruit at a fair price direct to locals, passing tourists, grey nomads and overseas visitors.

It’s not practical to attend our fruit stall at all hours of the day. Nothing would get done. So we rely on the self-service honesty box system. Our first honesty box was a simple plastic ice cream container, with instructions written on the lid to place cash in the container and take change if it was needed. Simple enough instructions and the vast majority of customers understood exactly what was required to complete the transaction.

The occasional purchaser of fruit interpreted the instructions to mean “help yourself to the fruit, no need to pay” or “help yourself to the fruit and the cash”.

Eventually someone decided taking the fruit, the cash and the ice cream container would put a glow on their country shopping experience. Because of the actions of a very small minority our new honesty box is a locked steel cash tin securely chained to the handle of our garage roller door. My wife has visions of a vehicle heading off down the driveway with our cash box secured in the cabin, chain protruding from the rear door and our roller door now separated from the garage bouncing along behind.

When I stock up our fruit stall each morning, it is with the knowledge 99% of our customers are honest and will pay for fruit selected. Some people leave notes saying they are short on change and will pay when next passing and they always do. Others leave notes saying they will post the cash to us and sure enough, days later, envelopes arrive with payment enclosed.

Overseas visitors take photographs of their children next to our stall and tell us how lucky we are to live in a country that allows us to leave produce out for sale, confident people will pay and they are, of course, spot on. More often than not our tin balances each night and I thank the majority of our customers for their honesty.

There is, however, the subject of lost property that has somehow found its way into our tin by way of payment.

Available for collection are the following goods:

Almost half a packet of extra-strong mints of various brands, two Saint Christopher medallions, a dog tag that once hung from the collar of a dog called Bruce, a small pewter elephant charm, a colourful collection of coat buttons, a good range of galvanised washers and one enamelled earring that appears to have spent several years in the bottom of an ash tray.

It’s my intention to hang onto the ever increasing foreign coin collection for my grandchildren, other than the large assortment of Kiwi coins we will spend on a few bottles of good Sauvignon Blanc next time we are over that way.

Next week: What Australia Day means to me

This is the fifth instalment in a series of articles on the experiences of becoming a farmer by Peter Seeney. You can share your experiences with SuperLiving readers by posting a blog on the website. Just click here to go to the blogs section, select the section that corresponds to your story (Travel, Finance, etc.), upload a picture if you'd like to and tell us your tale under the “blogs” tag. Your article will then be posted on the site.