Harvest is Done (mostly) and "Things Will Calm Down" Now..

Plus, Kamala on Brene (the best thing every), be lovely and just TRY!

Hass harvest is done! We finished picking and packing our main variety of avocados yesterday and it’s a damn good feeling.

We always celebrate the end of Hass harvest like it’s all over, but the truth is we still have another variety, everyone’s favourites, The Reeds, to go. They aren’t ready until just before Christmas and then we pick them through January. There’s not as many of them and Hass is the bulk of it so it really feels like we’re done at the end of Hass.

We were chatting last night at tennis about how avocado harvest is different from a grain harvest.. grain harvest is flat out for a short period (depending on how much grain you’ve got to harvest) it’s round the clock go go go until it’s done. Once grain is ready you gotta get it off.

With an avocado harvest it kind of goes on and on.. or at least it feels like it does. Avocados don’t ripen until you pick them so there’s not that sense of urgency as such, it just takes a long time to pick them. Depending on the price it can feel a bit urgent if the price is good and you know it’s going to drop, but it’s not the same as knowing that if it rains it’ll all be buggered so you gotta go!

This year was actually only 8 weeks which felt about perfect. Last year it was 16 weeks because we packed other people’s fruit and everyone had more fruit and it was just really tough. The price was awful, it dragged on, things broke down and it was tough. This year seems to have been a breeze comparatively and boy does everyone feel a lot better.

I love the buzz of harvest, the people around the action in the shed, the music playing and the fruit clonking in the bins, but it’s a lot. There’s just a lot going on. Tim is flat out, long days, so much in his head about the management of it all. It’s pretty much like he’s on another planet for harvest in terms of being able to have a conversation about anything other than harvest. He does well, but there’s just so much on his mind to manage it all.

So I’m looking forward to the pressure being off, to having Tim back, to some slower days. Really, it’s been a 10/10 harvest though and we are really trying to enjoy it, soak it in and enjoy a good year. As I wrote about in an earlier post, I think it’s so important to enjoy and sit with the good times. Not attach ourselves to the financial wins, we worked harder last year if anything and made a lot less money, so that bit is out of our control and we have to be OK with that. But I think it is important to just enjoy the feeling of the financial pressure being off in the knowing that it too shall pass…

Recommendations

• Brene Brown interviewing Kamala Harris - I was pretty excited about this. People go on about how they don’t know Kamala and they don’t know what she really stands for and blah blah, but she’s clearly a women of integrity and fairness and will be an incredible leader (she is already). Well worth a listen. Brene is the best.

• Sky Manson shared this in her midweek missive (which I recommend subscribing too) and it really resonated. I can’t remember anything and I think my hardrive is definitely full. But alas, I love the consuming..

• Seth Godin on Cathy Heller Podcast I love Seth and Cathy.

• Be lovely to someone. I was listening to another Cathy heller podcast where she reads the first chapter of her book and she talked about how we often don’t celebrate or tell people what they mean to us until they’re gone. At a funeral we will get up and say all the things a person did and why we loved them but we don’t do it when they’re here in real life! So tell the people you love how much and WHY you love them. We celebrated a dear friends 40th yesterday and I was so happy to tell her how much I love her and what a great person she is!

• Things Will Calm Down Soon - Zoe Foster Blake’s new book was a great, easy read. I heard her interviewed and she said she was trying to meld a business book with a non fiction book. My thoughts are she didn’t really offer that much in terms of the business stuff that would be practical for the average women in business (who is clearly her target).

Kit’s business is a boom from the get go because of a number of factors and she really skips to the 5 year in bit when it’s doing really well. I don’t think many women in business are pitching their businesses to investors to the tune of 100 million bucks after 5 years in business, like that’s pretty rare. In fact I looked it up and here’s the stats:

22% of startups are founded by women, but just 0.7% of funding secured by start-ups went to solely women-founded companies in FY22. (1)

Obvioulsy it would be wonderful if more women were doing that but the getting to that point is the hard bit. Perhaps Zoe felt there were lots of books already written on that bit of the business journey so this was more to be inspiring for what’s possible..

In terms of the non fiction side, I was in to it for that and the drama element of the business stuff was page turning. And the behind the scenes of what Kit was juggling was also real.

I don’t think I learnt a lot about business that would be in anyway practical for me at this point.. but it was still cool and I definitely recommend it as a good easy read.

• This morning I listened to the advice podcast from Glennon, Abbie and Amanda and Abbie’s advice really got me. Abbie shared the best advice she received which was “you never know how good you can be unless you try” and I loved this, it’s like you are better to try and fail than never try at all, better to have loved and lost than never loved at all etc.. the sentiment being that so many of us never even try. And Abbie shared that the real failing is in the not trying. I loved that. She and Glennon chat more about this for Glennon and it’s well worth a listen.

Joke of the Week

Why wasn’t the cactus invited to hang out with the mushrooms?

He wasn’t a fungi

Thanks for being here guys

Love Katrina

xx