We have started running a café on the weekends and have become a registered partnership and legal tax entity under the name of Pollinate Partnership. Our café mascot is a little honeybee, and in choosing the honeybee it seems like we are inadvertently paying homage to the beehive state that we love and miss.

We are having a lot of fun with the café: creating the menu, choosing the drinks, finding the local fruit and vegetable vendors, and organizing and beautifying the place in general. The café is adjacent to a small winery that specializes in fruit wines made from kiwis, feijoas, and manuka honey; we have created a menu that would complement that, and enjoy the expanse of land that the winery and café is located on.

Lynsey is incredibly adept at making beautiful signs and creating delicious plates. Aaron has made the gardens look incredible, and Dave has created complex algorithms that compute the cost and profit of every item that we serve (even factoring in the cost of the ten toothpicks on our fruit plate). I have been saddled with some of the tedious accounting and company details that I have my dad to thank for my ability to deal with. Although there was an extremely steep learning curve when we got here, my dad’s company has required me to navigate through all this stuff before and I have had the insight from many series of audits to know what to do (and what not to do). It has been an interesting convergence of all of our different skills.

One of the main appeals of our café, in addition to our local and organic menu, is the outdoor seating.  The gardens and outdoor area are covered with a canopy of kiwi vines and we spent a good portion of the day yesterday propping up kiwi-laden vines with bamboo. (I wonder if there is a provision in the food and safety guides regarding ripe kiwis dropping on café patrons. I don’t know how many countries there are in the world where that is a legitimate hazard concern.)

When we originally signed up for this project we didn’t realize how much time and work it would take, and we certainly didn’t realize the amount of love and attention a place that had been neglected for years would need. 

What had originally struck all of us as quaint and sort of picturesque – cobwebs on the wall, homemade benches, and old bottles – has now lost a bit of its charm and we have attacked the cleaning with a vengeance.  We have saved a couple of things for Dave to do upon his return – we want to make sure that he feels included in this project as well. Dave gets back this week and we are anxiously awaiting his arrival.