Dawn of a new harvest for market and manager
Through grief and formidable change, her passion to bring people together through food remains resolute.
A year ago, Jill Walcroft was selling the award-winning cheeses of Cartwheel Creamery from behind a gingham tablecloth at the Feilding Farmers’ Market.
Now she is the manager of the longrunning Friday market.
The cause for the life change was sudden and devastating, and what Walcroft described as the worst 12 months of her life.
Her partner in life and business, Adrian, died in August, suffering myocarditis following a reaction to medication. He was 54.
Only two months earlier, he had been crowned New Zealand’s champion cheese maker at the NZ Champions of Cheese Awards.
Several Cartwheel cheeses had also been honoured with medals that night. The Pohongina Valley brand and business were growing – and then her “Ade” was gone.
Walcroft was greeting customers with a warm smile and the occasional apology when Manawatū Standard joined her on a brisk market morning.
One patron was disappointed “the pear lady” was not present, while a number of regular stallholders were absent due to winter ills.
It was common for farmers’ markets to contract and expand with the seasons and harvests, and Walcroft treasured the “social capital” of independent growers coming together for a common cause.
“I love it. I love the market atmosphere, the cultural capital, the connecting with people.
“As a stallholder, I loved meeting people who loved cheese. As a manager it’s the same deal, probably more challenging. ”
There was a sense of poignancy at being back among the tents on Manchester Square, with heavy thoughts both of Adrian and their late friend and colleague, Alison Leber, who both worked at Cartwheel and was the market manager at the time she died in a car crash on July 2, 2022, aged 59.
To now fill Leber’s shoes was a strange twist of fate, but a meaningful one.
“I kind of like it. I haven’t put it into words yet,” said Walcroft. “She started off so well, and hopefully I can follow.”
She said the challenges of the past year, without Adrian, had been huge.
“A husband – wife business is similar to a farming family. It’s not just your work, it’s your home life. We had a small farm, and adjusting to that being by myself has been hard.”
“I’ve had an enormous amount of help from friends and people in the valley.
“The community, the rural community, there’s no words to express how good they’ve been to me. I’m really grateful for that.”
Walcroft said she considered continuing Cartwheel Creamery with a new cheese maker, but the venture was intrinsically tied to her and Adrian’s relationship.
“It was about us working together. I think my grief was just too big. I wasn’t going to be able to transition to working with someone else, and having that responsibility.
“If it had been Alison, who worked for us as well as the farmers’ market. If she had still been around, I might have.“
The portable cheese factory was for sale, and she expected Adrian would endorse her new role.
“It’s funny. As a stallholder, I would often grump about getting up in the dark or rain, ‘do I have to go?’ And he would say ‘you’ll like it when you get there’. And I always did.
“I would always come home very pleased with myself when I had sold a lot of cheese. I did get a bit of a buzz from it.”
In her new role, Walcroft has the challenge of growing the market, which has stagnated in the wake of Covid disruptions and amid a struggling economy and a cost of living crisis.
There was typically about 25 stallholders each week, and the aim was to raise that to 30, with a strong emphasis on produce grown from the land.
“We’re striving for an authentic farmers’ market, and we do have elements of that.
“There’s a challenge to get people selling meat products and fish. People are really missing our fish seller who left us recently.”
The day and time of the market was often a discussion point, and Walcroft accepted
its original premise – to correspond with the saleyards and attract farmers’ wives who were out shopping – no longer rang as true as it used to.
“The reality is the wives are all at work,” Walcroft said.
Any change to a different day of the week or time also needed to consider that many existing stallholders had commitments at other markets, such as Whanganui, Hokowhitu and Albert St in Palmerston North.
“Friday is the tradition for Feilding, and it does work. Just look at it now,” Walcroft said, as the crowd began to swell.
For this Friday, she was preparing a special Matariki market with additional stallholders, and events.
Local iwi Ngāti Kauwhata would be setting up on the quad next to the market, contributing to the celebration with kapa haka. “Matariki is about people coming together and feasting. And the market here is going to provide the basis for a great feast.“
Fittingly, it was also a time of remembrance for loved ones lost.
Walcroft said after Adrian died, she endeavoured to follow through on a number of plans they had planned together, such as a sailing trip down south, attending the cheese festival in Blenheim, and their son’s university graduation in Christchurch.
“It felt good to honour those plans. There’s some important milestones he missed.”
As the sun finally won its way through a crack in the stubborn grey expanse, she looked up with a satisfied sigh.
“There’s nothing like a bit of sunshine.”