Despite the cold weather, thousands of boutique shoppers descended on the Wagga Showground on Sunday to take part in this month’s second River and Wren Markets.
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The bimonthly event played host to handcraft salespeople with wares to spruik ranging from woodfire pizzas, to 3D jigsaw wooden puzzles, to corrugated iron sculptures of farm animals.
Caitlin Mullavey was once such stallholder, there with her Sweet Bee cake creations.
The 24-year-old pastry chef has been baking specialty cakes for the past two years. Each cake can take upwards of a week to craft.
First there’s the design process which is done in one or two weeks, and then the cooking, which on average takes three or four days.
“I did my apprenticeship in Melbourne then moved back to Wagga,” Ms Mullavey said.
“Each cake can be a long process and I’ve definitely learnt a lot of things that I didn’t really realise when I was an apprentice.”
Her business is run out of her home kitchen, using what she describes as her “small, conventionally sized oven”.
“There’s a few challenges to it, and I haven’t always got it right. Until I started the business I didn’t really know how much the weather could affect a cake. I’ve had a few problems with fondant melting on really hot days.”
Also among the stallholders was Jason Crowley and his mother Lexie Grady with their homemade hot sauces.
Mr Crowley worked for two decades in IT before he started the Crowley Hot Sauce business in 2010.
“His little boy was looking in the fridge and found a chilly,” Mrs Grady said.
“They wanted to show him how seeds germinate, so they took the chilly outside, planted it and it flourished so they made their first hot sauce.”
Just like the chilly seed, Mr Crowley’s business idea began to germinate and flourished into a range of hot sauces, and his own restaurant.
The hottest sauce on offer is the ironically named ‘Habba nice day’, which has a heat rating of 11 out of 10. But while Mrs Grady prefers the sauces around the seven grade, Mr Crowley has a stomach for the hottest.
“Jason makes all the recipes himself, so he tries all of them to make sure they’re right,” Mrs Grady said.
“There’s a real science to the ingredients, it’s like making a fine wine. The flavour hits you and then the heat follows through.”
In 2010, Kim Gibbs left her job as a primary school teacher to pursue a creative career after a pub asked her to design its logo. Now the Griffith farmer spends her days molding sculptures out of corrugated iron.
“I sculpt the things I see, cows, chickens, things from my world,” Ms Gibbs said.
Ms Gibbs uses sheets of corrugated iron she finds around hers and her neighbours’ farms.
“Each one takes a really long time and honestly the iron is awful to work with but I think it is important to re-purpose and re-use the things people would otherwise throw away. There’s unmatched beauty to that.”
She names every one of her sculptures, which she said gives them a a loving touch.
“You do get attached particularly when you name them, but that’s all the more important. I turn the things people would just chuck out into something worth looking at.”
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