This is a picture of me on my first day at the Western Fair Farmers' Market. I am bright and happy and cheery because it is the first day of following my dreams of becoming an entrepreneur in chocolates. It's hard to believe but I am almost a professional chocolatier.

I am currently enrolled in Ecole Chocolat, an online distance course based in Vancouver, BC. How could I be professional in chocolates in an online course? Let me tell you, the course is intense. Of course, I am not in any culinary institute and I don't have the time to spend years in that craft. I certainly admired the likes of Jacques Torres and Jacques Pepin, but I definitely want my focus to be mainly on chocolate and eventually desserts based on chocolate.

In the meantime, taking this course while running my own business is certainly a learning experience. First of all, I've taken two business courses in high school--entrepreneurship and economics. So, I sort of know the idea of supply and demand. So I try to apply what I know in the farmers' market. In my chocolate course, I have to learn how to make my own signature line of chocolates, not to mention a marketing plan and operations plan. In order to succeed in business, I need to learn not only how to make chocolates, but to sell them.

Western Fair Farmers' Market is fairly new. It opened about two years ago but has recently been bought by new management. So, there are changes, which is a good thing since I became part of that change.

One thing that people (vendors) told me is that it takes about four weeks for regulars to get to know me. A lot of people noticed that I was new. I introduced myself, introduced my chocolates, and hoped they like them and me. I really only had a few products available: three types of chocolate (lavender-vanilla, Earl Grey, and Classic truffles), chocolate barks, and brownies. The new flavours of truffles were unusual and people liked them. I knew it was a start.

My mom just said that as long as I could pay my rent, I was fine. I did okay on my first day. I was proud with what I accomplished. It was a long day. I forgot to take a break and even eat my lunch. I think when you are your own boss, you also have to take it easy on yourself. But at least I could reward myself with chocolate.

Getting ready for the market

It's Friday morning. We are still in Windsor and have to get to London that day in order to prepare the day before the opening of my booth. The weather has been finicky. We were almost in a car accident the Wednesday morning heading to Windsor when we were stuc

k in a snow squall storm. Quite scary. We celebrated New Year's Eve and New Year's Day with family and friends. Hence, a brief moment where I didn't think about my chocolates. Well, not really. In fact, I was baking and preparing chocolates at my mom's tea house well into the New Year's Eve. Repeated calls were made from my family, "when are you coming home to eat dinne

r?" Ah, food is important in my family. A full stomach equals a happy person.

We get to our booth around 2 o'clock and there are a few things we have to work on. Dave, the owner of the market has to use a forklift to move a butcher/deli-style cooler and replace it with a more quaint bakery display for my chocolates. In the meantime, Lucas and I are unloading the myriad of chocolate supplies and baking supplies onto tables, while our daughter is exploring the empty market. I have a bit of house

keeping to do with wiping down the display, the tables and the fridge.

We pretty up the area with a few tablecloths and plates, empty and waiting for the baked goods and chocolates I have prepared. I made a few signs with the ink-jet printer. Browns and greens were my theme, but eventually they started to beome pinks and blues when my cartridge started to run out of yellow ink.

At 5 pm when the market would shut down for the day, I was happy with the result. Tomorrow would be the official opening of Cocoa Earth, a dream finally becoming a reality.