Is it just us who can’t step out the door without being hit on the head by a conker? There are so many this year; lovely to look at, but a mess to clear up, completely useless, and a pain in the head! I’m sure there is a message there somewhere?…
Our regular readers will have noticed a lack of newsletters this summer – firstly our apologies, I’m not really sure what to blame but it’s just been one of those years for us here. The shortage of hens across the country made it really hard for us to offer our usual selection of hens to all our lovely customers, and it hit our business hard. Thankfully we have our courses, boarding pens and shop, so we don’t rely 100% on the income from hens, and our staff have been amazingly supportive, adjusting their hours as needed but it has been a real juggling act for us all just to keep things ticking along week to week.
We have also had some really exciting things happening throughout the year; we launched our new beekeeping shop linking up with Thornes and refitted the shop to display their great equipment. We also launched our locker collections so you can shop with us 6 days a week and we have enjoyed planting up our little veg and flower patch by the ‘garden canopy‘ where we held some great courses, sheltered from our unpredictable summer weather, and met many amazing people. Not forgetting our new website! well… what do we say? what an experience that has been! Hopefully, you will agree that it looks great, but many of you will know it has been a technical nightmare and we thank you all so much for your help, patience and perseverance when it just wouldn’t work! We keep our fingers crossed that it is now mostly fixed and you will keep in contact with us if things do go wrong.
Personally we had some big events as well, with our eldest son recently getting married (yes Bertie who you probably still think of as the little lad helping in the shop, has all grown up and got married!) and his younger brother moved out to start a fantastic horticultural scholarship. So, all in all, the year has been crazy and just flown by. Now with the longer evenings arriving and so more time to ourselves we can try to plan for some kind of normal for next year!
