January 2009

We had a very busy Christmas at the shop with selling lots of trees, turkeys, geese etc.  With David retiring from the turkey plucking, we got our already plucked, free range turkeys and geese from Hostingley Farm.  They were every bit as good as we hoped for and the praise from our customers has been tremendous.

The farm buildings at Wood Farm have been progressing frustratingly slowly but the end is in sight!!!  Aaron has his work cut out carting bales of silage out to all the cattle who don’t really seem too bothered by the delay in their new winter quarters but then most of them have hardly ever been in a building before and are perfectly happy where they are.
We are sometimes asked about Dolly the horse by people who seem to feel sorry for her living outside all year round.  I have to explain that whenever I have brought her into a stable for the night she spends most of the time kicking the door and keeping us awake as we can hear her from the house!  She makes it plain that she does not want to be shut inside a stable and as she grows a thick coat for the winter and has lots of silage to eat then we leave her out.  Maybe as she gets older she will agree to come inside.

Clare has had a hard time of it lately as all her hard work on the website was wiped by the company that hosts it, including all of the back up record. We understand that there were a number of other sites which were wiped as well so there must be some red faces out there.  As Clare has a full time job and does all the work on the website in the evenings for us, it was quite a blow.  She is working hard to get everything up and running again so she gets a big thank you for the effort she puts in.

Laura is also working hard to get internet sales of our beef, lamb, mutton etc. up and running, and hopefully that will soon be available.  We had people in the shop from all over the North West at Christmas and it constantly surprises us how far people travel to the shop but obviously we are delighted that they want to come.

The Dorset sheep have worked their magic again and we have about a dozen early lambs in the building at the shop.  There are one or two outside with the other sheep but they are skipping about perfectly happily and despite people worrying that they should be inside, we have to reassure them that they are sheep with built in ‘woolly central heating’ and as long as they have plenty to eat they don’t mind the cold.

We are hoping to organise a food event of some sort at the shop and will probably combine it with the opening of the ice cream servery. It may be a good idea if we wait until the weather becomes a bit spring like first but we will plan something in around a month’s time so watch this space!