Wild Bird food and Racing Pigeon food

Washing your hands just became a business

soap lady

    The last few weeks have been an utter whirlwind. People may be beginning to return to a new normal, slowly; however my family bubble are adapting and changing to what could be a new normal for us. The main difference in our ‘normal’ has been the recent focus on the production of environmentally friendly soap – and not of the hand sanitiser variety! For around 2 years now Chris has been discussing how exciting and what a nice project it would be to make our own soaps from the ‘leftover’ oil that we have on the farm. This has always been on the backburner, until our youngest, Robyn (pictured), came home for isolation and sprang into action to use our rapeseed oils!! It has been a real family effort too, Lydia helped Robyn with her first batch, I’ve been helping her with all her marketing (god help me!!) and...

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Farmsolation Week 4

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This is all becoming second nature to us all now, distancing, and stepping back when someone moves near to us. What a strange situation we are all in, but it seems to work whilst it’s sunny, however I’m not so sure about people being happy to queue for a long time when it is raining or much colder than the lovely temperatures we are experiencing now. Our shop is still open, and our customers have been great waiting outside until they can either come in or pay in the office one person at a time. We have found that the contactless payment has been a godsend to lots of people as handling cash is obviously a concern. Our staff have been wearing gloves, so we are happy to accept either form of payment. The dry weather has enabled Chris and George, plus our contractor who sows the corn, to finish the...

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Farmsolation Week 3

Potatoes

I’m not sure if we are adapting to this ‘staying at home’, or its just become more habit forming. Things seem to have slowed up from the initial panic in our shop and the same on the wholesale side. People are back with their regular orders - although we are seeing a lot of new faces in the shop, plus lots of our older customers are sending other family members or kind neighbours to collect their chicken foods, dog foods etc. I’m so impressed with our customers who are happy to respect the social distancing regulations we have had to put into place in the shop. We can still put items into your cars, but the One-in-One-out rule has been implemented for the safety of our customers and staff too, so thank you all for your patience and humour, too. Its so lovely to know that so many are still feeding...

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Farmsolation Week 2

chris

I think it has been the most bizarre week ever - the shop has been unbelievably busy with people stocking up on dog and chicken foods mainly, but also pigeon and wild bird foods. We have had some laughs among the stressful days, people’s humour has shone through rather than sadness or anger but in these uncertain times its so lovely to see the best of people rather than the worst that has been seen in supermarket queues and fighting over loaves of bread and toilet roll. It is so true that our lives have been turned upside down and will remain so for several weeks or months, especially if the social distancing measures put in place by the Government aren’t adhered to and people continue to crowd to our lovely beaches and countryside. I did mention how sad it is that the coronavirus has invaded our daily lives when the...

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Farmsolation

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Sadly, there’s not a lot of good news around at the moment and these are certainly worrying times for us all. Sky News is full of scary updates from all over the world as we are caught up in the Coronavirus pandemic with life as we know it being very restricted and many more changes ahead. Working from home or being in isolation from family and friends is challenging and can be very different for the whole family. We have two daughters who usually live away from home because of work they are both at home here on the farm now, along with Chris and me plus George, our son.  Add to the mix our two dogs and cats and that’s a lot of mouths to feed, extra toilet rolls and opportunities for arguments over the smallest things which I’m sure most of you will be familiar with – the pressure...

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Pause for Thought

blog pic 29.5.19

Chris & I have been out in the pickup, (with the dogs too obviously) down the fields to feed the hedgerow birds, and we were both remarking on how calm the weather is today & how there might actually be a light at the end of a very long and wet Winter tunnel we have been in since mid-September with all of the wet, windy and extreme conditions we have all endured.While we were on our way down the track Radio 2 ,Pause for Thought was on, a portion of the show where visiting contributors from a variety of faiths have a segment where they talk about life, their faith and everyday life. I listen if I’m in the car usually and today seemed so poignant. The contributor (I don’t know his name) mentioned about how we are all surrounded by nature but lots of us are oblivious or ignore it....

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