First Snow of the Winter

HoHoHo and it did look a little like Christmas last Friday!

#wheresbob

This was Bob delivering last Friday, just outside of Allendale, in the first snow of the season. We will do our utmost to deliver, whatever the weather. Thankfully, for some of our more extreme, but stunning, areas of delivery, our Defender will be the only mode of transport we can and should use. Ideally we would like to acquire an electric means of transport. However, the weekly miles we are having to complete, delivering to you our lovely customers, exceeds the number of miles an electric van currently offers. We (Bob) is constantly researching the current information re electric vans and it is something we want to convert to when the right van becomes available, hopefully in 2021.

The piglets are all growing. They seem to be the healthiest looking piglets we have ever had. They are solid boxes at the moment, which is a great sign. They have started eating solids and are now enjoying the greens and pellets we are giving Kate, their Mum. Kate is a great Mum, except when it comes to ‘sharing’ the food. She has no qualms lifting them out of the way and sometimes this is a lift right into the air. We will be making their pen a little larger as the piglets become more adventurous and annoying to mum.

The chickens are being kept inside the chicken houses. You may have heard or read that chickens are having their own pandemic with a strain of bird flu causing grief. Grief for the birds but also for the farmers who are having to loose flocks of turkeys and chickens. One farmer in North Yorkshire has just had ten thousand turkeys culled! The chicken quarantine does not start till the end of this week, however, we have decided to keep our hens inside from now. We will feed and water them well. We will also provide a little extra with cabbages and apples for them to eat and enjoy playing with.

One of our many tasks over this winter season will be to erect a very large (so large the chickens will still have a good area to roam free) chicken pen with a complete surround of netting. This means that when poultry have to be kept in, ours are already contained in a pen. Bird flu seems to be an issue on a more regular occasion. We are hoping that we will have this issue sorted on our farm with the new pen.

There is still time to order your Festive Box for Christmas week……
Our Christmas Organic Fruit and Vegetable box is on the website. We have put together all the delish goodies you will need to make your meals a festive feast. Your organic veg will be fresh from the fields and tunnels, so it will help us enormously if you can place

Your orders for the Festive Box by the 14th of December please

This is just for the Festive Box, the shop will be working as normal up until 18th December. From then on the shop will be closed until 9th January 2021. Don’t worry, I will continue to remind you of the dates on the weekly blog.
The contents of the Festive box will be:
Potatoes, Carrots, Onions, Brussel Sprouts, Parsnips, Kale, Broccoli, Swede, Leeks, Red Cabbage, Apples, Oranges, Clementines, Lemon, and a salad bag of Tomatoes, Cucumber and Leaves.

You will be able to buy much more to compliment these boxes, including Pork, on the shop closer to Christmas.

Christmas Day happens to be on a Friday this year. Consequently, the delivery days will all be brought forward by two days……

Wednesday delivery will be on the Monday, 21st December
Thursday deliveries will be on the Tuesday, 22nd December
Friday deliveries will be on the Wednesday, 23rd December

I hope you are all getting into the festive spirit. We seem to be like everyone else and putting our tree up much earlier than normal. So just going to start that now…….

Still Stay Safe,
Ann👩‍🌾