Happy New Year to our friends, customers and visitors.

Thank you for your support at Christmas - we had a very busy couple of days on 23rd and 24th, so an extra thank you for your patience if you came when the queue was out of the door!
We had alot of customers who had specified collection on Christmas eve come on 23rd (I think probably to avoid the icy roads), and it rather messed our system up! I've noticed that all good butchers have a queue at Christmas - in fact there was an article about how to keep people happy in the Christmas queue in the trade journal we get - but it was made longer on 23rd by this. On Christmas eve, I was proud to see that most people were in and out within half an hour, so the system worked that day! I think next year we will have to be stricter as it really wasn't fair on those who had specified 23rd pick-up, and our butchers who didn't stop or eat from 7am until around 8pm!
Mark and I were very proud of Paul, Martyn and the two extras, Sam and Richard. It was a long, hard fortnight, first plucking then dressing all the turkeys, geese and ducks, cooking all the hams, and butchering all the meat for orders and the shop display. Plus for several weeks before that, they had been making all the extra chipolatas and sausagemeat!

Unfortunately we forgot to tell the animals it was Christmas day, so it started out the same as any other for us! However we had a lovely time with Sam and Tui, Kirstie's family down from Cheshire and visits to Mark's family near Horsham. Thank you for all your feedback about the meat, and we're really pleased to hear all the fantastic praise and that we helped to make so many people's Christmas enjoyable.

The farm shop is now back on normal trading hours, and our January farmers' market will be held on Saturday 23rd. Here's hoping 2010 sees us coming out of this recession and an upturn in the livestock industry.

Thank you for your continued support,
Kirstie