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orders update

51 orders shipped this week which is spectacularly good considering we only had two days at it we couldn't do any yesterday as we ran out of several of the brassicas on Monday and my delivery didn't arrive from Cornwall until 8.30 this morning as this weeks order (4800 brassicas) was so large he missed the delivery pick up deadline on Monday as he was still pulling them.

we have approx 100 left to do and we will do our best to get as many as we can of the remaining orders out next week.

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Orders Update

ORDERS UPDATE 13/10/2012

We have just over 100 orders left to get out currently, providing we do not get any more hold ups we hope to have pretty near most if not all of these done within 2 weeks.

Sorry for any delay we have had hold ups for the last 3 weeks firstly Katherine was off sick meaning me and Sarah had to pick and pack in shifts. The following week we could only work one day as the road to the nursery was under a foot and half of water so we just couldn't get there. Then because we hadn't used the Brassicas from that week I hadn't ordered a new batch from Cornwall until the end of the flooding week Unfortunately I did not know his Broadband connection was down until the Friday and he hadn't received it so we didn't get them until last Tuesday But we still got 46 orders out this week despite that.

So What About Now Then?

We are now settled into our new compact and Bijou growing space But much less stressed with it we have restricted the amount of orders we took this year and just dealt with it on our own just the two of us and would have had a pretty successful year had it not been for the weather scuppering us what a God awful Summer that was.

I have never grown in such challenging conditions in my life things just would not grow due to the poor light levels and we really struggled especially with Peppers and Aubergines then we lost over 400 Tomato plants to blight which was handy not.

Nearly Two Years On How It All Went Wrong And How We Bounced Back

Well as you saw in my previous writings we were very excited to have found huge new growing space and were all signed and sealed and started growing ready for a new season last year and everything looked promising and we got off to a great start with the sowing and growing we took on an unemployed chap who showed great enthusiasm and promise and all looked great.

The owners of the nursery were starting to talk about us growing everything for their three garden centres and promising this that and everything else. But then as the summer went on we heard more and more rumour's about them and it was all being denied by them.

But when the staff from one of the garden centres started cutting up and collecting any metal round the site for scrap to pay their wages we new trouble was brewing in hind site we should have looked elsewhere then But we didn't.

Then in September last year they started demanding money we felt we didn't owe as we had been supplying them with plants and when we couldn't raise it they illegally chucked us out and stole all our stock and equipment and took it to their garden centres to sell leaving us with no where to grow no stock and loads of orders we could not fulfill they then went bust owing millions and leaving us no chance of redress.

But we clawed our way back found new premises to grow in which although substantially smaller has done us OK and we were back on track.

The Summer at the bigger nursery was a disaster we had loads of "free" help courtesy of a scheme to get unemployed working but in all honesty none of them wanted to work we even offered some that were slightly better jobs But none of them wanted them even taking on an apprentice was a disaster we only had one applicant and he had a condition that meant he was very difficult to teach and drove everyone mad all day repeating everything anyone said which distracted my packers to a degree they were making mistakes with orders so he didn't last longer than the first week of a two week trial.

At one point we had 14 staff and i was stressed to the hilt trying to keep them all doing a proper job. By the time we were evicted it was just myself and Sarah getting twice as much done on our own as we were with all the staff so this year we pruned the business back and did it on our own.