13th January

This is the first newsletter of the new year.

Happy new year to everyone.

On the lead up to the Christmas holidays we had an unexpected big problem.

As Andrew was on his way delivering the Thursday deliveries, the van stopped dead.

He was on his way to Glasgow for his deliveries, so we had a bit of an issue getting a hired van sorted out and our van home.

And to add to the problems, as I was on my way to Perth the pickup the hire van, and time was critical to get Andrew back on his way, I got stuck in a massive tailback, there had been an accident at Boxden roundabout, and there was a half an hr delay.

Eventually, we got him back on his way.

The next problem was that everyone was going to be on holiday over the next two weeks and no garage would look at the van.

We have now got the van in, and unfortunately the wet belt has broken, and we need a new engine, to make matters even worse, that van was due to get traded in in April.

So hopefully that is the biggest problem we are going to face in 2025.

We have had another problem on arriving back to work, but it is a normal seasonal problem.

The frost and harvesting Leeks.

At the start of the week, it was cold, and we were managing to pull the leeks out.

But by the middle of the week the ground was like concrete, so we had to cut the leeks at soil level, and dressing the leeks was really hard.

But we got them done it just takes most of the day, when usually it is a couple of hours to do the leeks.

The hard frost doesn’t really affect any of the field crops, the crops that are in the field now are all winter hardy.

And the purple sprouting broccoli now have some broccoli starting, so we should be harvesting them soon.

The winter cauliflower and cabbage are still a wee bit away.

We will be harvesting the cabbage around the end of January and the cauliflower should come early march.