Hello all,
Hope you all had a good Christmas and we wish you all a Happy New Year. It’s been a few weeks since my last update and we’ve been really busy. I can’t possibly fit in all the stuff we got done but despite the cold nip in the air, we managed to make some great positive progress on lots of projects. Hopefully the pre-Christmas weather didn’t spoil things too much out there in retail-land, and all those Christmas trees got shifted.

We had a great Christmas here, plenty of fun preparing, making our decorations for the mess room and a marathon session making all our Christmas cards (I did take some snaps of this year’s efforts which I will try and get on the website). We still had plenty of lying snow on the day and had a big family Christmas lunch down on the farm which was just perfect. Might have overdone the food consumption a bit over the period so a bit more self control needed in the next few weeks to get back to standard wobble levels.

Having been married for an extremely long time, present buying between Caroline and I does get tricky. Luckily I did remember last year’s Christmas message which was that when she says there is no need to get anything, that isn’t always what is really meant! I did better this year, although we did manage to buy each other the same things, great minds think alike. Having had a new wood burner put in the house, we both got tool-holders for the hearth, on top of that we both got chocolates. The last present also nearly got repeated too, but luckily I remembered she finds lacy underwear a bit scratchy!

New Year, New Season

We managed to get all the catalogues printed and posted so you should all be in possession of the latest version. Anyone who got missed or needs an extra copy please let us know. There is a version available as a download on the nursery website if needed.

Don’t forget that the prices have gone up by 7p/pot after the big coir pot price rise and increases in labour costs. Then there is also the VAT increase on the perennials to consider too. This means you may want to review your retail price points before getting stocked up. Many of you have your stock pre-priced with our ace wooden labels so you will need to let us know ASAP of any changes so that we can get ahead on the plate making and printing. Thanks.

Eco news (Don’t forget that if you receive this via fax we can save paper and email instead, just let us know)

OK this is a moment for big-time smugness on my part. It’s not often I get something so right and well timed, but in November I certainly hit the mark in the house. Over a few weeks we installed a wood burner, insulated the roof (to 270mm), filled the cavity walls and lifted the floorboards to install insulation under them. Perfectly timed for the cold weather and the enormous increase in heating oil prices over the last few weeks. In our old leaky house it has made an incredible difference, now the heat stays in for longer and the draughts have reduced hugely. Oil consumption has dropped off a cliff despite the cold and it’s toasty even when the heating is off. The roof and cavity wall work was subsidised so will pay back in just a few months, the burner and floor job will take longer, but the nice thing is that we save heat and dosh from this day on for years to come, a much better return than most saving plans and the feel good factor adds to the glow of self congratulation. I can’t believe we didn’t do this before, but years ago fuel was cheap (heating oil up over 50% in a year) and our focus was on other stuff.

Wind turbine project ticking along but progress is a bit slow as we try and get everything sorted out. The planning conditions are fulfilled and are just awaiting being signed off before we can actually do anything at all on the site.

Electric consumption on nursery down by 23.6% for 2010 up to the end of November. Water consumption down 14%.

Happy New Year, have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries