Monday 18 June 2012

Another tough week on the weather front. A couple of nice days and some not so good for getting those plants sold. After weeks of hoping for a recovery to save the spring sales forecasts we have just about given up on much claw back now, we will just have to do the best we can for the rest of the summer and knuckle down to making next year a more productive one. Luckily we have already made quite a few savings to help the cash flow, lower electric and water bills, less labour used and reduced production and distribution costs by selling and producing less. We have scaled back many of the ideas we had been hoping to implement this summer to help on production efficiencies as we just haven’t the cash to see it all through now but there are still a few projects we will pursue.
One sad event this year will be dropping out of Investors in People which has come up for its regular review this winter. Although we do like the piece of paper saying how sensibly we look after each other here, we just can’t really afford such a costly rubber stamp at this time. I’ve never been very good at following rules and o ther peoples ‘standards’ anyway, I like the freedom to do what I feel is right, getting recognition for going in an approved direction was nice for everyone but we can do just as well without it. We already have our next plan in place for making more of our working day with a series of workshops for everyone here on Lean Management. This is something we have implemented in parts for a while into our production processes but not something we have supplied training on for everyone. The tricky bit for implementing many updated ideas into an establish workplace is getting everyone thinking along the same lines and we have never had the spare dosh to afford a course for everyone. However we have been offered this for free under a government funded training initiative for NVQ’s, it just costs us the time off production which we will hopefully make back. All the work is done on site and will be very practical and relevant so not too scary for anyone. One great thing at the moment is the awareness of everyone here to the difficult year we are all having so we have a good positive approach to this all round, let’s see how we all feel after the introduction to the course which is being given in over the next couple of weeks.

I had my quarterly therapy session at our NBIS (Nursery Business Insolvency Scheme, I mean Improvement), everyone has seen a shocker of a spring, although one or two have done ok if their main season was early enough. We had a good session with lots of positive input although there was no free money available at the end to share out which was a shame because that’s what we could all do with!

A group from the local WI came round for a turbine trip on Friday, a fantastic breezy day and a lovely tour. I surprised myself (but not others) at how long I could waffle on for on anything remotely connected to our three little generators. They were all blown away by it all (pun intended) and left behind a perfect WI memento of cake, scones and jam of which there is unfortunately none left for staff coffee on Monday!

Eco News

I’ve been doing a bit of predator redistribution this morning, hovering up a few of the tiny frogs that have started to emerge from the pond. I’m sure it won’t make a huge difference to anything really but just thought it might save a few getting picked off before they made it into the tunnels. I never get over how tiny they are when they first come out yet how far they can jump for their size. I’m easily impressed. There are still plenty of tadpoles in there so we look like getting quite a good crop this year, they must love this weather, good job some things are benefiting.

Turbines passed their June estimate today (17th) so will make up a bit by the month end on the quiet February and March periods.

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