Morning all,
Bit of a shock when the warm weather ended this week. I know it was forecast but it still seemed to take a day or two to find enough clothes to layer on. Autumn and winter all seem very cosy in the imagination but I always seem to forget the inconvenience of all that extra kit. We even lit the wood burner again for a couple of evenings to take the chill off. At least I have got a bit of wood stacked away ready to keep us warm most of the time with out having to resort to the central heating. 
Just ordered the first delivery of heating oil for next week so that focuses the efforts to keep the wood burner going, ouch. 
The news was full of energy price increases again, SSE announcing an 8%+ increase and despite their great efforts to blame the green taxes the government are imposing to support insulation projects etc and the renewable energy costs when you look a bit more closely the biggest increases are increasing carbon based fuel costs and the big in creases in distribution costs which take up a surprising proportion of the bill. What seems to have passed unnoticed so far is that the companies running the distribution networks are somewhat related to the big energy companies. Down here we were dealing with SSE Distribution which is run as a separate company to the energy company but is basically under the same group of companies They work in 
a non competitive environment charging more or less what they like for works on the cable network as we experienced when putting in the turbines a few years ago. Then there is the separate SSE Metering company that runs the installation, supply and maintenance of the metering of most supplies down here. As a company we are paying them £360 a year for the privilege of having a meter on site, and then we pay a charge of about £160 to have the m eter read and the data made available to the company who pay us for our exported electricity then another £180 or so to have the meter data supplied to another company who charge us for all the electricity we use. So that is £700+ a year to have the meter read. I’m not bitter! 
Made great use of the last of the summer weather this week by getting the last two tunnel covers completed. We only just managed it with the last one going on Wednesday just as the wind started to pick up. We nearly lost Elaine who was trying to hang on to the edge of the sheet as the wind gusted but she was given permission to let go and all was saved in the end. 
Stepped forward into the modern world with an updated smart-phone this week and then spent most of Friday and all weekend working out why the wireless modem in the house wouldn't work with the new phone when it was fine with the Caroline’s and the laptop. Turned out to be the security settings in the modem which were very tricky to get access to. In the end I had to install a spare modem and programme that to fit in with the big network it is part of. Wouldn't have take more than half an hour if I knew what I was doing, but my expertise usually just runs to turning it off and on again, which actually I did have to do several times. Anyway all sorted now after a few choice words so all happy. I have already found the new phone quite handy. This morning Caroline's phone buzzed away and vibrated when a mes sage arrived while lying in bed then 
just after that a similar noise and vibration came from my side and I was successfully able to suggest I had just received a message too. 
Box returns 
Thanks for the great response to the email appeal I sent out for the return of as many boxes as you can lay your hands on. Don’t worry if you are still using a few them for display of our stock we just need to track down the spares of which there still appear to be a scary number out there! It is really very important we get these boxes returned or accounted for, so we can maintain a good looking and sustainable delivery and display system. Please do drop us an email to update us on the current position if you haven’t already done so. 

Cheers. 
Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries