Bamboo Skewer Challenges

Morning all,

Nice to see a bit of winter weather. We had our coldest night for a couple of winters at about -7C during last week’s frosts, but overall just about right. It helps knock back the pests a bit and definitely better to have it now than it appear in April and mess up the spring confidence levels. We had a couple of frozen pipes but they were quickly cleared and one small burst on a bit of kit I had thought was frost-proof. The extra morning coffee to thaw the fingers has seen milk purchasing double but it looks like the dairy industry need all the help it can get so glad to do our bit.
Just a quick one this week as time is pressing and I still need to complete the catalogue which seems beset with delays this year. We sent out a couple of orders last week which was a good trial run for the new labels but naturally it all took ten times as long as it might have, with all sorts of little hiccups to iron out. You always think these things are going to be simple and efficient but there always seem to be new challenges to overcome before all your dreams of super efficiency come true. Such is life.
Major trauma this week was the loss of the main label printer which after many years of hard work and abuse decided enough was enough. Luckily the policy of running a near identical printer in the main office got us over any immediate problems but after consultations with OKI technical support there was no hope for the old one and the decision was made to replace it. Not an ideal option on the cash flow front although by the time I had shopped around a bit and found a new one being sold from an ‘opened box’ complete with the 3 year warrantee the cost was only a £100 more than the value of the consumables in it! Just goes to show how much they must be making out of the consumable sales. Another bonus of getting basically the same model was that the toners are still compatible with the old one so we can use up the toner that was left in the old machine.
We had to start making new printing plates over the past week to price up the skewer labels where needed. Another easy job that turned into a marathon. The etcher wouldn’t etch, the cold water created a deposit on the printing plates, the labels wouldn’t feed onto the printer or bundle and the printer wouldn’t print clearly. Even when it started coming together the computer operator blew a fuse and got the price wrong. New stuff is just so exciting. Here is a taste of some of the new issues; the bamboo skewers are packed in boxes of 1,000 but not all pointing in the same direction and for quick printing you need them all the same way round, the labels look beautifully clean but are in fact covered in a thin film of very fine sawdust left from the cutting process which quickly builds up on the print head and the fatter one end thin the other design of the skewers makes them tricky to handle, feed under the print head and bundle. So to remedy the problems we now have a new label sorting device to quickly get them all the same way round and a new handling/storage tray to keep them all the same way round reading for cleaning and printing. Still on Blue Peter Mark 1 version’s but looking good so far.
New cat flap in office door this morning to accommodate slightly ill nursery cat in warmer surroundings. Not sure this one has  used one before so ongoing training required to prevent mishaps in the work environment. As if there wasn’t enough to do.
Anyone local to us should know that Marcus Bonfanti is playing at the village hall in Kings Somborne on Feb 7th. Superbly talented guitarist and songwriter with a great voice and a very personable chap too. Won lots of awards, just slightly bonkers that he has the local village hall listed as a venue on his national acoustic tour.
www.sombornesessions.co.uk
www.marcusbonfanti.com/uk-2015-solo-tour-dates-announced

Availability
There are signs of early growth on a few lines and the odd bud or two showing so spring isn’t too far away. Hopefully we won’tall disappear under a snowdrift anytime soon or get too frozen out, but all the stock is kept cold and well ventilated so should be pretty tough. As the days lengthen the first strong flush of growth comes along pretty quickly so do keep an eye on our emails to see things develop and the spring buds appear, it won’t be long. With the new look labelling and a bit of half decent weather we can put together an attractive display to kick off 2015 sales.
We should have some herbs available in the next week or two, depending on the weather and plant growth.
Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries