Hairy Easter cheese

Hello all you lovely people out there. Hope you are all well and coping ok.
People seem to be settling in to staying home now which is great for trying to get on top of this traumatic episode. The appreciation for all those key workers who often got overlooked before is building, which can only be a good thing. Thousands and thousands of people are going out of their way to do their bit, whether big or small and it all helps, not just today but for the future too. It is the sort of situation that I suddenly realise what a small cog I am in the big community. So many inspiring people to wonder at, just brilliant. Keep it up all you hero's out there.
Our little bit of madness may be drawing to a close for the moment. The Plants for People project has cleared plants to a retail value of over £350,00 already and I reckon we have another week to go before we clear the current back log of plant requests. By that time we will have cleared all of the stock that was going to go past it's best over this early peak season sales period. We have called a halt to new requests because of the now quite low levels of stock. I can't believe that in just over three weeks we will have cleared so much stock so efficiently. The income may not be what we would expect under normal conditions, but it is a very significant contribution, especially when you look at the potential losses and costs involved if we still had that stock sat on the nursery. The emotional returns have been huge for us and all the staff, with hundreds of very grateful and supportive locals sending messages, cards and financial contributions, a very strange situation to find ourselves in and still quite difficult to get a full grip on. There are loads of stories of communities opening up and talking to each other through the distributing of a few plants, it is just a great feeling that we could be the catalyst for so many extra little nuggets of kindness. Best not think about it too much, lots to do.
One of the main objectives of the project was hugely practical, we needed to clear big batches of plants and empty entire tunnels. It has worked brilliantly which means easy tunnel prep for the follow on crops. We have now started potting again, hurrah. We still have young plants awaiting potting and more still arriving on site. Difficult to believe it, but I am ordering more plants to pot again, after cancelling quite a lot initially, when we had no room to put the potting down. The fresh cash coming in means we shouldn't have to borrow any more for the next month, although that could all change when the dust settles and the cash flow dries up again. If the centres don't take too many weeks to open up for business we may still get away with surviving to fight again next year, hopefully without taking on too much more debt. Everything is crossed for so many things at the moment!
I know that we growers have been asked to lobby our MP's about the plight of the ornamental growers (and retailers) to try and raise the profile of our predicament and I can say I have well and truly ticked that box. I have our MP as a coordinator on our project and he has thoroughly enjoyed spreading the joy among a few of his constituents. He said he felt like Santa, hiding behind bushes to see the delight on people faces when they found a little collection of perennials on their doorstep! Heard today that he talked about us in cabinet last week so there is something getting through.
We have a lot of coordinator volunteers to thank for distributing the plants in their communities, as well as several who are working on the nursery and driving the vans. It is humbling and quite hard to accept the level of support we have had. There is that internal pride factor that we feel that we should be coping ourselves with our own problems, but we have had to admit that this situation was more than we could cope with alone and we will be forever in these lovely peoples debt, for being there
for us, in such difficult times. I don't know how we can ever repay that debt, but we hope we can have a go at it when, hopefully, we come out of the other end of this.
Like most I missed out on the family Easter roast last weekend, but had the most fabulous warm piece of buttered toast with sliced cheddar on top. So delicious I nearly cried. It doesn't take much at the moment.
Please take care out there, there are still going to be some tough times ahead, but hopefully a huge amount of good things will come out of it in the end.

Availability list highlights
We have a couple of customers taking a few plants for home delivery services they have started up since the lockdown took effect, so I have updated the old availability list as best I can at the moment. It won't be fantastically accurate as lines are being cleared each day under our Plant for People project. We may have to adjust the content slightly of any orders we might receive to get the numbers right, so apologies for that in advance, Circumstances mean we are going to have to be a bit flexible at the moment.
Under the current rules we are not comfortable sending out any stock that may be placed in a position that will attract browsing or handling by the public. Now is not the time to encourage that type of sale, Phone us to discuss options if you are doing mail order type deliveries and we can chat and take a view.
Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.