All my thoughts

Jenny Thornhill

There are times when there is so much in my head. Mostly questions. A few ideas. The answers can take a while to formulate. Sometimes there isn’t an answer and it’s an ongoing dilemma. Here’s a taste of some of my current thoughts:

Out of Plastic

While the aim is to replace the plastic yoghurt pots with reusable glass jars, we know that at the moment this project has had to take a back seat due to the financial uncertainties that we are facing in the coming year. These are uncertainties that we all face – horrendous energy costs, cost of living increases and, for farms in particular, there are staffing issues.

I recently got a little excited when I discovered yoghurt dispensing machines. I thought this might be the answer either in the short term or even long term. However nothing is that simple. The machine is made in the UK but mostly sold in Europe to hotels for self service breakfasts. Yes we could have one but the  amount it holds is nothing compared to the amount of yoghurt we sell on a daily basis so we would have to refill it several times a day. The yoghurt is stored in a ‘bladder’ or ‘pergall’, basically a large strong plastic bag (which is single use) from which it is dispensed through the machine. So it's still quite a bit of plastic and if it’s anything like most dispensers, there may well be quite a bit of yoghurt that just doesn’t dispense. Another complication is that the main producer of these ‘bladders’ is in Ukraine. So with no production there the other producers are overwhelmed with trying to take up the slack and are concentrating on the products that are most in demand, rather than these ‘bladders’! So, back to the drawing board.

But on a positive note, we are getting the used plastic bags from salads returned for reuse and are definitely using fewer paper bags.

New tills

We’ll be getting new tills in the shop very soon, which is exciting and scary all at once. It is as if the existing tills know they are going to be retiring soon, as each till has ever increasing quirks. The back-office work to getting the new tills ready with all the data is mostly complete (as the tills don’t run off wifi we’re getting a trench dug in the car park from the office to the shop) and next we will have a new till set up to play on. The counter will look much the same from the front but the under-counter area is being rebuilt to suit the new set up. Fingers crossed it goes smoothly.

Shopping baskets and trolleys

We’ve got new shopping baskets, yay! I can’t believe how bad the old ones got. They went rusty during the pandemic when we kept them outside and sprayed them with sanitiser. Gosh, what a time that was. What a nightmare.

Volunteers

Thanks to Brexit we are struggling to find volunteers for the summer and the two Warmonderhof students (a biodynamic training college in the Netherlands) that we would normally have for their six month placement over the summer can no longer come. They are not allowed to, even as volunteers, and as we are no longer part of the E.U. we are no longer recognised as a certifiable placement. So, I believe they’re all heading off to Ireland instead.

The other helpers we would expect to have are WWOOFers (Willing workers on organic farms). We get a lot of enthusiastic applications from Europe and in the past have had some amazing individuals. They want to be on an organic or even better a biodynamic farm, they stay for a minimum of three months, improve their English and help us through the busiest months. Some even go on to train in biodynamic agriculture. But now they are not allowed to come, not even as volunteers. We recently had a young girl turned away at the border. All this at a time when we need to be encouraging UK growers to grow more so we are less reliant on produce from other countries.

Many UK growers are cutting back on production following concerns over increasing costs and in particular the lack of labour and pickers. It is heart-breaking for them to see crops they have planted with care rot in the fields due to the lack of labour. We get very little interest from people living in the UK to WWOOF but we are trying to cast our net wider at home as there are organisations that encourage and support those who want to try their hand at working on farms and possibly going on to making a living from it.

Good nutrition

There is one issue though that plays on my mind probably more than anything else and that is the utter rubbish that is sold as food. Food, in the nourishing sense, it is not. Why is it even allowed to be produced when there is no true nourishment in it at all? Over-processed, things taken out, other things put in until it resembles nothing that nature or soil could even begin to recognise. No wonder our NHS is overwhelmed. But even that description, National ‘Health’ Service, is a joke. Where is this 'health'? Where is the link between good food and good health made? What is in vending machines in hospitals? Well according to a recent visit it’s Fruit Shoots and crisps!

This quote from Wendell Berry sums it up :

‘People are fed by the Food Industry which pays no attention to health and are treated by the Health Industry which pays no attention to food’.

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