Wark Farm

Off we go again into a new year. Not that the first of January marks a particular change in the farm and food production year, there are far more significant dates in the biological calendar. As a business though it is marking a few changes in how we do things and it seems as good a time as any to share a few of these with you. Firstly, a huge thank you to all of you who stuck with us, kept buying, eating and supporting the farm through what was the most challenging of my 14 years here. Your custom, loyalty and support is valued way beyond any measure of pounds and pence, thank you. We ended the year with a good December and are excited to be heading into 2018 with a host of new ideas and a great, expanded, Wark Farm team as we move into a more collaborative and community based way of running the farm and business.

I have already introduced you to Richard and Susan who joined me here in August and some of you will have met them already, at markets, in the butchery, at the holiday cottage or around the farm. They are now living on the farm and are a key part of the momentum in the business. As well as being lovely, skilled and hard working people they are doing their best to keep me on the straight and narrow while I buzz around exploring new opportunities. Any of you enquiring about our experience days will also have heard from Fi who is now managing the administration and marketing of that area of the farm and is busy with our further moves into the word of food, tourism and sharing what we do here. We have given our ordering system a bit of an overhaul and after many requests and attempts think we have now managed to find a tidy way of acknowledging your orders by email including a copy of what you have ordered, which many of you have been asking for. We are also making changes to our invoicing system (which has delayed some of the December invoices, sorry) so you will see some changes there too. Managing the ordering system (and contacts list) is now being undertaken by Lolita and you will hear from her as you place your orders. Feel free to ask any questions of her if you have queries about your order, delivery dates, product availability, etc. Should there be queries she can't answer she will wake me up and I'll do my best to help as ever.

It's a great and necessary thing to be spreading the aspects of running this diverse chunk of hillside amongst others but be assured that I continue to have my inquisitive sticky fingers and enthusiastic mind in all aspects of the place and you are welcome to continue to contact me with thoughts, queries, complaints and suggestions as has aye been. But I very much hope to be able to offer you a much better customer experience than I alone have been able to manage in recent times as well as allowing me more time to implement improvements to the organic farming system, give more focussed attention to our conservation plans and to get out and about more, sharing what we are up to here and to pursue, if I can restrain myself, just a selection of the new ideas and initiatives coming along.