Christmas is coming at us at the speed of Casey Jones at the throttle of the Cannonball Express! A reference that will be lost on most of you young things, but along with Champion the Wonder Horse it was a staple of children’s TV when I was a youngster. Anyway, I’m not getting into all that malarkey now, there are pressing issues to discuss. Well it’s not actually a discussion, that suggests a two way exchange, no this is more dictatorial than that. Here I go again distracting myself from my vitally important message. Well it’s only vital if you are going to be requiring a vegetable delivery for Christmas. Look I’m going to start a new paragraph with the information that you all (some) need, because this is going nowhere fast.

Please place your Christmas orders by Tuesday evening. There will be no deliveries on Thursday or Friday of this week. Instead all deliveries will be made on Monday 23rd. The only exception to this will be for the few customers who collect their orders from the farmers’ market at Wyken; if that is you everything will be as usual, because I will of course be attending the Christmas market on Saturday 21st. The first deliveries in the New Year will be on 9th and 10th, and the first market will be on Saturday 11th of January.

So the story of the rescued owl finally reached its conclusion last week when it was released just a couple of hundred metres from where it was found on the side of the road. April, the stallholder from Wyken who picked it up was invited by the people from the Phoenix Bird of Prey Rescue to participate in returning the beautiful creature to its natural habitat, and it was her who had the honour of releasing the bird from her arms. It was almost exactly a month after the owl was picked up that it was set free. I have huge appreciation and admiration for April, and the team at Phoenix for enabling a happy ending to this tale.

Last week I fell foul of a scam. I thought that I was more clever than to be taken in, but clearly not. I use a device at the market for taking card payments supplied by a company called SumUp. Well one morning during the week I discovered an email from them inviting me to log into my account to benefit from a host of new features that they were introducing in 2025 to enhance the service that they provide. It all looked very plausible and professional, but minutes after logging in I had a niggling doubt in my mind, so I immediately changed the password for my account. Sure enough I then received a message from the real SumUp to inform me that someone had logged into my account from a device that they did not recognise, and advised me to change my password if it was not me (which I had already done). What happens is that the funds from sales that I make on a Saturday are held by SumUp until they transfer them into my nominated bank account a couple of days later. What the scammers had planned to do was to change the bank account details from mine to theirs and relieve me of my hard earned takings. Fortunately there was nothing in my SumUp account because they had transferred last week’s sales value into my account the day before (phew!). I only use the device on Saturdays, but if I were a trader using it on a daily basis there could have been a substantial amount awaiting transfer, and that would have disappeared just like that. Some scams can be spotted a mile off, but they are becoming increasingly more sophisticated. I am just relieved that I acted on that small seed of doubt in my mind. Please be vigilant, there are a lot of nasty crooks out there.

Well we are almost there. I hope that I will have enough produce to satisfy whatever demand there is for it, but it’s always a nervous time. I have a spreadsheet covering the last 6 years of Christmas orders and base my ordering on the averages (plus an allowance) for all of the most commonly ordered items. It is not an exact science, but it usually works quite well, so let’s hope that it does this year too. The mushroom saga rumbles on – it looks as though there will be some for me from the farm this week, but they will definitely be the last from Capel  St Mary because the farm shuts completely this week. I don’t know exactly what will be available, but I have included chestnut cups and Portobello mushrooms in the shop in the hope that there will be some of each. There might not be, and whatever is available will not necessarily be brown, some could be white. I won’t know until later in the week.

I have rationalised the shop for simplicity, only including the most commonly purchased items at this time of the year. So there are Brussels sprouts, cabbage, PSB, and cavolo nero, leeks, parsnips, swede, beetroot, carrots, red cabbage, sweet potatoes, cherry vine tomatoes, onions, red onions and spuds of course. I have included small bunches of herbs – sage, Bay leaves and Rosemary, as I have access to all three either at Moyns Park or from my home garden. As for fruit, the apples are Spartan, there are oranges, lemons, clementines and limes.

It just remains for me to wish you all a very happy festive period and to thank you for your unstinting support. I don’t really need to do a blog next week, but if there is anything for me to say I might do a short one. If not the next one will be on the 5th of January.

Very best wishes

Phil