Roll up, roll up

Well... hello there all! The birds were singing their little hearts out this morning, so with the sun on my face as i did some work it felt rather good realising we have made completely the right decision with our path in life and the course it seems to be taking us. We have had to think ahead with everything this year and have had to have some serious foresight with regards to planting up, vegetable plots,ordering and of course a platform to sell some of our baskets.
 As a unique part of our business, we are offering Stratford's first delivery to the door service and also fitting them for our customers as well, but we wanted to really get in with our community and have a proper Soul Patch event in our hometown.

Surfina hanging baskets we have for sale this year

Trailing Begonia basket also available

 The local markets seem to have quite a mafia side to them and obviously have their existing sellers but unfortunately seemed very unreceptive to 'the new guys on the block offering something different' which is fair enough, but we were left rather stumped as to how we could get our brand and products out there to the general public. So what do you do when your left out in the cold? Do it anyway and do it by your self of course. We happened across the idea of hiring our local parish community centre which is a real hub for our community, so we decided to hire it for our opening day and get a few other people along who have a similar ethos to us, are independent, local and most importantly...lovely people! :)

 We have the fantastic Transition Stratford, who are realising so many people in Stratford's growing dreams by matching land already available with growers, keen to 'have a go' at growing their own and having a little slice of the good life. They are also picking the fruit that is on the fruit trees in our county that otherwise would have gone to waste and either make it into juice or give it to the community. They are trying to re-map out Stratford's orchards so that future generations can gain the valuable knowledge of the food that is widely and in many cases freely available to everyone. here is their link
http://www.transitionstratford.com/wordpress/

 We also have the lovely Judith from Shakespeare's sister's soaps who grows all that she uses in her amazing soaps and is very keen on keeping her business very local. Here is a small exert from her website and a link to it
http://www.shakespearessisterssoap.com/about.html

Judith decided to realise her passion to make and sell her own scrumptious soaps that smell wonderful, feel luxurious, and are carefully hand-made using local or sustainably sourced ingredients. Both Judith and Amanda made a conscious decision to make soap without any additives, preservatives or artificial scents or colours. Judith's love of gardening allows her to use as many of the flowers and herbs grown in her Stratford-upon-Avon garden as possible to make her soaps. 

Our open day is between 1pm and 5pm on Sunday 13th May at Holy Trinity Parish Hall situated just over the road from Holy trinity Church itself in Old Town. The Soul Patch will be offering Surfinia and Trailing Begonias in beautiful 14 inch hanging baskets, supplied with chains and hanging hooks. If you would prefer we can always take your name and address on the day and deliver it to your door as we know how awkward they can be! We will also have Soul Patch hand made mirrors and art pieces as well as our delicious elderflower cordial and hopefully our new apple press providing fresh apple juice made in front of you :) Here are some of our home made pieces as well as a sneaky preview.

Shell wall hanging

Wall hanging up close

Shell mobile

Mixed media mirror

Seahorse mosaic

Shell themed mirror

Bathroom mirror

Oyster mirror on metal

Vintage vase with fern

'Day at the beach' mirror

 We really hope we can make a name for ourselves in our town as we love where we live and grow, and want to become a real name that is recognised and recommended in our little corner of the world. We really hope to see you there, we will be the ones running round like people possessed, but please come and say hello!
Grow local, Buy local. The Soul Patch

Christmas, the ham and the lash

With another Christmas over, the benefits of great friends that have dissipated to far flung reaches of the planet decend on our small hometown to visit family and friends and we are reunited in the local pubs we all drank in as youngsters. Stories fly around with a garbled drunken recollection of facts and situations we all found ourselves in in our youthful years and i have spent quite a long time pondering this Christmas how the hell we all survived it and came our relatively unscarred! The sad truth is we all move on in one form or another, whether it might not be physically, perhaps just as people. It is something we all go through as we stumble and fall through life's wicked roller coaster but there is something to be said for not seeing friends for sometimes up to 2 years or more and being able to take off where you left all that time ago without even an ounce of awkwardness or struggled silence, then you know, what good friends truly are.

Our fireplace at home this year.

I decided to make both hams this year (earlier recipe on previous blog post) The one on the left is the honey and wholegrain mustard and the one on the right the jamie oliver jerk ham (recipe also on previous blog post)

You can just see Hendrix our dog waiting in anticipation in the background :)

And this was after he got his grubby little paws on some.

So...........with December out of the way and into January the 3rd it was the first day back at work and my body clock not wanting me to miss my alarm this morning very kindly awoke me at 5am. With it being not the best day outside thoughts turned to what i could be doing inside and as we got our delivery of pots for the surfinias and begonia plugs to go into just before Christmas i thought it would be a good job to do indoors, setting them out and seeing if they all actually fit in the greenhouses/polytunnel! Well the good news is....they do! Quite exciting having a glimpse of how many plants are going to be set out, as there is only so much you can muster with your imagination. The pak choi and chioggia beetroot are coming on a storm in the polytunnel and our arts and crafts department i.e. myself and lydia are busy beavering away making lots of nice things to sell come May. So my only real problem is, May can just not come soon enough. We have also been putting out messages on platforms such as Facebook to try and acquire a more permanent home for The Soul Patch as we yet again become homeless in June but we have had some initial ideas from some lovely people so lets hope something stems out from that. Anyway below is a piccy of greenhouse 1 and below the polytunnel to show how we are getting along with it all. A very Happy New Year to you all and may it be prosperous for all x