What a frustrating March.

Three of our major product lines involve Wild Garlic, and these include Wild Garlic Vinegar, Wild Garlic Jelly and Carrot and Wild Garlic Chutney. Given the popularity of our Wild Garlic products we have to make a lot of them and we can only get cracking when the new shoots make their appearance in the woodlands where they grow. And we are time limited because we leave on our travels in mid April.

This year was the sourse of much frustration because the weather decided to throw us a curved ball in the shape of "The Beast fron the East 2" which covered the ground with a thick layer of snow and stopped the Wild Garlic in its tracks. And not only that, we had booked to take our motor boat out of the water for its bi annual bottom blacking (repainting). This process invilved two days of travel to the slipway, a week out of the water and then two days to get back all during one of our busiest times of the year. No sooner had we alpplied the first coat on a relatively mild spring Friday than the temperature plummeted to minus 7 and the boat was buried under a snowdrift. The end result was the bitumen failing to adhere and all peeling off again. Grrrrr.

Finally, the snow retreated and the sun came out and the Wild Garlic came to life again. We had just enough time to pick and process the leaves, resulting in a great tasting preserves but a less than great odour which lingered in the kitchen for a few days!