Christmas chaos no sweat with extra hands
Christmas arrives and family with helping hands arrive too. This means extra hands in the market garden, in the packing room, and to put up the Christmas tree which might have been forgotten otherwise. It means two extra sat-on seats at the table, extra company and extra laughs.
Our youngest son who has finished his Uni year comes home with a renewed enthusiasm for what we do. He makes a big impact on weeds, helps us fly through Christmas induced increased volumes of salad bags in the packing room, prunes trees and goes to the Farmers market to help Daryn with the big Christmas crowd chaos.
My Mum turns up each year before Christmas, to lend a hand. She excels at pulling apart flowers for the salad mix, tying up feisty cucumbers, completing abandoned housework and peering seriously through her glasses when the rest of us joke that she's the HR department keeping us all in line.
When I was little, my grandparents would arrive a couple of days before Christmas to lend a hand in the tomato shed. It was a busy time, with the picking, grading, boxing and selling of tomatoes to locals and people heading off in all directions on their summer holidays. My grandparents, who had been market gardeners themselves, knew what a hectic time it was and turned up spot-on when they were needed. I remember the tomato shed a bustle of people chatting and laughing, Christmas songs playing on the local radio and customers cars pulling in off the road all day.
This Christmas, keeping our flat-tack busy stockists stocked up is a priority, and we'll rush to keep up in the Christmas madness. But once we've done each days work, we'll relax and celebrate with our loved ones.
We wish you all a happy Christmas. May you too have extra hands if you need them over the busy season. Good luck to other growers out there, that are working hard these holidays to earn an important chunk of their year's revenue. Thank you to all our wonderful customers, fellow market stallholders, our stockists, friends ... and our families for your support and fellowship this year.