We’ve done the training, got the certificates and now we have a roll of pretty stickers… this Soft wee Croft is all grown up and ready for business.
A cute little logo, predictably featuring one of our bonny Highlanders, has been drawn up and affixed to letterheads and packaging. Bound, inevitably, to be as instantly recogniseable as the Nike swoosh, our coo’s-head branding should take us to the dizzy heights of being stocked in the local shop and sold to neighbours and friends.
Granted, it’s not yet Markie’s Food Hall, but Mr Marks himself began by peddling his wares around tiny Yorkshire villages, so who knows what awaits us here in rural Argyll?
Wikipedia doesn’t mention whether or not Michael Marks got his City and Guilds certificate for livestock transport, so we might well be one up already on the entrepreneurial Belarusian.
I am, of course, playing fast and loose with the pronouns here. There’s not a chance in hell that I would tackle these skinny, windy roads with a muckle great trailer swinging at my back. The fact is, I married a graduate of agricultural college whose student days were spent driving tractors and shearing sheep – skills much more useful, as it turns out, than anything I learned in my four hazy years at uni. So, the husband added two City and Guilds certificates to his long list of handy accomplishments, proving that he can safely transport both pigs and sheep. Yup, it’s two separate bits of paper and two separate £60 quids.
His wee hideaway-cum-greenhouse is also proving to be a bit of a showcase for his talents. The Polycrub now resembles the Day of the Triffids. The veggies are growing at a crazy rate, covering every spare scrap of soil and climbing the walls like kids dosed with Granny’s homemade tablet.
The upshot is we have more food than we can handle, so have decided to strut our wares around the village and beyond. The butcher was effuse with his praise of our pork and asked to keep a load to sell himself; the rest of the pork and lamb will hopefully be delighting diners at the local café and gracing dinner plates in homes far and wide. If the veg continues to grow at its current rate they, too, will be adorning the shelves throughout the summer. We’re not heading for the FTSE 100 any time soon, but that’s not the point. If we can feed ourselves, feed our neighbours and cover the costs it’ll be a job well done.
We’re lucky that the costs are pretty minimal – everyone’s free-range and their grazing saves powering up the lawnmower; the fruit and veg are fertilised with seaweed from our own beach and watered from our borehole – itself plentifully supplied by the generosity of the Argyll weather. And there are certainly worse places we could be right now. I’m not sure I could be bothered with Boris’s traffic light system for a trip to Benidorm this summer when we can be sunning ourselves here at our own wee seaside hacienda. Our homemade hooch is as good as any sangria – if a little more potent – and our new sausages would give the finest chorizo a run for their money. To find out just how good they are give me a shout at Fiona@littlekeills.com Yup, get me, with my proper marketing chat…
The Softer Crofter 