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We have always been a little 'old fashioned' at Mantel Farm, and Christmas to us is all about spending time with family and friends. Now the boys have grown up there is less time spent making decorations for the tree, but we still try to make a few gifts as well as home-made mince pies and other festive food. The same decorations made when the boys were younger still get carefully unpacked and hung on the tree and paper chains hung from the ceiling. Our decorations would certainly not win an award for being stylish or co-ordinated, but they do hold special memories for a special time of year.
As a family we have always tried to avoid the cheap 'throw-away' presents, wrappings and food in the shops at this time of year, but a trip to town this week made us realise just how far we all have to go to end our plastic and throw-away society. We are trying hard in our own shop to cut down on the packaging and unnecessary waste wherever possible, we are reviewing all our suppliers to see where they make or source their products and how they package and distribute them, but we are finding we don't always have an ethical option - as a small business it is hard to insist on the immediate changes we would like. We will not give up though and continue to do what we can, we have already swapped our own packaging from plastic to paper wherever possible (thankfully cardboard boxes have always been the thing for our chickens - plastic shrink wrap just never worked!?!). Our big ask for you all is that you please work with us, don't be tempted by saving those pennies from shopping online, and with each purchase consider our planet as well as your local business.
New Workshops for 2020
We now have our new programme of workshops and courses running from our training room in the barn. We have been talking to local artisans and craftspeople and are really pleased to introduce many new courses for 2020 including hand made cosmetics and willow weaving. We will each month feature a course or two in this newsletter, but if you are looking for an ethical Christmas gift for someone special, how about booking a place on a craft workshop or buying a course gift voucher.
We start the year with our popular country wine and honey mead courses in January - these workshops make a perfect present, a fun, hands-on morning or afternoon spent learning about these wines and mixing the ingredients to take home a demijohn of wine or mead in the making - simply watch it bubbling away until its ready to bottle and drink.
Our Christmas Offer:
We avoided the Black Friday and Cyber Monday madness! but during December we are giving away a £10 gift voucher for every course booked using code NLDEC
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