The Yard Is Changing
When I purchased this block in 2005 and had the factory built in 2006 (which we moved into Easter 2007) I never envisaged the changes in the business, the amount of visitors to the yard, or the evolving garden bed industry that has resulted.
This has caused two effects which must be rectified/managed and until now has sort of slipped by due to many factors.
The display area I have built since 2006/7 has run its race. It is not really a safe and practical area to take visitors.
Tanks have been soldered to seal them. This is a slow and arduous method of construction, not to mention not a particularly healthy method either. It is hot; the fumes are nasty; and the solder and soldering irons are becoming very expensive (not to mention the irons have also been hard to obtain at times).
A decision had to be made!
We were going to sell up and move onto something else but two things happened - despite the many offers on the shed/yard, not many people were interested in purchasing the business, and oldest son Josh came to work here. These two things combined ushered in a new decision (well, a few actually). We put Josh on full time and he has taken over the workshop, allowing me to step away to concentrate on the yard, which after the last few years of crazy busy has fallen into sad neglect, and spend more time on promotional ideas. As I am still chief deliverer and phone answerer I haven't spent all my time in the yard so I have fallen behind in my plans to reinvent it, but in saying that a lot of changes have occurred and it has come a long way so far, and I am still going at it.
It has become essential in todays world to separate the functioning/busy factory/storage yard environment and the display area. This is currently underway and although I had hoped to have this done by Easter (also trying to tie in a cheeky 16th anniversary being that I moved here Easter in 2007) it is looking unlikely given the busy weeks ahead up to Easter.
We decided to use this years Seymour Alternative Farming Expo to implement some other alterations to our product range. I will outline those as I think it is the easiest way:
As mentioned, we will drift away from soldering the tanks. They will now be sealed with a product called ™TREX and this will become "standard" as of 31st March (the Friday which is the first of 3 days of EXPO)
Soldered tanks will still be offered as an option but they will be priced differently and will need to be ordered specifically rather than just as a standard option.
We will be offering our range of tanks in ™Aquaplate as an option as well. I haven't made an ™Aquaplate tank in over 20 years (mainly due to price of materials) but it will now be an option. We will also look to manufacture ™Colorbond ™Aquaplate as well.
We will have available "Rain Gardens" which are basically a storm water retention system that is a Wicking Bed. These are required to be ™Aquaplate and will be offered in galvanised finish or ™Colorbond.
™Aquaplate & ™Colorbond ™Aquaplate will be an option for Wicking Beds (we can also do raised garden beds in these options but it will not be a standard option on the price list so would need to be priced as required).
We will be offering a range of Greenhouses from a company called Winter Gardenz as of EXPO (31st March). If you can, come down and visit the site E34 to see a display of one of these solid and practical green houses.
Although price lists will not be available by EXPO, we will be offering an Aquaponics range featuring grow beds, fish tanks and components. I will be looking to get some installation options to offer and we will also have other accessories available. Many things need to be considered here as from size of systems, pumps and types of growing medium, there are many considerations to consider. This will be something we will look to expand on over time.
There will be a customer/visitor gate as well as the existing gate which will become the "DO NOT ENTER" and/or "EMPLOYEES ONLY" gate. The display area will be completely cut off from the work environment.
I intend to have some display days which will hopefully become informative and fruitful utilising some wonderful local knowledge and learned persons with demonstrations of things like grafting and Fruit Fly protection and with options of specialised interest but this is down the track a little - crawl before we walk or run!
I did intend to be more active with the Blog but as you might have gathered I have had a bit on my plate recently. I won't make hollow promises of changing this right now and having a "once a week" addition, but I do intend to be a bit more active than I have been.
I hope to see you at EXPO if you can make it, Friday 31st March, Saturday 1st April & Sunday 2nd April 2023 - or call in to 5 Tebble St. and see for yourself the transformation.
We hope to see you soon.