A fortnightly reminder that The Bandon Farmers Market is on again tomorrow – and the forecast indicates fine and dry!
After four days in the past seven at two food shows in the UK, one in Bristol at the Organic Food Festival and the second in Olympia, London at the Speciality & Fine Food Fair, the thought of another day standing and smiling is going to be a challenge – but if the sun is shining then all will be well!
Hope to see you there!
After weeks of burning midnight oil, diving into code books, and Master Classes in the challenges of php files, our new ordering pages are now live at www.ummera.com.
Modifications and improvements will continue over the coming weeks (and no doubt years!), but the base is there. The big change for us, and our customers, is that no longer is the price given for the product the final price. We have succumbed to the norm of having an ex smokehouse price and only at the check out will you get the shipping cost. This now means that an order can be made up of a mix of any of our products; the system calculates the total shipping weight and then gives the shipping cost. This, to me, is very clever, but I presume that it is far from new!
The other thing new about it is that customers will need to register, and guests are also requested to register. This way they can get get maximum benefit and so can we.
Any feedback is most welcome, both good (of course) and bad (most important).
Weblogs tend to be tales of the past, however not here. This is the future……!
My earlier post ended in Bristol, but not for me; the Bristol show starts on Saturday and I will have to catch the train to London at lunchtime to set up our stand at The Speciality & Fine Food Fair in London. Then three days of talking and smiling, then home on Tuesday night.
If you have read this and are at Olympia, there will be a special draw for a side of smoked salmon for anyone who visits our Stand 545 and can say the word UMMERA backwards without prompting! Start practising!
An early start on Friday morning as Ralph and I head off to catch the ferry at Rosslare en-route to Bristol and the Harbourside area. We plan to do a short tasting at Chandos Deli’s shop in Clifton before setting up our stall in the Lloyds Amphitheatre area.
If, by remote chance, anyone is reading this in the Avon area, come and see us at the festival. I gather that there is an entrance fee this year, but hopefully that won’t deter those who are interested in seeing a fantastic range of organic fare. For details go to http://www.organicfoodfairs.co.uk/
It looks as though the market will continue through the winter. There is hope that the market area will be covered with a large awning/canopy to make it so much more agreeable both to shoppers and stallholders!
The quality and variety of produce available at the market is attracting great comment, and with the prospect of it being every week when the canopy is up, will mean that there will be no excuses for not turning up!
So great news, and many thanks to those who have driven it thus far!
A reminder that the fortnightly Bandon Market is on this Saturday, August 26th, from 10.00am to 2.00pm.
Looking forward to seeing you there – perhaps!
Sunday August 6th, Lisselan Gardens, Clonakilty. Shelter in any ……….
And it was raining!
Best intentions of maintaining a fairly regular web log (and I still have a dislike of the word blog!) have slipped since the middle of June. Slipped not because of nothing to say, but because of changes in our hosting provider and our internet access.
Ummera was off the air for nearly 10 days as we swapped host providers; the blackout was unfortunate, but did give me the opportunity of discovering gmail, with which I was, and still am, pretty impressed with. The reasons for changing hosts was one of cost primarily, but there were e-commerce reasons as well. Our old site’s ordering pages were designed with asp/dot net and it was quite beyond me to make any changes myself; I thought that there must be an easiersystem. And I hope there is, because I am now trying to make sense of php – and that with great difficulty over very simple parsing errors!
The other big event is that we now have broadband here at Inchybridge. May 27th 2004 was the first e-mail I sent out to the community here in Timoleague to try and get broadband. Last Saturday rapidbroadband.ie connected us on a wireless link – and it is fantastic! Here is picture of the mast above the smokehouse which myself and Andrzey erected; not very tall but it picks up the signal from above Kilavarrig and deflects it down to the lower Argideen valley. Now both Barryroe Creamery, Inchybridge Branch and Tim Severin can access it!
Yesterday our 4 year old requested a BBQ, so I was duly despatched to get some charcoal in Clonakilty. Just before going I was moaning about the foiur or five hour wait in Dublin en route to Harrogate. Herself suggested that I should think about all the work I could/should do in that time. Being totally lost without the computer these days in any brain orientated work activity, I couldn't quite see how I could do any real work. Anyway, on the way to get the charcoal, it occured to me that the computer place next to the Atkins might loan/lend/rent me a laptop for the weekend. Think how useful it would be in Harrogate as well to show prospective customers our smokehouse and so on…..Of course they don't rent laptops BUT how about an inexpensive second hand one………..So here I am, in Applewood House, on their WiFi connection, typing away on my Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000, 2nd Hand! Apart from a very slow boot up time, it works well;don't like the little blue pointer control button, but a mouse was included with it. Skype is now loaded, my Act! database is loaded, copy of www.ummera.com is loaded and being edited, and I shall shortly vanish into slumberland!
Left home at 7.30 this morning to catch Ryanair flight to Dublin to wait a very tedious 4 hours or more in a grossly overcrowded Airport. It seems incredible that there is no seating anywhere in the check-in area of the Departure area, except upstairs at one of the so called restaurants. Dublin Airport advertises their Anna Livia Lounge for €20 for up to three hours (and I would have been happy to have done that), but you can only get to if after you have your Boarding Pass and gone through security. My onwards flight to Leeds Bradford check in gate wasn't opened until 1315hrs and the boarding time was 1445 hrs, so I had to eek out a cup of Cafe Latte from 10.00 to 13.15hrs; my laptop battery (and the story about that is to follow) ran out after a couple of hours, and I also had to pay €3.00 for 30 minutes WiFi access……Pity the poor business traveller wanting to plug his laptop in and comunicate with the world!
Anyway, Leeds Bradford Airport came and went quite quickly as a bus was leaving for Harrogate shortly after getting out of the airport; Very friendy people up here and the bus stopped at the end of St Georges Road where I had booked into Applewood House, which, so far, I can highly recommend; Barry and Lesley Knight were most welcoming and Barry himself drove me out to the Yorkshire Event Centre where the Harrogate Specialty & Fine Food Fair begins tomorrow,Sunday – thus my visit to Harrogate.
