When they’re Gone …
J
onathan & Denise >
We’ll spare you the tedious to-and-fro of arguments pulling us this way, pushing us that way, and – just when you think a line of reasoning had answered the question, it suddenly seems not to make sense at all, and we’re back where we were. It’s been difficult, but the decision has been made …
We’ve been producing and selling our Big Garden Preserves from home – here at the walled garden – for nearly fifteen years, and it’s been a great success. But we need to reduce our workload, simplify our lives. We also want to rediscover the joy of making preserves and storing them in the pantry in the knowledge that they will be there through the long winter months, to feed us, to cheer us, to sustain us. If you’ve done that yourself, you’ll know what we mean! We want to enjoy the best of our preserves, not make do with the batches we’ve condemned as less-than-perfect. We want to enjoy the freedom to experiment, to be more spontaneous ; not just in the choice of fruit or the ingredients, but also in use of jars and how we label them. We’d really like to make our preserves to please ourselves! So …
2018 will be the last year we’ll be systematically making and selling The Big Garden preserves – jams, jellies, marmalades, chutneys, dried herbs. So, when they’re gone, they’re gone!
English
Basque
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Dutch
Finnish
French
German
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Portuguese
Scottish Gaelic
Spanish
Welsh
Pingback:On The Move — The Big Garden and Croft
The end of an era, akin to us deciding not to get another dog now that our old buddy Liam is gone.
Oh, hard decisions! But I do get it and I think you’re going to be very happy with your decision. Time to do for yourselves!
J > Yes, Kerry, we’ve just been talking about this over lunch. We’ve both spent 40 years pursuing the happiness of others, in order to pay our way in life and have a wee bit over for personal spending. Work has always come before pleasure, and since we both became entirely self-employed 15 years ago, it’s been difficult to do anything but work without a sense of guilt. Work permeates every moment of the day, and every where in our house and garden and beyond, with materials and equipment and work-in-progress in almost every room (but not our bedroom!), the garden producing food that is primarily for customers … If we take a rare morning off to do something personal (usually combined with something to do with our work), we feel guilty and that we ought to get back home asap and open up the shop and be ready to respond to answerphone messages, emails etc. And yet, now all the big projects are complete (in particular renovation of our house), we can afford to take it a bit easier … but actually doing so is tough. We need to rediscover the ‘soft landing’ that is the pleasure of living a simple, inexpensive, but highly satisfying life of our own. We have everything we need for that – it’s just a matter of overcoming guilt, overcoming fear, and letting go …