Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

Well, they used to order a lot normally. But West Cork is not an easy place to do business or stay in business.

Let me tell you a joke to illustrate that.

Customers in a sea food restaurant are taking notice that in the life lobster tank one lobster is just about succeeding in climbing out of the tank. They alert the waiter.

And the waiter replies: "Don't worry these are Cork lobsters and the others will pull him down again."

 

You build up a successful business and within a month people will notice and start up exactly the same business. In a short while nobody will be making a profit any longer and all will stop but not before the original success business has gone down as well.

 

A few weeks after my lettuce delivery I was told the restaurant had now three other suppliers much nearer by. What they still wanted from me were the specialties that were immensely labor intensive and that they had been getting dirt cheap as part of the total delivery.

Thinking for instance of radish seed pods from the Munchen Bier radish specially grown for the seed pods. Or Chinese artichokes. Both crops take a lot of work to get a few Lbs together. And of course they only wanted to pay the old price for these.

End of story for me.

 

john

Hi John

 

That's pretty horrific, and the loss on the lettuce repellent  as well.  I drive about for my business and I would have made for a minimum order, enough to make the trip worth my while or at least a surcharge for the hot shot delivery.  That one restaurant must normally order a pretty penny's worth for you to out of your way like that.

 

Yours, Pego

 

"A few years ago an organic seller was taken to court
because a customer found a caterpillar in his produce and he was fined
around $20,000 for that in compensation.
Also, I used to have a vegetable round and I would get a call at night to
immediately deliver 4 heads of lettuce (and nothing else) to a restaurant in
Goleen which is almost an hours drive. Petrol costs over $10 per gallon
here. And I got something like 25 cent per head for the lettuce.
So at the moment we just grow for the extended family and anything left over
goes to our animals.

Just to let you know you are lucky.
john

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