legal vehicles and lots of hope

I am doing really badly and then today I had an order from someone for over £200 ( wholesale so not really that much but much better than I have been doing recently). Its looking good. Also a publisher has offered me free advertising in a vegan trade mag which I cannot afford to pay for which is totally unexpected and very generous of them. Maybe all this small amount of good luck is going to make it work after all. I managed to MOT the van and pay for the tax ( today) and I did ok at Brum vegan fair which was brilliant fun as expected. Sadly I will stil be struggling to pay for Bristol Eco-fair but who knows maybe it will all just fall into place. The tax man will want the tax return soon too so I had better get round to doing the books up to date in the next week. I have had to buy some new candle supplies which is a pain to fullfill the new order - its good to get it tho dont get me wrong but its for 16 candles so I have to make more and when weighing available candle wax I do not expect to have enough. Still with luck there will be other candle orders so the money wont be tied up too long. Then this weekend we are back at Wellesbourne market - in the rain by the looks of things and there is a new ( for us!) market in Sherwood forest which we are going to try. The woman I spoke to on the phone about it seemed really nice and not at all like the usual Toby( market manager) so I am hopeful this may be a good one. I should be back on Rugby craft market in May too so not too long to survive. This so they say is the year that decides if you have infact got a viable business. Most companies go under in the next few months timewise. I just hope I manage to make it work. This is real make your dream come true thing for me and I am tryng everything now that I can think of. There is no point doing the tiny local markets tho- tempted as I am since I hate sitting round waiting for it to work but I just lost money last year doing them. WE are still seriously financially knackered but maybe at the end of April we will be getting there again. We managed to spend just £60 on food last month ( we do have loads of dried pulses in stock) and I am off to pick some nettles now to make nettle soup from the recipe emailed to me by the Vegan familly house
http://www.veganfamily.co.uk/soups.html
worth trying I think. Also the Redditch veggies and vegans have a talk on soon which sounds really interesting on picking your own wild foods as follows:
Wild food for free talk & demonstration, On Wednesday 7 April, a talk in Redditch offers the opportunity to explore nature's free wild food larder. You can pick up lots of ideas for foraging, cooking and feasting on the wild plant food that is freely available to us all. The talk will be given by Mary Green, a wildlife writer from Alvechurch and is hosted by the Redditch Vegetarian and Vegan Society(RVV).
Using freshly picked samples from the local area, Mary will show us what plants are edible, where to look for them, how to safely identify them and how to prepare them. She'll even tell us how to cook wild foods, so you'll have all the info you need to make the transition from pathway to plate! The meeting will take place from 7.30pm at St Georges Community Hall, St Georges Road, Redditch. Admission is free, all are welcome.
As it happens I currently have no idea where St Georges Hall is but I am intending to try and go to this since it sounds just the type of talk I will like. Also all the other talks of this type I have seen advertised include killing and gutting animals and personally being veggie this really does not appeal so I never go but I do want to know more about wild foods so this could be really good. Its quite a long way from me but I will see if I can make it.

nominated for Eco-vaggie awards 2010

Its been too long since I wrote anything for the blog so sorry for that if there are any readers left out there after this extreme slackness. I have been really busy though. This weekend we are at Brighton Eco-veggie fayre and I could not believe when I saw it but Brackencraft has been nominated for the Eco-veggie awards. When you see who else has been nominated we have about zero chances of getting anywhere but just to be nominated is amazing. And in the second year of trading too so very promising really. I was so excited when i saw it. No idea who nominated us or how many people but thank you so much if it was you. I was starting to be really worried how I am going to mamange to pay for everything - MOT for van, safety assessments for new products which perhaps I should not have done but I will not do any more for a few years after these I think - tho already have 2 new things in experimental stages! still may just keep them for friends! and also I now have to make a real living since all savings have run out. Infact they ran out a few weeks ago now and its surprising how little you really need to get by on but life right now is hard not fun. So getting nominated for anything would be pretty fantastic but the fact I have been trading such a short time it is just like a dream. How it has happened I really do not know. I need to find out who choses and how many votes are needed etc but either way its brilliant for the business since if nothing else its publicicity and rght now I cannot afford to advertise at all. The 2 adverts I went with were a waste of money - one just gets me invites to school and brownies events which is very nice and they tend to be enjoyable to do, but small things like this are not going to make me a living. The other - Midlands green pages is proving to be a complete waste of money. Well both were really. I need to put an ad in Off the hoof I think but have no money right now to do this. Its a catch 22 situation so getting listed in something like the Eco-veggie awards and for my soap!! is brilliant since if nothing else sme folks will read about me/brackencraft. Well spent yesterday getting a local lady to look after the chickens when I am away and tomorrow poor dogs go in kennels - hopefully they will behave themselves! And its just a lonely cockateil in the house poor girl till sunday midday. I am worried about the chickens to since I think we have a Rat!. No definite evidence other than a tunnel that keeps appearing in their run but I think its bigger than a mouse hole so I have ordered a humane rat trap off the internet. I actually asked the local garden centre if they sell them or can get them intending to go to the local business and support local trade etc. I got a lecture on how it was wrong to release rat back into the fields and not fair on farmers! As if there are no rats there already. Its not like I intend to release it into a barn or something. Finally when explaining to nasty woman behind counter that I do not want to kill it since had 2 lovely pet rats not so long ago and "there but for the will of god go I" etc ( not that I am at all religious but it seems this particular expression does work on church types when talking about the murder of such creatures as rats.) Anyway I may just have to boycott that garden centre from now on. They cost more than places like Homebase and B&Q and if they insist on being so nasty then whats the point of supporting them - after all this rat trap has cost me £23 on the internet with shipping so they could probably have charged me £25 for it and made and kepts their nasty gobs shut. Besides surely if you want customers you should keep your stupid out of date oppinion to yourself and if they dont its fair they lose me as a customer. Since they are closer than anywhere else - just about any shop infact- I have been a reasonably regular customer despite things like compost being a fraction if the price at big stores like Wickes which is 10 miles away but this is unreasonable and she was quite nasty and very disaproving and I reckon from now on I shall save money and use slightly more fuel but still save overall and buy from the big stores where infact they will probably also stock humane rat traps. Yes I may have to resort to poison but if at all possible I want to attempt to release the unfortunate animal into the wild - just well away from where we live and in the middle of some fields. Apparently if you release too close to home they will find their way back. I feel bad enough depriving the poor creature of its familly since there are probably quite a few of them and since it will probably never see its familly again once released and do not see that it will achieve a great deal to murder the poor animal just because it decided to make a meal out of the food my messy chickens throw all over the floor. And also I could end up poisoning wild birds, my dogs, moles etc if i use nasty murderous chemicals to kill it. And after all this ranting does this small creature have less right to life than anything else just because it happens to be a rat?