Snippets of Apley news

Big Little Things, first of the Christmas stock

Bread & butter pudding made from croissants & Apley cheesecake – both delicious !

Apley Estate brace of partridge, processed on the Estate & packed here with sage leaves

Big Little Things, the florist & gift shop at Apley Farm Shop, have got some lovely Christmas presents in stock already.

The whirring noise has begun coming from the Apley Estate game room again. It’s that time of year when the birds are processed, sometimes late on cold, dark, wet evenings, so they’re delivered as fresh as possible to Apley Farm Shop.

Whilst we’ve been having an incredibly busy Spookley Pumpkin Festival week, our chef made this delicious bread (but actually croissant) & butter pudding & cheesecake for customers in the Creamery Cafe. As it was so mild & the Creamery Cafe has been so busy, we had a Spookley barbecue today in the courtyard.

Bob the Butcher is getting ready for National Sausage Week next week. He’s making Apley Catherine Wheels & even popping candy sausages for bonfire night. I can’t wait to try those ! He’s sold his first few meat boxes for which I’m sourcing the packaging & best courier services.

I caught up with Deli Donna on our Delicatessen counter who showed me how she made truffled infused brie today, as a trial run for Christmas. Several customers are buying whole Godminster cheeses, 2kg each, so she’s ordered 20 of those ready for Novemeber. She’s visiting Martin Moyden’s creamery, which involves watching the cows being milked at 5h30 ! She’s attending a few wedding fairs with the Apley wedding cheese cakes. I’ll confirm dates asap.

Another reason to appreciate our local town of Shifnal is that it has an amazing Google partner called Ascendancy Internet Marketing. At the start of the week, Natasha & I had 3 hrs of Google Analytics training there which has already been so helpful in understanding our website traffic.

Gavin & I enjoyed meeting the owner & manager of another Shropshire farm shop (Moor Farm Shop) this afternoon. Being sufficiently distant from each other, we pose almost no competition to one another & can therefore enjoyed sharing information & details which we hope will be useful to them.