Granny Bakes

Just a quick check in, we have moved, space of our own after 5 months camping amid a mountain of boxes in hubby's folks spare rooms, busy trying to get all the boxes unpacked etc. No Internet till the phone company gets around to turning things on in a few weeks & barely a phone signal unless you go hunt around for one.
Trying hard not to let all this get on top of me again as I've just come through the worst 8 weeks ever with frequent IBS flare ups meaning my normally hard as nails imune system got kicked in the gutter & I wound up with whatever that tummy bug was that one of our teens managed to pick up at school, mum in law got it first & then it floored me.
One thing at a time, the end is in sight at last.

If anyone is after a sack of bread flour I'm aiming to be in the shop at some point between Thursday & "Saturday to start packing up and taking things apart, won't be in before as I've had a bit of a tummy upset & even though I'm not actually working with food & customers just now I'm still doing the obligitory 48hrs, it may or may not have been stress/IBS related so I'm not taking any risks.
If you want a sack kept for you then let me know.

How am I doing? Would it sound really bad if I said I was getting by on auto pilot? I'm that stressed about it all that I've had to kinda detach myself from the shop, it's so much work & godless long days that it took to get it all established that to watch it fall apart because we were never made aware of building works is pretty soul destroying.
Gota keep thinking forwards, we hope to move into a house soon & as soon as we've done that it's back to the paint brushes and ge...t the new Crovie based cake studio sorted out, I've a tastings day on the cards for the last week of November which will be the last one of the year,, empty the shop, sell what I don't need for cakes, pay off all the bills and keep on trucking. Wouldn't be able to do it without some awesome folk who have helped me hugely when things get stressy.
Anyhoo I'm not my usual fast response on messages at the moment, don't always have access to Internet so I do beg patience.
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Good morning, I'm going to be in the shop next week starting to get everything packed up & will have some surpless bits and pieces to sell if anyone is interested
16kg sacks of bread flour - light rye, dark rye, wholemeal all priced at £10 a bag. 4 bags of each available. It's all mungoswell farm flours so better quality than anything you can buy locally. I won't be making breads again in any quantity until spring.
There will be other bits & pieces which I'll list on here for 24hrs as I find them before they go on ebay.

I made a start at home today... 2 crates of apples now about to stock the freezer as ready to use apple sauce & ready to use pie/crumble filling.... Numerous crates to go & still chutneys, jams, jellies, juice & apple sponge to go.

This is a hard one to post as it contains a lot of very happy memories of someone we all miss so deeply, but it also gives a great insight into the real spirit of Fair Isle, together as a community that really valued its visitors, in this case Norwegian tall ship The Loyal, regular visitors to the island and much missed.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b0NBOBV57iI

Life on Fair Isle, for those of you who have messaged to ask.. Here it is in a nutshell, fog fog and more fog, hurricanes, sunsets, aching backs after days spent hand shearing sheep, spinning, knitting, cheffing at Fair Isle bird observatory, growing lots of veg, making Hay the old way as a community, boats, tourists from all over the world many of whom are now cherished friends (except that bunch from Iceland cos they are all bonkers 🤣) and neighbours who became family.

Lol 5yrs ago I made this for the harvest festival on Fair Isle and broke all the sugarcraft rules, weather was shit so the islands ferry hadn't run, sugar and flowerpaste stuck in the store at grutness so it was good old boiled fondant from a 1980"s recipe and the crapest flower paste formula that ever existed, nearly threw the whole lot out the window more than a few times.

One from a previous weekend, set up at Durn House in Portsoy, I hadn't been there in a longgg time & had totally forgotten what an intriguing and architecturally interesting building it was.
Excuse the wonky angle, after kneeling on the floor while taping the flowers together ones knees were protesting at lot about the whole standing upright thing & I was having a nightmare getting a photo without some serious shadows happening.

Quotes all done & emailed, if yours hasn't arrived let me know as the Internet took a funny spell in the afternoon here so there maybe one or two that didn't send even though it looks like they did.
Never seen fully lustred tiers so popular, pastel shades rocking 2019/2020 with blacks and bolds close behind, loving the variation.

Absolutely loved the finished look of this cake this weekend and the ballroom at Pittodrie House just looked stunning after the florist and decorators had finished. Managed to get it set up just before that relentless rain started & having kept an eye on the forecast I had worked each tier so that the oncoming humidity explosion wouldn't be a problem.
Thank you to everyone who messaged me yesterday having noticed I wasn't at our planned bridal fair, too much going on just now... with dad home from hospital, mam not doing so great, trying to get us moved before weather kicks in with an icy winter hand, planning out the new cake studio & 101 other things. I'll work on those quotes today and get them off in the afternoon.
November is going to be hectic to say the least but it'll be worth the long hard slog to keep us there and clear our heads and feet.
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This is a post that back in late April when the scaffolding first went up I dearly hoped I wouldn't have to write.
But alas, the decision made not to inform anyone of impending building site for 4 months has resulted in our once thriving wee establishment having to make the decision to close the shop door after our customers fell by over 80% and our waste bill hit the roof.
As many of our customers know I have worked relentlessly since May attempting to bring plans forward an...d send the bakery in a wholesale direction in order to try and retain what we worked long hard days to achieve since we opened, but alas the catastrophic effect these improvements had on our books meant that those companies who were once willing to financially support our growth into the wholesale market were no longer willing to do so when it became apparent how long said building site was to last and devistating effect it was having on our trade.
I have tried to keep things going in the hope of having been able to reopen by now, family has been covering the shop rent for me to try and help me get to the point where we have wholesale up and running and the shop reopened but alas without financial support of those who were keen to help us with growth I am not able to make the packaging improvements our wholesale interests require & neither are we able to financially keep things as they are for any longer.
For that reason I am taking a big step backwards, we need to get us as a family back into living in a house of our own as at the moment we are a family in deep need of being able to support each other, my parents need me a lot at the moment and theres a grandaughter we would dearly love to be able to spend some time with. Once we achieve that I will be continuing with the celebration cakes side of things and the shortbreads on a small local scale from home once we get everything set up and the required pass certificate and insurances place.
We aren't giving up totally and have hopes of being able to restart as bakery in the future but more carefully choosing both our location and landlord, this will let us clear our heads of invoices which have built up since we were forced to close the door, build up some reserves and go into things afresh learning from the mistakes we made. Hopefully by early spring next year we will be in a position to explore positive locations and begin again as an artisan bakery and wholesale shortbread company.
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Good Morning,
Getting back to normal now that Arianna is finally here, mum and babes now home and starting that road to recovery,
We're running to appointment only for the next week at least to give me a chance to finish getting sorted for upcoming bridal fairs and I've a fair amount of goings on happening with potential wholesale orders. .
... Pretty pic.. cake from a few weeks ago, yellow roses do make me smile with their cheerfulness.
Lots of people starting to ask about Christmas, I will do a post next week listing which gateaux etc will be available to book, there are no Christmas cakes left already, I baked 30, they are all booked but we do have space available for non fruit versions & we are taking bookings for over the Christmas and new year period.
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Granny is delighted to say that Arianna June Porter arrived yesterday afternoon via a very traumatic C section weighing in a 9lb 14oz. I'm still on restricted bakery duties for the next wee while as mum has a lot of recovering to do.

Just a quick check in, we're currently "floating" waiting for a phone call from Aberdeen maternity to say they have a space available for now overdue daughter to go in & be induced. Lovely weather for it too.

Just a quick one
The scaffolding has up and gone! Yes it's as much of a surprise to me as it was to a lot of folk. When are we reopening.. Not immediately, I nerd to take on a few part timers & I darent do that until I've secured a good few more retail customers for our shortbreads, without orders we don't have the cash flow needed to keep up with the stock reordering to keep the shop open. Hopefully I can reach that point in the next three to four weeks, I'm working like a trojan on steroids to get there & undo the damage this whole fiasco has cost us.

Good morning, automated posts R us at the moment, there is so much going on that my days are full of prep for everything being full steam ahead from October onwards.
The good news is that supposedly the scaffolding is coming down on the 17th, which is also the day I'm up at Inverness at a showcasing Scotland meet the buyer event & have a few very exciting meetings already organised, so I'm busy putting together a wee pitching visual presentation of our fabulous shortbreads an...d the quality ethos behind them.
In between all that I have 4 cakes, at lease 8 new display cakes to ready for bridal fayres and sales meetings with a multitude of deli shops/gift shops/niche grocery stores & cafes.
And... Theres shortbread packaging design to be seen too so we can go to presentation gift boxes on time for Christmas.
So while I work away like a trojan there will be the occasional pre loaded post happening.
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Headed down the road, absolutely pooped but with 9 new retail outlets & 3 Distilleries to bake samples for.