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chez
Joined: 13 Aug 2006 Posts: 35935 Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset
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Posted: Fri Mar 04, 16 8:39 pm Post subject: Considering giving up the market. Input please. |
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We're really struggling with doing the market every Friday, even with NMG here helping us. I can't drive, or be on my own with the kids, or do anything active, in case I end up fitting like a kipper. I've got an ATOS assessment on Monday as I've finally caved and have applied for PIP. Nenna's steadily deteriorating - she's been in hospital with pneumonia this week and has come home today, for those if you not in the Facebook loop. She needs a lot more day to day care, physio, etc.
The market takes up 8 hours on a Friday and about 4 on a Thursday, preparing. We are lucky if we make £60 profit a week. Annual turnover is about £12,000.
However, there are other, difficult to quantify, benefits - advertising for courses and pullets, social interaction with people who are taller than four feet high, helping my Ma by taking flowers and plants to sell for her.
In addition, the hours and the turnover give us gravitas for Working Tax Credits. WTC bring in £53 a week. If we ditch the market, we may lose some, if not all, of that - our hours will drop below the threshold.
It is possible that if I am reclassified as having a disability, we may need fewer hours to maintain a claim. I claim Carers' Allowance for Nen. I am not sure if I can still claim that if I am 'disabled'.
I need
1. Sensible generic advice about shedding yet more stuff we are not coping with - you don't need to persuade me much, because all three adults in the house would like to let it go - and
2. Practical knowledge on how to maximuse our benefits from someone who knows the system, with particular reference to smallholding, life limited children with one disabled parent, and just effing everything financial, really, because my head is at the point of melting.
It's not that I want to stop doing this. But the rubbish conversation I had yesterday telling Leo about the likely progression of Nenna's condition ended with the promise that we are going to make every day bloody count, and we can't do that if we are fraying at the edges. |
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 46052 Location: yes
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wellington womble
Joined: 08 Nov 2004 Posts: 15051 Location: East Midlands
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chez
Joined: 13 Aug 2006 Posts: 35935 Location: The Hive of the Uberbee, Quantock Hills, Somerset
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Posted: Wed Mar 09, 16 10:40 am Post subject: |
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In no particular order:
- We can't afford to pay anyone properly to do it, we'd be in the red.
- I buy in nearly all the eggs for it currently - from a friend who's local, with a small commercial free range business. The cost per egg is the same as producing them myself, but of course there is a load less work. The egg quality is not as good as it would be if I did it myself - yolk colour is not nearly so rich - and the colours of the eggs are just 'ordinary', but as a stand-in whilst we plod along doing everything else, it's okay. The customers understand what's happening and the small number of my own 'rare breed' eggs still sell at a premium.
- No space for another stallholder to take the eggs on. Stalls are quite small and there's quite a lot of volume of eggs
- I am not involved at all in a practical sense, as I can't drive at the moment and if I went as a side-kick I'd end up getting too tired and fitting, which would be overdramatic and tedious for everyone.
What we have decided that NMG is going to pack the van on a Thursday afternoon. She will be a bit more together about it than Arvo, who will then have that time free. He is then going to get up and do the actual 'driving there and selling eggs' part of it on the Friday, then NMG is going to unpack when he gets home, so she knows where it all is for next week. Ma is going to see about having Nenna occasionally on a Thursday night, so we get a good night's sleep the night before, although this does depend on her health.
I will stay at home and languish like a Victorian Maiden, in a lace cap.
We're going to give it a few weeks and see how that works out, then reassess at Easter-time.
We're also thinking of other things we can do to bring people to the stall - I bought a dozen new pullets before Christmas that should have been coming in to lay now, with different colour eggs; but someone broke in to the house on Ma's holding and pinched them two days before Christmas and I haven't had the heart - or the cash - to replace them. I'm revisting this and ideas like it. |
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dpack
Joined: 02 Jul 2005 Posts: 46052 Location: yes
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sean Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 28 Oct 2004 Posts: 42218 Location: North Devon
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