I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and I wish everyone a happy, healthy 2025. This past year seems to have gone so quickly in the shop. We have welcomed many new and old customers, and we seem to have an attraction for dogs who we also welcome. We now have regular dog visitors coming for treats and get through two packets of doggy treats a week! We love dogs and sometimes prefer them to people – they never let you down and always remain faithful.
Going back to my childhood, I had a black spaniel. We were inseparable and played for hours in the fields. I lived on a small farm and through the summer I would help out on local farms. I would take off my coat and leave it at the end of the field. My dog would lay on my coat guarding it. She once fell asleep on my coat and at the end of a hard day’s working the farmer came into the field and decided to bring me my coat. Big mistake – my dog attacked the farmer with great ferocity – he hurriedly withdrew, chased across the field by my beloved guard dog.
Those were such happy carefree days living and working on the farm. I was very lucky to have worked with the shire horses just before tractors took over the heavy work, they were such wonderful gentle giants. At 7 or 8 years old I could ride bareback on the horses out in the fields, and I was never in danger, they were so careful not to stand on my feet. I once took a shire horse to the blacksmith, all the way from Crossgates to Wike, a distance of about 5 miles. Coming back home with new shoes, it appeared that the horse took great pleasure in the noise created by its new footwear on the hard surface road.

We did not have a television in those days but got our pleasure from the countryside. There was one sacred pleasure and that was all the family listening to The Archers every evening on the wireless after our tea. My mum was a great cook and baked the most wonderful bread on a big Victorian black leaded oven. She would bake enormous meat and potato pies to feed all of us 7 kids, but you had to be quick, or my big brothers would eat the lot! Such happy days.
If you like to reminisce about the past, there are plenty of items in the shop to remind you! Please feel free to call in and look.
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