2007 has been a very busy season for my staff and me, with lots of new things being tried, and gathering ideas for the future. If you have been, and watched our new woodland owl and hawk display, you should have walked past the new kiosk; we opened this just before the summer holidays. Selling ice creams, cold drinks, chocolate bars etc, it proved to be a great success. Now that we are going to be open in the winter on weekends, buy a hot chocolate from the kiosk to keep you warm while you sit and watch the demonstrations!

This year we have done quite a few corporate events, which has meant putting together a variety of different menus, varying from fairly basic finger buffets to quite elaborate fork buffets; all these were done with the help of my consultant Monica De Salis. Festo, one of our sponsors, have been my guinea pigs this season - they have held 10 corporate days here, giving me lots of opportunity to test the menus and myself!

As our study centre has been beautifully converted upstairs to hold these ever growing corporate days, there has also been a lot of interest in hiring the venue for other occasions, such as christenings, evening birthday parties and wedding receptions. One of our future plans is to have a kitchen servery fitted; so instead of having to transport all the food over from Duffy’s coffee shop when it is ready, we will be able to do basic preparation and final touches as well as food storage. There will also be toilets and a disabled lift installed within the building.

Now that the season is winding down I am really looking forward to the winter weekends. I will be using the weekdays for all the boring cleaning chores, and Fridays to prepare for our hopefully busy weekends. I am introducing roast dinners on Sundays, which hopefully will be popular. I will still be running our normal menu but just taking off some of the summer lunches, ploughman’s for example.

Well, hopefully I will see you all on our winter weekends!

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