You never can tell what the weather is going to be like at this time of year. It can be wet. It can be dry. It can be snowy. Looking back over pictures I’ve taken in January over the last few years, it looks like we’ve had all types of weather. Lambs in the fields. Snow on the tops. Dark clouds. Fog. You name it. We’ve had it.

When you’re sitting out on a market stall, the weather becomes important. The other week in Workington, it barely got above zero degrees all day. Thankfully, I’d prepared well. I was wearing thermals, two pairs of socks, two T-shirts, a fleece and two coats. I was still cold by the time the afternoon came around. I guess it’s one of those things you have to put up with when you decide to sell your product at an outdoor market.

Wednesdays in Workington are building nicely for us. We have a few regular customers who come along every week. As the year warms up, we’re confident we’ll be selling more and more. We also have a few new wholesale contacts in Workington too. Hopefully they’ll come on board over the next few weeks.

Keswick Market started again this week. It’s a lot busier than Workington but they tend to close down on Thursdays through January. It’ll be nice to meet up with all the other stallholders we haven’t see for a while. There are a group of food stalls down the bottom end and we all look out for one another. One stall sells olives, another is a butcher’s and another sells preserves. Lakeland Mues has a stall next to mine and Fyne Fish is just behind.

I’ve said before that we’ve gone about this whole market thing the wrong way. If we had started off as a small bakery, we would have made the local markets a priority. Yet because we started off as a coffee shop that sold bread, it’s only in the last year that we’ve taken markets seriously. Keswick on a Thursday. Workington on a Wednesday. We’re hoping to appear at the Saturday Market in Workington too. It all helps with the sales and getting our name out there.

Local markets are important. They’re good to support. A market helps make the shopping experience in a town a little more diverse. And we love meeting new people and hoping they’ll be customers for years to come.