I made this Lemon curd yesterday.
Very, very tasty lovely lemon curd made in my kitchen 
It was easy and fun to make and it tastes great – much better than the stuff you buy in the shops. I also make jam and pickles and I know lots of other people do as well. When you do this you usually end up with more than you need so I have a plan……..
Later in the year – around October time to allow for harvest times and chance to make some stock – we could hold Pickles and preserves sale, or even better a BCT mini farmers market. Not sure on the venue yet, although I have a few ideas, and we could even have an online section so people could order and have some things posted to them.
If we had homemade bread and cakes as well and maybe even fresh laid eggs etc it could really become a mini BCT farmers market – obviously if we do an “online bit” we would have to select certain items only to be sent via the post as some things may be difficult – not sure how well a lemon meringue pie would travel!
To make this work I would need people to donate things they had made – jars of picked onions, Strawberry jam, maybe you have chickens so could let us have some eggs or you do local farmers markets already selling cheese and could let us have some to sell….. I would also need people to run the stalls on the day….. help set up…. promote the event …..
It would look great if we used the same jars for jams and pickles made by several people and the same BCT branded label. The label could be put onto all the items sold to say “sold to support the work of BCT.” There are lots of ideas like this we could use on the day to make it look really good for the people coming to shop.
This is how most ideas for fund raising events start – I jot down some bits and pieces of an idea – it grows and then you end up with an event like our recent Rescue Dog Weekend which made a profit of over £400 and resulted in some great PR and raised awareness of our work at Border Collie Trust.
If you think this is an event you could help with – perhaps by simply donating a single jar of your homemade jam or by spending the whole day before baking fruit cakes, or dog biscuits (says Stan with an excited glint in his eye) and donating them – let me know what you can do to assist and I’ll be in touch closer to the time – all offers of help gratefully received no matter how small J
One other thing you could do that would help is let me know would you come and shop either online or by coming to the sale/market? Having the reassurance that people think an idea will work and that they would be likely to shop it is great for those working to organise it – anyone who was with us to help on the first day of Rescue Pet Weekend will tell you that I arrived looking very sleepy, having had very little rest the night before as I had dreamt that not one single person turned up! Currently our Easter Auction is going very well and looks set to raise a lot of money but before it started I was getting worried about where I was going to store all the items we couldn’t sell! It turns out there won’t be left over items and my worries were just me being silly but advance reassurance is always welcome!
Please do nip over to our Easter Auction on Ebay and see what great bargains we have there. I’d like to say a massive thank you to the people donated all the lots and all those who are working hard promoting this on twitter and face book, in pet shops and vets and even in the pub! Without you it would not be working – keep it up we have a few days left to get those bids in and up as high as we can. If you have not looked already please do visit the auction at http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/bctgb_fundraiser/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=&_trksid=p2050430
Happy Easter Shopping xxx
