Ding dong merrily on high! Once again we are offering you free hot drinks this December to provide some comfort and cheer this gloomy winter. In return, if you felt like giving a donation to our fund for village groups that would be very welcome. Or why not buy some of our raffle tickets in December and you will have a chance to win £50 or £25 to spend in the shop. This year, all profits from our weekly raffle and all last year’s hot drinks donations went to the Friends of Payhembury School who have been prevented from doing most of their normal fundraising this year. Thank you for helping us to support them.
I don’t think anyone will want to travel to crowded high streets to do Christmas shopping 
this year even if we’re allowed to, so we have tried to make sure we have a good selection of gifts for you to choose from. As well as prettily packaged chocolates, biscuits and sweets, we also have wine and spirits, and you could easily make up a small Christmas hamper for someone, including some of our large range of locally made Daisyland and Ottervale chutneys, pickles, jams and jellies or the Miles Tea special Christmas ground coffee and hot chocolate gift sets.
For other ideas we have Village Scents wax melts which will fill your house with a wonderful fragrance, and Halina’s Herbs luscious skin creams, both of which are made just a short distance from the shop. Accompanied by one of Lucy Tweedie’s ‘From Devon With Love’ cards they will make the perfect gift.
Once again, we are selling free range turkeys and geese from Orchard Farm near Crediton. These are always extremely popular and are very competitively priced. Please order by 14th December, by which time we will know how many people we are allowed to have at home this Christmas (that’s a sentence I never dreamed I would be writing). Whole birds, half turkeys and breast joints are available and all the
details can be found in the shop or on the village notice board. We can also take orders for fruit and vegetables, milk and cream and for local meat including bacon, and sausagemeat for stuffing and sausages from K and M butchers. 
We hope by ordering from us you will be able to save yourselves from extra trips to the supermarket at busy times.
Finally, we have one more new local product in our freezer this month. You may think December is an odd time to be promoting ice cream but Baboo gelato is no ordinary ice cream, it is made near Bridport from local organic milk with fresh natural flavourings using locally grown fruit where possible. At our last committee meeting before the lockdown we had the onerous task of tasting all the many varieties (well someone has to do it!) and we unanimously 
decided that the velvety texture and intense flavours were a taste sensation worthy of their titles of Best British Speciality at the Great British Food awards 2020 and Champion Ice Cream at the Taste of the West awards 2020.
We wish all our customers, volunteers and suppliers a happy and healthy Christmas.
Mary Whiting
