It is digusting weather outside, so I am happy to be inside adding new products to the website, even if it is the weekend. At this time of year I seem to work every spare hour there is - thank goodness I have an understanding husband!

Harry (age 2) is watching a Tractor Ted DVD on another computer in the office. He has watched it so many times he is telling me what they are going to say next - and he is word perfect!

Oliver and his friend are playing with lego, between whizzing in and out on ride-on motorbike!

The children have been testing some new DVDs which are coming very soon - Emily (8) and Oliver (6) both love them - more to be revealed soon!

I am just adding a new Bruder horse shelter and fencing to the website. These have been promised since the summer, so we are delighted that they have finally turned up in time for Christmas. I think they will be an even bigger seller than the new Breyer Horse Cruiser, which is galloping out the door.

Right, back to work.....

Julia

I have just received a present from a grateful customer! A lovely lady needed some model dogs and ducks for a 50th birthday cake she was making at very short notice. We managed to dodge the postal strike and get them to her in the nick of time. She sent me a picture of the cake, which is fantastic - unfortunately it isn't clear enough to put on the web, or I would show you.

I do however, have an amazing picture of a cake that a customer decorated last year (see above), using a couple of our model horses. Doesn't it look amazing!

Taking of being creative, my middle child after 10 days of half-term decided, at bedtime the night before he was due back at school, to announce that he had to make a robot for the next morning. So at 7 o'clock last night we were cutting and sticking, to make a cardboard work of art.... so much for an early night before they go back to school.

Still, he is now back at school (phew!). I have a sick child at home and a toddler running around but it is still a lot quieter than it has been for the past 2 weeks.

Julia

We were runner up in the Somerset New Business of the Year award, 3rd place in fact! First place next year.....

Meanwhile, we are currently trying to win a Wildcard place in the final of The Pitch 2009. Earlier this year, we won a place in the regional final and had to pitch to a panel of judges, just like in Dragons Den. We were pipped to the post by a energy gum company, but still have a chance to get to the final with your vote! Go to www.thepitch2009/videos-2009.html, click on South West and select Farm Toys Online (second from bottom), then rate it 5 stars!! You get a free trial with LoveFilm and 2 cinema tickets for your efforts. Deadline is 5pm 2nd November.

Meanwhile we really are doing some work here. Have you seen our new look website? If not check it out at http://www.farmtoysonline.co.uk/.

There are still more products being put on the site too, such as these cute little money boxes, great stocking fillers.

Somerset Business Awards

FarmToysOnline.co.uk has been shortlisted for the Somerset Business Awards! We are all chuffed to bits. We are getting dolled up in our glad rags and off to the awards ceremony tonight. My daughter is very jealous as Ian and Laura from our local radio station, Heart FM, will be there.

Meanwhile, back in the office, we are busy trying to get all our new Christmas stock onto the website. We have a limited amount of ride-on JCB's with front loaders and back excavators, which I think will rush out the door.

We are now stocking Breyer horses, which are American horses and their riders, with all the bits and pieces that go with it. Within 2 days of putting the Horse Cruiser on the web we had sold out! It is a fab horse box come combi-van, so horses and riders can go camping together. Don't worry there are more on the way!

Well, it is half-term, and my daughters godmother has just turned up! We are off to Lyme Regis for the day for sand, fossils and fish-and-chips.....

Fame is going to my head....

I felt like a film star yesterday! A camera crew (well a cameraman and a producer) came to visit us at FarmToysOnline.co.uk in order to film us for a Business Link promotion for successful internet businesses. How's that for an accolade! We spent the day mainly filming outside in the fields and garden and fortunately the weather stayed fine.

Elsa the dog, joined in, in fact he is probaly the star of the show. And filming had to stop when I needed to pick Harry up from pre-school (only 10 minutes late). Luckily he fell asleep on the way home, well playing with toys and paints is very tiring, which meant we could finish filming in peace.

I am just completing our latest newsletter, which should be popping into your inboxes over the next few days - if you haven't signed up yet click here and you can sign up now if you like. We will be sending you offers and letting you know about the new stock we will be getting in over the coming weeks.

Once that is done, I am off to Julip Horses to see the jumps they have been designing, to go with their gorgeous horses. We should be able to stock them very soon. Watch this space!

Julia

Phew, the children are back at school! As much as I love having them at home it's great when they go back. I am one of those that you either call a Have-it-all mum (own business / children / live in the country) or a Do-it-all mum (continually juggling business / children / husband / home and not necessarily getting it all right!).

Either way, the summer holidays were lovely and not nearly long enough. There was a constant stream of children through our kitchen throughout the holidays, some I recognised, some I didn't. The pigs grew fatter, the lambs bigger and the chickens kept producing gorgeous big, brown eggs for our breakfast. And the puppy kept chewing the children's toys, my bicycle, the outside table, in fact anything and everything.

However we were still very busy in the office. You might have seen us in the Daily Express and Practical Parenting, amongst others, who both loved our children's gardening things. We are currently redesigning a new logo and tweaking our website (all will be revealed in due course). And we have been sourcing some great new products for the autumn, which we will let you know about as we get them onto the website.

Off to prepare for my meeting with the designers tomorrow.

Julia

Holidays and clocks

Oh what lovely weather! At least there are some who are enjoying it - the pigs! Sausage and Bacon are having a lovely time in the mud. Their field has all been ploughed up in their quest for roots and grubs and with all the rain has become a complete mud bath. They have really grown - as soon as the weather improves I will take some more photos of them.

Some people who have been enjoying the summer holidays are Thomas and Oliver. Here is a picture of them having a great day out at The Alnwick Garden, in Northumberland, well worth a visit, especially if you have kids, I am told.

Meanwhile, I am tucked up in the nice warm office putting some great new tractor clock, digger clock and horse clocks on the website, whilst supervising cake making the my 6-year old son. They are gorgeous (the clocks, not the cakes), I have already given some as presents for children.

Enjoy the holidays!

Julia

We are all very excited here in the Farm Toys office - after being filmed for The Pitch last month, I was on BBC Somerset radio last week, I will be in Hello magazine in no time!!!

We have also been talking to Luke Joyce, age 3, from Lancashire, who was the lucky winner of our ride-on tractor competition. Well actually we have been talking to his mum. They decided he would like one of our new excavators, ideal for the sandpit or even taking to the beach, but then went for a last minute change and decided on a John Deere Pedal Tractor & Trailer.

We have a new competition this month to win a Wheelie Suit Case - either a horse one or one with tractors and diggers on. Go to www.farmtoysonline.co.uk/competition to enter.

Meanwhile out in the fields the sheep have finally been shorn (or is it sheared?). I am sure it was a welcome relief, with last week's weather, but now that the rain has set in I am not so sure!

Fox Attack!!

The fox has eaten 2 of our chickens! Well, actually she got 1 and she injured another so that it died of its injuries. They were shut in their house at night but she managed to lift the sliding door up enough to get her nose in. It's lucky she didn't get right into the house or she would have killed them all. Another 1 had a bit gouged out of her neck and a fourth had a bit of her wing attacked, but they seem to be recovering well. No eggs for a while, I imagine, until they get over the shock.

I say "she" for the fox as I assume it is the mother of the cubs we hear making a racket in the field behind. I have 2 sets of friends who have lost all their chickens lately, including the next door neighbour, and not through lack of attention - they really are crafty things these foxes.

On a brighter note, Bacon & Sausage, the pigs, are loving the very wet weather we have been having today. It has made their field into a mud bath - and they are wallowing in it!

Here in the office we felt very important when a newspaper asked for some pictures of children on tractors. The ones we had weren't suitable - but of course they needed them now! Our ride-on tractors (apart from the youngest son's) are boxed, and generally need to have wheels and steering wheels attached, so we couldn't produce any immediately. A pop next door to borrow a John Deere pedal tractor resolved that one. Next problem - children! All but my smallest were at school, so a visit to another neighbour was called for. Unfortunately, they were on their way out - and one had chicken pox, which doesn't look great on camera. Eventually, I got some great pics of the youngest and middle (well, I might be slightly biased), let's hope they were in time for the article.

Julia
Farm Toys Online

Here's a picture of me pitching at The Pitch 2009. What they don't mention is that I dropped the basket of toys afterwards - perhaps that's on the video to be revealed later.

Julia

It has all been very tense here at Farm Toys Online, as we were shortlisted for the regional final of The Pitch 2009!! It's a bit like a Dragon's Den and I had to stand up in front of 5 judges (plus the cameras and press) and say why we should win the £50,000 worth of prizes! There were only 6 of us from the South West who got through and we were the only company from Somerset! It will all be on YouTube in July, so you will be able to laugh yourself silly then.

Being in the big city (well Bristol) for the day I thought it would be lovely to be back in that working environment.... but when I went out to feed the pigs and chickens before work this morning, and sneaked out for a walk through the rape fields, which are in beautiful yellow flower, at lunchtime I thought how ridiculous, this is the best working environment ever! Cities are great to visit but it's lovely to come home.

Julia

Great Farm Days Out With The Kids This Weekend

Are you wondering what to do with your children this weekend? We have come across some great ideas to get out into the country:

Firstly, for those of you who live in the south, Tractor Ted is having a Farm Show at Longleat in Wiltshire on both Saturday and Sunday (6th & 7th June). Not only can you meet Tractor Ted (isn't it every young boys dream?) but there are also farm animals, big machinery displays, falconry, duck herding, sheep shearing, stalls to visit...... and of course all the normal things to do at Longleat, like the safari park, train, boat ride and adventure playground, amongst other things!

The best thing is, we have some discount vouchers on offer. If you just want to go to the Tractor Ted event and visit the grounds it is only £2 per adult and £1 per child with our discount vouchers. We also have a £4 discount voucher off a Longleat passport, which entitles you to visit the safari park and all the other attractions.. but you don't have to visit it all in one day. The passport is valid for the season, each attraction is only valid once but you go back any time before the end of the season to visit the attractions previously missed. (See the voucher or Longleat website for all the details).

For those of you living further afield it is Open Farm Sunday, this weekend too. All sorts of farms around the country are open to the public, some are open that don't normally open to the public, others are putting on special events. Some of the events are free. Click here to find a farm near you.

The Pigs Have Arrived!

Last weekend saw the long awaited arrival of Bacon and Sausage (the children named them, not me, honest!). Bacon is a Gloucester Old Spot pig and Sausage a Saddleback. Sausage is (almost) famous - his mother was one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall pigs that starred in his River Cottage programme on Channel 4 in his Bristol community project.

There were Peep Wars between the pigs and the sheep when Sausage & Bacon arrived, as our woolly friends thought it rather unfair that the pigs should get waitress service, when they had to use the self-service system. I thought they were going to jump over the rather low electric fencing and steal all the pigs food, but they bottled at the last minute. Now they just bleat and follow us down the field looking very hopeful every time we feed the pigs.

Talking of sausages and bacon, we don't sell any! But I know a really great farm shop that sells it online aptly named Pink Pig Farm. It is all homegrown, GM free, free-range pork from happy pigs!

We do have lots of piggy presents though - my favourite is a Pig Cuckoo Clock. A pig pops out every hour and oinks. The clever thing is when it goes dark, he goes quiet, so doesn't keep you awake all night. If you look at the product page on our website make sure you scroll to the bottom of the information and you can hear the noise he makes.

Must go, time to feed the pigs.

Julia

Our First Blog!

Welcome to our very first Farm Toys Online blog! My name is Julia and for those who don't know us, we have a website http://www.farmtoysonline.co.uk/ which specialises in fun farm toys for children - so lots of tractors, horse things and other funky animal stuff.

Here at Farm Toys we have a fantastic view from our office over the Somerset countryside. We share it with 3 sheep and our very first 2 lambs ever, Rosie and Charlie; 6 chickens, which are laying an egg each every day (once you have tried home-grown eggs you will never eat a supermarket one again!) and Elsa, the rescue puppy. Elsa is 6 months old and into chewing everything! Doesn't she look angelic?

We are very excited about the imminent arrival of 2 piglets, already labelled Bacon and Sausage by the children. Hopefully they will get them this weekend.

Our chief buyers and testers are:

Emily, age 8, who specialises in horse stuff, although she is quite keen on the children's gardening stuff too, having just planted her own bit of flowerbed in our jungle. She is currently road-testing a new pair of supersoft, organic Little Munchkin Pony Pyjamas.

Oliver, age 6, who is great at choosing tractors and other "big boy" things. The only problem is if he sees a brochure he tends to tick everything!

Harry, age 2, is tractor and digger mad, which is just as well, as he can't say many other distinguishable words. He is chief tester for our Little Ride-on Tractors and our Bruder Tractors, which he loves! He can't quite understand why he isn't allowed to help himself to any of our products, whenever he likes. He is very keen to road test one of our sandpit wheelbarrows but so far only managed to make it to the office door before being rumbled.

So do visit our website and I will be returning regularly to update you on exciting goings on at Farm Toys Online - and of course on the progress of Bacon and Sausage.... watch this space!