To All Customers, Supporters, and Friends of the Pantry in 2012:

Thank you, thank you so much for this fabulous past year!

Granted, you saw the last newsletter in February, and here we are on New Year’s Eve – time sure flies… So what on earth have I been up to? Well, here’s a long overdue update:

Besides filling orders as fast as I could, while also answering countless questions, telling everybody and their dog about organic gardening, and taking on the odd landscape design, I have been teaching part time for Gaia College; and in what spare time there was, I gave in to the urge to tend to my own garden – or what the chickens had left of it. Realization Of The Year: You can have a nice garden. You can have chickens. But you cannot have both… unless they are carefully separated in both space and time!

Fortunately for all of us, Pantry founder and good friend Phil has agreed to contribute regular newsletter content from now on (and we’ll also make the format a little nicer to look at). This means I can keep fine tuning the garden-chicken balance – and you won’t have to wait another ten months for the next issue.

In other news, while the Compost Tea Brewing Manual is sadly out of print, Phil’s fabulous book “Building Soils Naturally”, first published as an e-book, is now available on paper through the Pantry. If you enjoy Phil’s clear and accessible writing style, this one’s for you – great winter bedtime reading, and the stuff for dreaming of spring!

In order to simplify my product line, I have removed non-organic molasses from the virtual shelves – this is the Organic Gardener’s Pantry, after all. After much deliberation I have also discontinued the Herbal Probiotic Drink. This was not a decision made lightly, but I would like to keep the focus on gardening.

To that end I have added an exciting new vortex compost tea brewer, developed by local BC tea expert Tim Wilson… check it out! A couple other new products will be launched this coming spring – we’ll keep you posted.

A word about prices and rates; I am happy to announce that most products will see no or low price increases next year; where they do increase, it will be mostly due to rising import and transportation costs. Overall, with their high quality and efficient concentration, the Pantry’s organic gardening products will stay well worth it!

Is that it? Almost. Please note that the Pantry will be closed from January 5th through 20th, 2013. We will start shipping orders again on Monday January 21st.

Thank you again!
Happy New Year and a fruitful, abundant, fulfilling new season to you all!