When you work on a farm and also have a bird food business, then it’s fair to say that ‘weights and measures’ are pretty-much second nature. So be it a one tonne crate of potatoes or 13kg sack of bird seed, we know what it looks like and how it’s best moved (the former with a forklift and the latter easily by hand).




But of course, there’s far less reason for most of our customers to be as familiar with different weights and what they look like as we are, which we were recently reminded of when a customer asked us just how big was a 13kg sack of sunflower hearts – a very reasonable question.




So with this in mind, we’re now adding images and size info to the product pages of our website:







On a related note, another question we’re often asked is around the benefits of buying bird food in bulk every now and then, rather than smaller quantities more frequently. We always encourage the former, and it could be suggested that we’re bound to do so because the value of the individual sale is obviously larger.




However, overall and across a year, a customer buying, say, 100kg of food from us in small bags and ordering frequently, might have to pay around double compared to a customer also buying 100kg but less frequently and in bulk bags only. As a comparison, sunflower hearts in a 4kg bag work out at £3.12 per kilo, whereas in a 25kg bag they’re just £1.54 per kilo. So if everyone bought in bulk we’d actually make less money!




But that is acceptable because there’s another and more important reason buying in bulk makes more sense, and that is that having fewer deliveries is a direct benefit to the environment as it clearly reduces carbon miles. And, as ever, it’s environmental considerations which drive our thinking at Vine House Farm.