So i have been meaning to do an update for ages, but when the Tesco’s delivery man couldn’t find me and i explained where i was, his reply was “The old Tia place?” so here is the short version.
When Covid hit we lost 60% of our income overnight, with the closing of the Charity shops, and that was very scary.
For the first few months a very, very small team here at the farm kept Tia going. The donations from our supporters were amazing, from money to veg from Morrisons. At one point we had that much food for the animals we didn’t know where to put it all. The chickens were especially pleased…
With everyone wanting dogs we didn’t close we were just careful and around 70 greyhounds went out into homes, the majority of which have stayed.
We haven’t sold the farm yet…but are still hoping to. Over the past 6 months i have been able to get back to my job, ie rehoming animals. The cafe and visitors centre was the worst thing i have ever done, we simply didn’t have the staff or the money to make it a success.
So at present we have just 40 horses, instead of over a 100 which we had two years ago. We have around 60 greyhounds, as opposed to the normal over 100. We also have less shops and less staff, but amazingly we are keeping afloat…
The greyhounds are still coming in thick and fast, we have had 22 in since the Greyhound Retirement Scheme started at the beginning of September…The scheme means that any dog racing on the 1st September will have a £400 bond to go with it towards it’s retirement. None of our dogs qualify, they never will because we pick up all the fallout, as we have been doing for the past 24years. The Sheffield 13 being a classic example.
The 4 charity shops that we have are all open again and doing well.
So that’s it, the short version. Yes we are still here and we have no intentions of going anywhere.
Thanks to everyone, we couldn’t do it without your support…
Deb