The present that turns up eleven times.
A patch given in October arrives as a card, then as a drilling notification, then as a photograph every month until August, and then as a parcel. It is the only present on this site that keeps happening after the day it is opened.
Build the gift.
Why this works better as a present than as a purchase.
Because the awkward part of a patch — that it is quite a lot of money for produce you could buy more cheaply — stops being awkward when somebody else is paying.
And because the thing being given is not the flour. It is eleven months of somebody thinking about a field, which is a genuinely unusual gift and almost impossible to buy any other way.
The failure mode is giving one to somebody who does not want it, and receiving thirty-six kilos of potatoes into a first-floor flat. Which is why the hedgerow option is at the top of that list.
What the recipient gets, in order.
A card, and a patch reference
On the day you choose. It names the field and the crop.
A drilling notification
With the date, the variety and a photograph from the gate.
Ten growth-stage updates
Across eleven months, including the ones that are bad news.
A monthly photograph
From the same fence post every time, which is what makes the sequence work.
Six hours of warning
Before the combine moves, because that is all the weather gives anybody.
The parcel
And the twelve-frame sequence of the year, which is the bit people keep.
What is in a gifted patch.
Included
- A patch, at the ordinary price
- A card, digital or printed
- Full transfer of the notifications to them
- The produce, to whichever address you nominate
- A refund if they have not claimed it within ninety days
Deliberately not
- Any gift premium or handling fee
- Any automatic renewal into a second season
- Any subscription, of any kind
- Any cash value, ever, in any circumstance
- Any transferability once it has been claimed
Gifting, questioned.
Ninety days to claim, and a full refund to you if they do not. No arguing and no credit-only nonsense.
Yes. The card carries whatever message you write and no name unless you put one in it.
Yes, to anything of equal or lower price, up until the drilling date for their crop.
There is, on the shopping side, and for somebody you do not know well it is the better present. A patch is for somebody whose kitchen you have been in.
Or take one yourself.
Nineteen still free on the grid this season.
