Name: Linda Jones

Business name: Llynclys Hall Farm Shop

Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday from 9am until 5pm

When did you open your business and why?

I CAN’T quite remember exactly, but it was quite some time ago now – probably around 25 years ago or maybe a little more than that.

The reason for opening up at the time was diversifying really and opening up the farm to become more.

Why in this location?

I HAVE lived here ever since I got married to my husband, and he has lived here all his life, so it made sense to run our business here as a family business. We had children and then I had to give up my hairdressing job, and this is what we started doing after that.

We really enjoy having a business here and it’s something which has allowed us to get to know a lot more people in the area over time.

We get a lot of returning customers so you really get to know people well.

Tell us about your business

We OFFER fruit and vegetables, and we offer many other things, a lot of which we try to source from places as local as we can.

We’ve also got a big pumpkin farm here so we tend to grow a lot of them at the moment so that’s another thing we do. It’s quite unique and it’s quite a big part of what we offer now.

There aren’t too many places which offer something like that, and we do try to keep things growing there all the time.

“We have a variety of pumpkins we grow there which people seem to find quite enjoyable.

Certain times of year we will grow our own things, but as I said, we do try to source things locally if and when we can when they are available.

Things don’t grow all year round, so we just try to get things as locally as we can, when we can, really.

Being a local business ourselves, it’s nice to be able to work with other local businesses as well. We sometimes get people coming in with things they have grown which they might have some excess of, and we’ll buy it from them.

Our market stall in Oswestry has been shut for a few months while the market has been closed because of the pandemic, but we’ve been open here throughout and we’ve been very busy – people have been really kind by coming in and supporting us, and it’s felt nice to help out people who might not have wanted to go to town while the pandemic has been here.

What is your proudest moment?

I THINK one thing which has been pleasing is watching the pumpkin farm grow and seeing people take a good level of interest in it. We were never too sure how it would go, but it has been very good.

On top of that, people’s support has been amazing to see.

Any strange requests?

WE HAVE have had some famous visitors stop by when the Channel 5 show Carry On Barging was being filmed – Nigel Havers, Debbie McGee, Lorraine Chase and Simon Callow stopped by.