Read Chapter 13: — A SECOND WORKSHOP

Orders outgrew the barn.

Sunward Weaves outsourced simple lines to another rural craft workshop thirty miles away. For six months the arrangement worked. Then the subcontractor raised prices sharply and threatened to stop production unless Martin accepted exclusivity.

The old developer in him recognised the tactic and wanted war.

George advised restraint.

"We are vulnerable because they can make what we cannot. That's our fault, not their crime."

Rebecca added, "You cannot build a rehabilitation story around a business that collapses every time one supplier sneezes."

So they trained more local workers.

A vocational college sent students in furniture, product design and digital marketing. Martin insisted the placements be paid.

"If the work has value, pay for it," he said. "I spent too many years treating other people's desperation as a discount."

One student, Adam Reed, designed a modular woven screen that could divide restaurant spaces without permanent construction. It won a regional student competition.

Another developed a system for combining 3D-printed connectors with willow ribs, allowing complex shapes without losing the handmade surface.

Traditionalists objected.

Edith surprised everyone.

"Tradition isn't doing the same thing until nobody wants it," she said. "It's knowing what mustn't be lost when everything else changes."

Martin wrote the sentence on the workshop wall.

Sunward stopped calling itself a basket company.

It became a craft and interiors studio.

That change attracted hotels, garden designers and architects.

It also attracted attention from the county council.

For the first time, Willowbrook's abandoned school building was discussed not as a liability but as a possible training centre.

Martin began to see the village not as a collection of old houses but as a system.

Skills. Housing. Transport. Care. Work. Food. Identity.

His old instinct had been to build first and assume life would follow.

Now he understood that buildings were the easy part.