A SMALL family business faces a bleak Christmas after burglars stole 2,000 homemade decorations representing hundreds of hours of work by the two women who run it.

Fir cones collected over two months and painted and decorated at home on kitchen tables during long summer evenings were lost, together with wreaths and decorative stands, in the fourth raid this year at Old Lye Nurseries at Rock.

Carol Woods from Lye Farm and her partner Ivy Stone from Franche, Kidderminster, pleaded for better police protection for rural businesses after the raid in which electrical tools worth £1,500 were also taken.

They reckon they will be unable to meet £4,000 in orders which they were relying on to see the business through the winter months.

Widow Mrs Stone said: "We have worked over so many hours and to see it come to nothing is so depressing. We are staying up all night to try to make up for it but I can't see us being able to fill that many orders in time for Christmas.

"We have been running this since 1991 and we have made it our lives. Everything is home produced. Even the plants we sell are grown from seed.

" It seems we have become an easy target. I am a pensioner and have a mortgage to pay, so it is very hard.

"We are very, very rural and rather isolated though not far from the main road. It looks as if we are being targeted. We need more policing in rural areas like this."