Sailing back to those blooming flowers!

No sooner had our 2 newest recruits walked through the door did I announce that I was abandonning the farm for a few days to sail the seas. Despite initially being reluctant to let me depart, when Renee declared that she loved cooking, Jamie realised that my absence might not be so bad after all. Confident that Jamie was in safe hands I trundled off to meet the boat at Hubbards for the annual Schooner Race week. I arrived in time to join in the last day of racing, though this race didn't quite live up to the fast paced action that I had imagined. We quickly lost all the other boats and gave up trying to finish the race and hence disqualified ourselves.
The real adventure began on the following day when myself, Tam and Ray departed from Hubbards and began the journey across the seas back to Tatamagouche. The sail started off peaceful and sunny with a light breeze and over the course of the next 4 days turned cool and breezy with lashings of rain.
We survived a few eyebrow raising moments like running out of fuel and the boat filling up with water (say no more!...), and myself and Ray soon became deaf to any over excited moments of tyranny from our otherwise laid back captain.
It was exciting to finally motor up the channel into the Tatamagouche bay and pick up our mooring right outside the Creamery and we left the boat feeling extremely soggy and in need of a good night's sleep.
Not that I had that to look forward to back at the farm!! The flowers really are in full bloom and Jamie and the girls had been working overtime to get the harvest in. We have now ventured into several different markets during the week and the cooler still seems to be over flowing with blooms. This means that the crazy van is now on the road, so at least everyone sees us coming. Gladioli season is almost upon us and we've just finished wrestling with all the garlic which is now hanging in the barn.
Our chocolate puppy is doubling in size every week and enjoys hanging on to your welly boots (by her teeth) as you harvest. She also leap frogs over Eddie to be the first for any attention, much to Eddie's utter annoyance, he still isn't convinced that this little (bigger by the minute) sister is going to be much fun and has started picking on the ducklings instead. Better dash I can hear Jamie's whip cracking.

Lilies, Bono and a little chocolate dog

Thanks to the hot sun - heavy rain cycle that we are enduring, we are all in a bloom down at Oliver Farm. Ever since the Asiatic Lilies went pop and the drum stick alliums followed, it seems that we might be taken seriously as a flower farm after all. Harvesting has got a little crazy and if it wasn't for the weeds and the over grown grass (still no mower), the beautiful splashes of colour dotted up and down the field would be a true Eden. It's incredibly satisfying actually having a product to sell and myself and Jamie are still a little stunned as to how any flowers really managed to grow and turn out as beautifully as they have. So as the flowers bloom and we harvest twice a day, we are now able to put them into the newly operational cool room. Hurrah! If it wasn't for the fact that it's leaking somehow, we would almost feel like we had earnt the privilege to cross that project off the list.
All of this excitement makes for a lot of fun and much floral disorganisation and means there are never enough hours in the day, so we are feeling a bit pooped.
We didn't really help ourselves or rather we couldn't help ourselves at the weekend when we decided to pretend we were normal people who didn't farm 24/7 and fled the farm seeking refuge at the U2 Concert in Moncton, New Brunswick (many thanks to Kendra for manning the market stall and working like a trooper all week!). This incredible show turned out to be the last gig in their almost 3 year tour so was full of surprises. However what surprised us most was the fact that we got in so close to the stage. I think at one point if Jamie had had the energy to lift me up I could have touched Bono or strummed on Edge's guitar. We were in the inner circle and rocked our best.
The show was awesome and being so close meant we got to see every detail, we had a ball. Also playing were the absolutely bonkersly brilliant Arcade Fire and Carney. Somehow managed to get my photo taken with Reeve Carney, would imagine that is floating around on facebook somewhere, much to his embarrassment.
To cap our hedonistic (sleep deprived) weekend we swam in the sea and then....scooped up our new puppy. We are currently revelling in her cuteness, need I say more?