Crunch Time

Well the first crunch happened about a month ago and involved a collision between our much-loved (non-backed up) lap top and the hard, filthy pavement of New York City. Whoops. Sadly the damage was as bad as it sounded and we were left stranded all alone without technology to connect us to the big wide world.
So we merrily glided through more festive markets, Winter Solstice, Christmas and into the New Year without our own pc to play with until a couple of weeks ago. I hope this is a good enough excuse for not blogging.
And now more crunching is upon us...the sound of frozen snow outside and the buzz of the cogs in our small brains turning as Jamie crunches the farm figures from 2012. Yikes. So much for down time, this is crunch time!

Falling Leaves

Well whoops a month has actually flown by since our last update at Thanks Giving and so all those beautiful pictures we took of autumn colours and bright leaves are now totally insignificant because as far as leaf coverage goes, it's now looking pretty bare out there.

Thanks to a frost in the 2nd week of October the flower growing season is officially over at Oliver Farm and although that is a huge relief to us workwise - it's amazing how much tidying up and prep work remains to be done before we settle in for the winter. So there is no putting up our feet just yet.
However, at the first whiff of garlic planting season I made my annual escape to Europe where I enjoyed an indulgent week in Rioja and Ribera del Duero with a wonderful group of clients, some outstanding wine and the fabulous MW Derek Smedley, if you ever want the heads up on wine then check out his website.

My absence meant that Jamie and the dogs were left to their own devices for 2 weeks and faced with planting all that garlic himself for the 2nd year in a row, this year Jamie developed a cunning garlic clove-sized hole-making tool. Think it would have worked excellently if our dopey doggies hadn't decided that digging in the dirt was their favourite activity also.

Now that I'm back and the garlic is planted, with the weather turning cooler, we have turned our attention to our loose leaf tea business. Many of our herbs are dry so are being blended into all sorts of tasty infusions. I have also been busy grinding up a wonderful concoction of spices for both our black tea and Rooibos Chai blends. We spent a long and enjoyable day at the Valley Tea Festival on Saturday and they were a great success so all that grinding was worth it. For me it's not quite the same as tasting wine but it's the next best thing!

A final flourish

Hurray we reached Thanks Giving without a frost...yahoo! And thanks to the inches of rain and hot weather we have experienced over recent weeks this meant we had a wonderful spread of flowers, decorated pumpkins and ridiculously shaped gourds to display at the market last Saturday and it turned out to be Jamie's best day ever. This was our last Saturday at the Seaport Market in Halifax (or so we thought!).

 For those of you who haven't looked at the Oliver Farm FaceBook page then I suggest you check out the Oh My Gourd album for a laugh at the brightly coloured funny shaped goblin eggs and the like that our land produced. We are still gathering in beans, tomatoes, potatoes etc. anything that we can salvage before a frost descends. I am digging a few herbal roots to produce muddy-looking decoction type things. We have both enjoyed some gorgeously warm, sunny and blissful bug-free days and it's come as a shock to us to suddenly have to put on the heating (or attempt to) and find a sweater. Would love to say that the to-do list was getting shorter now that summer has most definitely ended but am not convinced that we will get to put up our feet for a while since we have a schedule of Christmasy type markets on the agenda and garlic to plant on an incredibly soggy looking field.