2011 has begun at the frenetic pace that seems to encompass most of our life and major changes are afoot! we do not wish to cause any undue panic or alarm and assure you that some things remain the same, for instance the goats are still susceptible to awe inspiring bouts of flatulence and Hercules the cat is still capable of enduring amazing amounts of fuss at the hands of any willing volunteer. No, the animals are all safe and well and evidently completely sane. We, however, are arguably completely insane! Once again we have stepped off the employment merry-go-round and turned our backs on security and predictability! Yep, we have once again abandoned our employers for another year! It would be fair to assume that we have a plan for the coming twelve months, unfortunately.... we have not! We do, of course have the B&B and have enjoyed a good season to date, thank you very much, but as we hurtle toward the long cold nights of winter, the coffers are likely to get very lean. We are, however, undeterred and have decided that unpredictability, uncertainty and self sufficiency are actually very good for the soul, hence we have now become farmers of Sunflowers!
We have about 5000ish of the blooming things and on Saturday 29th January, 2011, Sharon and I went to market.
The night before we gathered the troops, when I say troops, we mustered four of our good friends, plied them all with food and wine and then marched happily into the paddock for the rather chaotic, ill-disciplined and hap hazard harvest! Cut, trimmed and bunched our way through the next couple of hours and, needless to say, a couple more bottles of wine, and before you know it we had our stock.
Simple, yellow and stunning, three large buckets of floral gold and happiness in a pot!
Up at 6am, we squeezed the buckets into the back of the truck and headed to town. Even the boulders that fell overnight and smashed the road to pieces around the Devil's Staircase were unable to stop us as we strode confidently toward Queenstown Farmers Market!
We did not quite make our fortune but people did like the little bunches of sunshine and we sold a few, we also made lots of people smile on what was a very gloomy day and starred in many, many holiday photographs. Sunflowers are the way ahead, at least they better be if we are gonna eat this winter!!!!!
