As we welcome new staffer Tom Cardew and the return of Kelly O’Leary, we also bid ALOHA to various Sheehans who held the fort this busy, busy summer.
First I would like to thank Emily who has worked full time here for the last year. Emily has just started a graduate program to get certified to be an elementary school teacher. We will miss her in the office but know this was a heartfelt decision and one that takes her on a path of genuine passion and joy.
It was great to have Emily here this last year for many reasons. Emily knows an awful lot about Flowers and their Essences. Anyone of you who connected with her in the last year got her insight from a surprising number of years of work with Flower Essences. Basically she has been advising me about Flowers and their Essences since she was five!
Emily also brought great creativity to all the organizational tasks she took on here. She did an incredible job keeping up with the bottling during a year when bottling became a more and more consuming job. She also was the one responsible for all the Facebook postings this growing season. She would start her mornings with a cruise around the gardens to take photos then get them up on the Facebook page if and when our internet connection was cooperating. In everything Emily did, her humor and zest shone through. I think this photo she took last week reflects her creative fiery spirit. We will all miss her in the office but also celebrate the lucky first graders who are going to have Miss Sheehan as their student teacher this fall.
We also saw Ben depart back to the classroom, leaving me most bereft in the kitchen. He does all the website stuff and as mentioned in a previous blog, he made my summer by cooking dinner each night for the ever shifting group around the kitchen table. Ben’s meals were imaginative and delicious almost to the end. However at his last scratch pizza extravaganza, he established that he was still human and not yet a culinary god by serving us a very strange dessert made from agar agar.
These coffee/ coconut things tasted fine but had the consistency of tires. Ben, I am missing your brilliance as a chef so much, but this last dessert helped everyone else return to my more seat of the pants “what on earth can I drum up for supper tonight?” cooking. Thanks for all the fabulous feasts and this parting disaster.
Jim also has begun to spend his days back in his classroom, getting ready for the arrival of his students next week. This morning, however, he volunteered to stay home to help unload a truck of bottles. Thank you Jim for this and all the jobs you do for GHF!
Here Jim is in orange, handing off a box to Kelly. We always seem to be unloading something into our overstuffed barn! In a wonderful piece of Angel serendipity, the darling man delivering the bottles today, here in the blue t-shirt, is married to a Green Hope Farm friend who has been sharing our Essences with her clients for twenty years at her business Angel Star in Newport, New Hampshire. Linda, it was such a fun surprise to meet your husband in this Angel orchestrated way!
Will is the last Sheehan to take flight. Not yet able to choose teaching as a career like so much of the family, he returns to the classroom as the teachee. Now a senior in high school, his year has begun with his soccer team going to Maine for team prep camp. As his summer was rather uneventful, this adventure is well deserved. While Will did a little bit of everything inside the office as well as outside this summer, I am particularly grateful for his meticulous work making Flower Essence mixes for us. Each of the many combination mixes including all the Animal Wellness collection remedies have to be mixed from individual Flower Essence inventory and Will has proven himself very careful with this task. Thank you Will for setting us up with so much inventory to keep us going the fall.
Fortunately the cats and dogs can’t take teaching jobs! They are happy to stay here and hold down the office with Elizabeth, Sophie and me as we welcome aboard all the new staff!