Article contentThe crop is expected to be a bit below the long-term average as the vines recover from last year’s drought. But enough rain this year and a kind spring bode well, compared to recent seasons.Article contentBack at their Lochaber, Antigonish County barn, the Brothers family were looking forward to setting all that greased and repaired machinery into motion.Article content“We’ve had some hard lessons, but that comes with anything new,” Brendan said.Article contentThe Brothers fields, like most in the province, were once subsistence farms. Their grandparents, Hughie and Monica Sullivan, began buying fallow fields in the late 1970s around Hughie’s childhood home in the Roman Valley.Article contentWhile raising five children, the couple began tending the fields, encouraging the blueberry vines to creep in.Article contentHughie named each field they added after families who’d spent generations doing the backbreaking work to clear them.Article contentBray, King, Doyle, Joe Donald, Tom Donald — the fields bear primarily Irish monikers of the late waves of European settlers who got the hardest land.Article contentArticle contentAs children, Lorena, mother of Aidan and Rowan, her siblings and all their friends on Thompson Street in Antigonish got hired each August to rake the berries that began coming in.Article contentIt took Hughie and Monica a half century to get the fields to where they are now.Article content“Dad always wanted one of his children to take over but it never happened,” said Lorena.Article content“He was hanging on, hoping.”Article contentFour years ago, his grandchildren Aidan and Rowan put up their hands.Article contentWith help from their parents, they bought out the farm.Article content Aidan Brothers, left, and Rowan Brothers, right, with their grandfather Hughie Sullivan, who built the blueberry farm they have taken over. Photo by Aaron Beswick /The Chronicle HeraldArticle contentJust 18 and 19 at the time, it’s been an education.Article content“Frustration? That’s just part of it from Day 1,” said Aidan.Article content“It is what it is.”Article contentMachinery has broken, and there have been bad seasons. And there’s been learning; farming means being a mechanic, a welder, an electrician and a businessperson on top of learning to grow food.Article contentOlder farmers like Jim Perro, Albert Jurlink and Lowell MacLaughlan have been stopping by, hovering over equipment, sharing their hard-won lessons.Article contentHughie’s been there. At 85, he still pushes a walk-behind harvester for his grandsons each season.Article content“There’s lots of challenges but hopefully if you stick with it long enough you can make it work,” said Rowan.Article contentOn Thursday, as they took a breath surrounded by working machinery and plump berries waiting in the fields, the Brothers were finally feeling optimistic.Article content“Cautiously optimistic,” added their father.Article content
‘Cautiously optimistic’: Two young Nova Scotia blueberry farmers are ready for their first good season after four bad ones
