Certification Audit, Jazzfest fun, Oktoberfest planning, SAQ conversations, Canada Day, VCI Grad

We had our annual organic certification audit today. There is an annual audit and then random unnanounced inspections throughout the year. Today went pretty smoothly, we'd had a delegation from the EU and CFIA do a mock inspection a month earlier, so we were pretty prepared. Still makes for a stressful morning, but its a great feeling once the inspection is complete.

Last night we took our staff out to see the final night of Jazzfest as a group. It was a lot of fun and a really nice way to say thanks to everybody for putting in the extra hours over the summer. This is our 3rd time doing Jazzfest, and it was the first time we could get out as a group and take it in. And Sharon Jones was phenomenal.

We had a townhall meeting on Monday night to offer up opportunities for our town to benefit from our Oktoberfest celebration. We're encouraging the whole town to get in on the fun and make it really special for our guests, while letting them receive some benefit from all these tourists coming in. It was a good meeting with lots of interest, and I'm hoping we can get a number of satellite events happening this year.

We had a really interesting conversation on Tuesday with a Quebec beer importer. They had tried our beer at Mondail and would like to represent us in La Belle Province (mmm...steamies). It is a difficult process, so don't expect anything happening overnight, but I would really love to be able to sell into the Quebec area.

Canada Day was great. I spent the day with my family, took the girls to the L'orignal park for fun stuff there and then over to the Vankleek Hill celebration where my daughters danced up a storm and then watched the fireworks. (they had Beau's on tap there, too, so life was good).

On Saturday, Vankleek Hill's highschool had its final reunion before the old school is torn down. It made for a memorable night of visiting old friends - although, truth be told, I've kept in touch with many of my highschool friends, so there were only a few of those "Holy crap, I didn't recognize you, its been wayyyy too long" moments.

All in all, another busy, awesome week.