AS if Battle of Flowers week is not stressful enough, float builders around the Island were rocked by the news this week that 100,000 dyed chrysanthemums from Holland were rotten.

The Jersey Young Farmers Club was one of the exhibitors who were particularly affected by the crisis, and a lack of funding has meant that unlike other teams they have been unable to buy in emergency blooms from the UK.

‘Of our 29,000 stems – which each have around five flowers on them – we lost loads,’ said Emily. ‘By Monday afternoon the situation had gotten worse and loads of our flowers looked really droopy with mould on them. The best thing to do then would have been to split all of the buckets but because of restricted space we just couldn’t.

‘In total we lost a good ten buckets of red flowers and as well as this our black flowers came down totally unusable. That was nothing to do with the rotten flower situation they were just all shrivelled up. We were hoping to use the black flowers on things like our tractor tyres and our pig’s jacket but now we’re having to use other colours. Our tractor was going to look awesome and I really think its tyres should have been black. We’ve had to use white blooms on it instead so it now looks cartoony which we didn’t want it to, but we are not allowed to spray them black.’

Emily said that the team began to flower their float – which is called Jersey Young Farmer’s Chaos – at 7 pm on Sunday.

‘Our barn is all red but loads of our red flowers were affected. We have still had to use some of them, though, so I just hope that if the flowers look rubbish then people will understand,’ she said. ‘We just can’t afford to pay £10,000 for these flowers and then buy more at the last minute. We can’t take that risk in case we don’t get a refund. All of the other float builders have been really good though about offering us flowers.’

So where has the loss of so many flowers left the team financially?
‘I think we’ll be okay,’ said Emily. ‘Our guarantee pretty much covers our flowers and we will hopefully get deductions for the rotten flowers and our money back for the black ones.’

As though the team weren’t already having enough problems with their blooms, on Tuesday night a marquee protecting all of their brown flowers was smashed by the wind, destroying many of these ones too.

‘It is a nightmare,’ said Emily, yesterday morning. ‘We lost about five buckets worth. We were using the browns for the skirting so may now have to include some flame designs or something. We are also going to have to use more turf than we anticipated.’

Although the cost of the flowers will be covered by their guarantee, the team say that finding other sponsors for the rest of the float has been a difficult job this year.

‘It has not been the best year for us. We have had fewer sponsors than usual,’ said Emily. ‘However, we have done quite well financially with the cost of the float and have tried to keep it down.’

Yesterday, the team were pleased to have some last minute support from Emily’s local paper shop – Verona Stores in Grouville – which she visits every day, which will, help towards general costs. So aside from all of these floral issues, how have the float builders been getting on with everything else in the last couple of all important weeks?

‘We pretty much managed to finish all of our building work before the flowers arrived,’ said Emily. ‘We just did all of the last little bits on Sunday. There were all of the little holes around the float that we kept saying we would leave until later and then we suddenly realised that it was later.

‘Our costumes are finally all sorted too and my Mum has finished all of the bloomers, which is good. Our harestailing wasn’t all finished until this week though. With things like our pop-up rabbit we had to use a hot glue gun to stick the harestails firmly, which meant burning our fingers. Because it will be moving fast we needed to make sure that they didn’t go flying everywhere, which they would have done with regular glue.’

For all Battle exhibitors float designs are never truly final until the exhibit is on the arena. And in true Young Farmers style, Emily says that the team have been changing their design right up until the last miute.

‘We were going to have a real person on our spit-roast but the mechanics didn’t work so we have had to get an inflatable person instead, which looks a bit scary,’ she said. ‘Also, instead of having two pop-up rabbits we have decided instead to just have one, as well as a dog on a pogo stick so it looks like they are chasing each other. We’ve also built a mole popping out a hole.

‘And we have now also decided that instead of having fish in our pond we are just going to fill it with water and have one of our members, David Perkins, sitting in it pretending to have a wash, which should be really funny.’
Over the past month or so we have seen the female members of the team battling to learn their dance routine, which was choreographed by team member and Miss Battle 2008 Holly Fraser. However, on the eve of the parade it seems that they have finally mastered their moves.

‘The dance is brilliant,’ said Emily. ‘All of the girls have come on so well and it looks really good. We had it pretty much sorted last week but we needed a few more rehearsals this week. The problem when it came to learning it was that Holly made it all look so simple but quite a few of us are not dancers so it was all completely new to us.’

Although the team are prone to last-minute changes, one part of their float – the chicken – was still worrying them a couple of days ago, when they still hadn’t decided what to cover it with. Last month the JEP asked Islanders to donate any unwanted pampas grass to the young float builders to help them cover the bird.

However, despite receiving numerous phone calls from readers, they were unable to find anything suitable.
‘I’d like to say a massive thanks to everyone who rang about pampas grass. It was awesome, even though we didn’t manage to get any,’ said Emily. ‘We have ended up having to use feathers instead. We weren’t sure whether we were allowed to or not but we have checked in the rules and it says that we can. I hope the judges understand that because of the lack of flowers it was pretty much our only option.’

Although the Battle of Flowers is all about the taking part, winning awards is the icing on the cake for all of the teams. And the team say they have a few prizes in their sites. ‘This year we are looking to win the animation award again,’ said Emily. ‘The boys would be upset if we didn’t get something like that. They have put in so much hard work so they would be disappointed. We would love to get the most humorous award too, as it is a really funny float and we also try and go for carnival atmosphere.’

Throughout this week, most of the team have been off work to help on the float. And a number of them will be taking part in the two parades too. People to particularly look out for on the float will include two children in cages and a mass of Le Maistres – John as a cuckoo, Allan as a scarecrow on a bike pedalling to make the rabbit move and Charles coming out of the ram at some points.’

After today’s main parade, none of the 28 float-building teams’ work will be complete, as members of each group will be dedicating tomorrow to getting the exhibit ready for the Moonlight Parade. The Young Farmers keep their lights at their club hall throughout the year in preparation for their annual night of stardom.
So with a reputation for working through the night, what time were the team hoping to finish last night?

‘Personally I want to finish about midnight and get lots of sleep, but there is no chance of that,’ said Emily. ‘In fairness we all do actually love working through the night – it’s one of the great things about Battle and it’s going to be a late one again.’

But no matter how little sleep the team managed to get last night, one thing that is for certain is that none of the Young Farmers will be letting tiredness get in the way of them having a good time on the Avenue this afternoon.

‘I’m really nervous and scared, but I’m sure it will all go really well,’ said Emily. ‘Our exhibit is ever so slightly controversial this year but it is such a funny float – I love it. I’m sure it will be a great day.’
lIn the final instalment: How did the Battle of Flowers go? Did the team win the prizes they wanted and when will they begin planning next year’s exhibit?