When we first started mussel farming we had to get a permit from Crown Lands to go in and occupy the waterway. Then we had to go to the Department of Fisheries to acquire a licence to aquaculture the site. Two years ago we moved to our third site, so right now we have the capacity to harvest a million pounds of product.

You can't just say you're going to process product. You have to abide by the fisheries regulations, as in every other fish plant. In 1991, we went out and bought a secondhand piece of equipment. We got funding to complete the processing line and set up in the S. T. Jones fish plant on Little Bay Islands. But it burned down a year and a half later. They rebuilt it, but there wasn't enough room there for us. So we said, "We're five years ahead of when we wanted to build our plant, but now is the time," so we began building in Little Bay.

The same month we began to build our plant, we lost my younger sister Deann and my niece Jessica in a car

accident. For me to deal with this, I buried myself in work for a year and a half. I mean I just worked and worked and worked and worked, till I was told either stop or change or something. So last year I figured I'd go back to school, give myself a break. I also wanted to build up my knowledge and confidence because we are going farther afield into Japanese and European markets.

When we decided to go into processing, we came to an agreement that I'd run the processing part and my husband would run the farming part. Maybe that way we just might stay married a little bit longer! Everything pertaining to running the plant is mine - from the marketing to the accounting, to the hiring and firing, to the shipping. There's seven of us at the plant, seven employees, and this is a proud thing to say, we're all women. It's a woman-run plant. That is unique. The women are all former fish plant workers who worked at Little Bay Islands. They are all from Little Bay, St. Patricks, and Beachside, the three communities in the area.

What I like about my work is that it is not mundane. I can go in the office in the morning and I know that this is not going to be a typical day like yesterday, because there's so much happening. So many things can go wrong and they have to be corrected, but that's what I find exciting about it. I work best under pressure, when I don't know what's going to happen next.