Happy Friday Y’all! There’s excitement brewing out here! We had our first warm day. I had my first mosquito bite. The forecast has all warm days and nights. The Icelandic poppy tunnel is full of stems that this warmth will push into fully being. The sleepy and cold stunted ranunculus, butterfly ranunculus, daffodils, Italian poppies, hellebores, and anemones will truly begin to wake up in time for spring. Our new hires have all been out for a visit and met with all of us and toured the farm. Systems that were nebulously forming in our minds for months are now taking real shape and the mild trepidation permeating through our farm this winter seems to have turned into high spirits...

Happy Friday friends! Not much to report here. This week’s cold, ice, and a little snow kept our staff from coming in most of the week. Undeterred, Mandy has been cleaning and organizing like crazy, so there are racks, rubbermaids, tables, and materials of all kinds moving from one place to the next as she cleans, paints, and does bits of carpentry with her new battery powered circular saw (loves it). Fun fact, when Mandy and I started dating in 2006 and we moved her across the country to CA, we got her a job doing construction with my old boss and my brother, while I did Timber Framing at a business across the street. We’d meet for lunch covered...

  Happy Friday y’all!  I hope you had a nice week.  No major news to report here.  We did ship out our first 3 flower bundles of the year though.  2 anemones and 1 pastel poppy bundle.  We’ve got a lot of cold weather coming, so I don’t expect a big flush of blooms anytime soon, but we may continue to trickle out a bundle hear and there as they present themselves.  There may be more snow upcoming.  Our weather apps are flip flopping from as much as 5” to as little as nothing.  I’ve mixed emotions.  Last week’s snow was probably the most fun we’ve had in years.  We finished our morning’s work, put on some velour track suits,...

  Happy Friday and Happy New Year y’all!        Thank you for joining us as we start a new year and for following along each week as we bounce our way through the seasons.  We truly appreciate all of your support and for making our 2024 a great year.  We’re hoping to get as many flowers and even more flowering plants out into this country’s homes and gardens in 2025 and to share the highlights and hardships along the way, so you can keep getting a glimpse through our weekly word filled window into the wild world of how to grow an unusual flower farm in the south .     During the break, Mandy started walking the dogs down the old...

  Happy Friday y’all!  We’re looking for Spring help!  We’ve got a few different positions to fill and are looking for really bright, warm, and competent people to fill them.  Spring is really really busy out here, so we’re looking for folks that can successfully handle a fast paced day with lots of moving parts and do so in good spirits.  Our existing crew is wonderful and it’s a beautiful place to work, so  if you or someone you know is the right fit, it could be a great 4 months (Feb-May) for you to experience this kind of life, while helping kind people throughout the country get the best flowers and plants possible.  We have assistant positions available in 3...

Happy Friday y’all!   I just cut the first poppy of the year!  It’s a beautiful pastel Icelandic poppy and for some reason that variety has multiple stems popping up extremely early.  Not to get anyone too excited though.  We won’t have enough stems to sell bundles until well after the new year, but it sure is nice to have a couple of pretty flowers on the table in mid December.  The anemones have thrown up a few lookers as well, but that’s par for the course. They’re always the earliest. We’ll probably have a few bundles of them in late January.   Speaking of spring flowers, if you’re looking for the perfect gift for that special someone who has everything except...

Happy Friday y’all!   We’ve got all hands out in the fields this cold and windy week and it feels good to be making big progress on a few large projects before the rain comes in and turns the fields into a muddy mess.   These kind of projects are usually tackled by 3-5 of us, but for the last few days, we’ve had a crew of 8 and it’s been a pleasure to sweep through such grueling work.  Full days of digging clusters of dahlia tubers out of the soil, shaking the moist clumps of dirt off, cutting the stalks, loading them into crates, lifting the crates onto pallets, moving them across the farm, lifting them onto the top...

Happy Friday y’all!   We’re flipping through seasons over here.  We just finished cutting, packing, and shipping all the mums today with part of the crew and the other half was out pulling the netting and stakes off the plants, cutting their tops, pitchforking their soil, and pulling up all the roots, replanting them in small pots, and shuttling them to our propagation house for a whole new life.    In what felt like our first actual day of Fall weather, we finished our Fall flower program and began Spring.  Well, at least in those tunnels.  I guess we already started Spring in most of the other tunnels.  Winter happened today too though as we are likely to get a frost...

Happy Friday y’all!   It’s been a mumtastic week out here.  We’ve been holding off harvesting the flowers for quite some time so we could have gorgeously full tunnels of flowers in full bloom for Southern Living’s photographer who was just out here shooting everything.  It’s always weird walking around the farm in nicer clothes than we’re comfortable in, pretending to be candid, casual, and charming.  It’s an unnatural state for us to strike a pose and we’re filled with self consciousness and a strange sense of being an imposter in our own life.  Fortunately we got on well with the photo team, which always makes it easier.  Then yesterday, we made up for lost time by having as many...

Howdy Folks,   We’re doing our thing in this oddly pleasant weather.  We’ve been having 60 degree nights and 70-80 degree days for awhile.  No frost yet.  Our first year out here in 2011, we already had a 19 degree night by this time of year. This is massively different. Consistent weather patterns are a farmer’s friend.  Inconsistent weather patterns, even if they are occasionally pleasant, are more challenging and can often be a threat.     Oh well.  Constantly practicing being okay with unwanted change out here.  Accept what is, release your grip on what you hoped “now” would hold, take notice of what you have to be grateful for, revel in that gratitude as fully as you can, and adjust to...