We are on the cusp of our Late Fall plant sale where you can find all sorts of spring blooming bulbs, flowering shrubs, and perennials. We love to see how many of our community members are so into gardening and beautifying their landscapes and we love sharing our favorite varieties with everyone too.
Plant sales are a big part of our farm’s history. It started out as a way for us to generate income after a long winter filled with big investments and no revenue. We coupled that with a big event where we were able to introduce people to the farm with live music, hot food, and a guided tour. The first year to our surprise, hundreds of people came. The next year at least doubled that. By the last year before the pandemic, we had to have 50 people on staff just to handle the massive influx of cars and people that would come out and we were still understaffed. Thousands of people flooded the old country roads to our house and had to exercise patience while we tried to navigate everyone in and out on the long one-way dirt road out to our neighbor’s field. A logistical nightmare and a significant stressor for someone who doesn’t like to inconvenience people, but everyone was always incredibly patient, gracious and smiley.
We do miss the times where we felt comfortable hosting huge gatherings of smiling faces, but have found silver linings in our new incarnation of a multi week plant sale, where folks can come out based on their schedule, and pick up all their pre-ordered plants in one fell swoop. Our rapid shift to an online plant sale and pickup system during the lockdowns of 2020 has evolved into a set up that is not only a bit more convenient, but it has also evolved into a beautiful farm store that seems to really bring a lot of people significant joy. Not only for one fleeting day each year, but throughout the year.
As time passes, we continue to fine tune the process to try and make the experience ever more user friendly and pleasant. There’s still a bit of frenzy when the items first get listed, but we are getting a better sense of what sells out fast and doing our best to beef up our inventory on those items to make the whole process less stressful.
One item of note is that we are victim to a design flaw that plagues all Shopify based web stores. The flaw is that items put in your shopping cart are not reserved until they are actually purchased. That can be very frustrating because 2 people can pick the same item and feel like its safely theirs, only to find that it gets removed from one person’s cart when the other check’s out first. We have spent countless hours, days and weeks scouring every app, plug-in, and technician possible to search for a solution. Alas, despite huge demand for it, there is no current work around. Our best attempt at a solution as I said is to try and increase the quantities available as much as possible to minimize scarcity, but we wanted to let you know that despite our best efforts, technically this is still possible.
Back to the sunny side of things though, Mandy’s folks have been crafting away in their workshops, creating all sorts of new and unique pottery and wood turnings to fill up the store, so you’ll have plenty to peruse when you pick up your plants. It’s never too early to start picking up holiday gifts from talented local craftspeople….especially such lovely humans as Tony and Linda :). We’ve also got a bunch of new items from all sorts of small scale makers that we’re really excited about, so there’s plenty to check out in the store!
For non-locals interested in flowers, our dahlias have finally gone to sleep for the year, but our heirloom mums are beginning to wake up. We have a limited amount available for shipping next week, but don't worry, there are more to come!
We hope you enjoy the plant sale and get all the goodies you want! Please remember that the plant sale is for local pickup only. Have a great weekend!