Hi y’all!  This week has been fun.  We got our old buddy Ty back with us for awhile and Kali is in her second week in the studio and is doing great!

  Ty Brooks worked with us for a couple of summers almost a decade ago and went on to get his Master’s in Sustainable Ag and start his own Peach and Pumpkin farm, Lazy Summer Farm, in Athens.  He’s helping us out a few days a week in the fields and tunnels and we’re really excited to have our friend in the fields with us again.

  Kali Jones helped run one of our absolute favorite flower shops, Adaptation in Atlanta, and was a customer of ours for 7 years, before moving out to Comer to join us on the farm.  We couldn’t be more pleased to have her expertise in bundling and packing our seed and flower orders to be shipped out to you.  

  Filling in for Naw and Marry are Wah Sha (Yay she’s back!) and her cousin Hsut Po. They’ve been helping out for 3 weeks now and are both such thoughtful and mindful workers that really have us feeling super grateful at their level of care and attention to detail in their work.  

  We’re always somewhat riddled with stress filled anticipation when it’s time to try and find new folks to spend our days with out here, but we continue to be blown away at the quality of people who apply and at our good fortune to find such lovely people to help us run this farm. We truly are blessed to have such amazing new team members this spring!

  I just got home from the Georgia Organics conference down in Perry.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay and mingle and learn more, but I only had time to make the drive, do an instructional talk on how farmers can add solar to their farms, and then head home to tackle some evening projects.  It looked like a great turn out and the courses offered have evolved in such a positive direction since I was last there.  The folks in charge are doing a great job.  It’s happening through the weekend if you want to book a day pass and check it out.  

  Worth mentioning, if you are a farm, or a small rural business, you now stand to get 70% worth of incentives for doing a solar installation.  Hard to beat those numbers.  Look up the REAP Grant (40%) and the Federal solar tax credit (30%).  We can use as many happy sunny electrons as possible.

  I have fielded a couple of questions about a flower subscription for locals, so it seems worth mentioning our reasoning for not offering one this year.  The main reason is that we intend to have the store constantly stocked with flowers when it is open, so there really isn’t a need for a subscription.  The other reason is that we consistently had subscribers forget to pick up their flowers, resulting in either them losing flowers they paid for, or us having to replace them for free and throw out their originals.  Neither choice was pleasant and with a store that is always stocked, there is no longer a need to make such an undesirable choice.

  We’ve also had shipping customers wonder if we’ll still offer single orders instead of full subscriptions and the answer is definitely and wholeheartedly Yes indeedy!!  We’ve been offering everything we have for almost a month now, but we still haven’t fully hit our stride, so they tend to sell out quickly.  Each week is more and more abundant though and the webstore was just restocked today at noon and will be minimally restocked each Tuesday and Thursday.

  Lastly, when ordering flowers, please keep an eye on your weather.  Storms can cause delays and freezing daytime temps can damage your flowers if you don’t bring them indoors immediately upon delivery.  Fedex won’t offer insurance on any delays or damage due to weather, so we encourage customers to be mindful of local conditions and avoid ordering flowers during deep cold, or significant storms.

  Cheers to y’all and to all the frogs that are croaking in our woods right now.  I just saw my first mosquito of 2023.   Spring is coming.

  Happy weekend!

-Steve