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 dirt road to the river in the mornings and for a few days I joined her.  I willed myself to find moments of awe.  To take pleasure in the sideways sunlight on the dead leaves of a beech.  To absorb the silence and the cold breeze.  To be in nature without trying to impose my will on it.  It was soothing.  The one day I actually made it all the way to the river, I marveled at the beauty of it and found myself thinking the same wistful thought I have every time I get to the river.  “We should get canoes and paddle through here at some point.”  We never have.  Yet somehow that thought always feels novel and inspired and delights me.  By this point it’s followed by the smirking awareness that this fancy of mine is a mental reflex destined to be repeated and ultimately repeatedly ignored.  That’s okay.  I let the notion float down the river in the place of my mental canoe and enjoy the walk back.

Back to work.

  We’re off to a cold start in 25’.  I’m writing this on Thursday night, but we’re supposed to be getting anywhere from 1-4 inches of snow today (Friday).  For those with children, or childlike tendencies, I hope you get out and sled a hill, have a snowball fight, or take the dogs for a jaunt in the woods and just take in the beauty of it.

  If you are a newer southern grower, please mind your tunnels/hoophouses/greenhouses.  Your tunnels are likely not designed to handle snow loads and can easily collapse under a couple of inches.  We’ve seen it so many times at friends’ farms over the years, so turn up that heater, or grab that extension pole with a push broom on the end and start scraping it off to save your plant babies.  Great for building upper body strength.

  In other news, we’re going through lots of applications from lovely people for the 4 positions we’ve got available on the farm. We are very much looking forward to filling out our team for the spring, so we’ll be introducing you to our new crew soon enough.

Stay safe and warm out there dear people and have a great weekend!

Steve