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 of us as possible sweeping through the tunnels and frantically harvesting and processing all that we could in preparation for a huge week of shipping next week.  We also had Bailey Garrot out here doing headshots and documenting the harvest yesterday.  Most of us are terribly camera shy and tend to avoid photos as much as we can, but since everybody and everything was already cleaned up for Southern Living we figured make hay while the sun shines.  Which is an odd choice of expression on my part, since it was raining.  

The harvest continues today and as soon as I finish typing, I need to run back out to snip and strip so we can finish the harvest and get everyone a full weekend before a huge campaign of bouquet making begins on Monday for all of the gratitude bouquets going out next week.  

Our orders for gratitude bouquets (link) pretty much doubled as Erin of Floret, who we always refer to as the Michael Jordan of flowers,  just did an unboxing video of each of our mum varieties on IG yesterday.  If you love gardening and/or flowers and you don’t know Floret, you’re missing out and need to check them out.   The whole flower farming community owes more to Floret than they probably know.  One young woman’s vision that started with some chickens and a small patch of flowers has grown into a global renaissance of small scale flower farmers that fill every market booth with beautiful local blooms of varieties that were getting lost in the gears of commercialism and agribusiness.  Floret’s immense impact has so permeated everything that it can’t be measured. In addition to influencing and changing our business and that of every flower farmer we know, we recently saw a perfume commercial with Natalie Portman in it, with the little white truck, overflowing with a bed of flowers, in a field of dahlias.  A stunningly romantic image that is practically the trademark of Floret.  Whether its a tip of the hat, or a bit of plagiarism, it is indicative of the influence they have.

The documentary style show on their farm and lives called “Growing Floret” is an incredibly well done production that features so much beauty, but just as compelling is the rawness of the process of figuring out how to choose the best way forward through a multitude of physical and conceptual obstacles.  I expected beauty and unattainable perfection in typical gardening t.v. fashion and instead was supremely impressed by the honesty, grit, and reality of the show.  Incredible beauty was woven throughout, but I was very moved by how rich the show was on every other level as well.  Erin and Chris are dynamos playing chess while we’re out here playing checkers.  I just can’t get my head around how they do all the projects with such grand vision and scope that they do.  Impresses the heck outa me and then makes me wanna take a nap. Just saying.  You should check it out. Growing Floret is on Magnolia, Prime, Max, and Discovery Plus.  You’ll love it.

Anyway, I’m outta things to say, so should run out and get to cutting.  

I hope y’all have a great weekend!