
Notes From the Farm
A weekly check-in of all things happening on the Farm from the mind of Steve O'Shea
Rooted Mum Sale Starts This Week! 8/22/05
Posted on
Cheers! Happy Friday y’all! It’s a beautifully cool day here with the occasional light shower and a high of 80 degrees. Doesn’t get much nicer than that for a Georgia August day, so we’re drinking it in. Gonna have a low country boil tonight with Mandy’s fam, so we’re looking forward to the end of the day, but before we get too distracted with shrimp and melted butter, we’ve got a sale to launch! Heirloom chrysanthemum varieties in our tunnels last fall! Today is the big day for those of you on the mum waitlist! Check your inbox for an email from us with a special link to our heirloom mum cuttings pre-sale. You’ve got 2 full days of priority...
Hello Again! 8/15/25
Posted on
Ciao y’all! I guess I’m back to tippy tappin’ on this here keyboard. I hope y’all have had a good summer. We’ve done our very best to make the most of ours. We joined my folks and brother and sister in law in the Dolomites for a lot of deliciously slow hikes in mid June. When I say hikes, they were really mostly just leisurely strolls through Disney-esque mountain ranges filled with lush green meadows thoroughly painted in wildflowers. I’ve never seen so many flowers. At one point, I’m told, we were in the largest mountain meadow in all of Europe. Every inch of that meadow was covered in beautiful flowers. A significant number of those flowers were varieties we...
Sleep Time Down South 5/30/25
Posted on
Happy Friday!Thank you all so much for your support through this incredibly busy spring season. We spread so many flowers and baby plants across this pretty country, and it always feels so good to know that we get to be a conduit for other people’s love and good will. Your best sentiments of condolences, congratulations, gratitude, and romance are made tangible by sending the flowers we have the good fortune of growing every day. Your plans, hopes, and dreams for a small part of your gardens and farms are made tangible in part by the tubers and cuttings we nurture throughout the year.In a world where animosity and fear are so prevalent, we feel incredibly fortunate to be a small...
Seeds of Success 5/16/25
Posted on
Happy Friday Y’all! Feels good to be closing out another busy week and edging towards a slower season on the farm. Summer is our time to regroup and recover at 3 Porch. Our employees pare back their hours, take trips, tend their own gardens, nap in the a/c, and as best as possible, avoid as much of the intense stress that farming in a Georgia summer exacts on your body. There will be some brutal days in the fields doing all that’s required to prep and plant 9,000 dahlias, but they’ll be exceptions and not rules. I swear I’m much older than I would’ve been if I didn’t spend a decade laboring all day, 7 days a week, in the...
Spring Crops to Cover Crops 5/9/25
Posted on
Happy Friday y’all!I’ve been wearing a sweatshirt this week. I feel like I’m somewhere else or somewhen else. A chilly May in Georgia is more welcome than it is common. I’ll keep my beanie and my hoodie close at hand and be grateful for cooler temps as long as we get 'em. Maxine's peonies after 7 days in the vase with her smart refrigerator trick! We got an email from a customer yesterday with 3 photos showing how beautiful her peonies looked 7 days after receiving them. Now, peonies are inarguably some of the most beautiful flowers in the world, but they aren’t known to last forever. In her case, she was tickled with the fact that hers still looked...
Peonies, Dahlias, and Mums, Oh My! 5/2/25
Posted on
Happy Friday y’all!It’s been a lovely week out here. Some afternoons have climbed into “too hot and muggy” territory, but outside of that it has been beautiful. Mornings have been cool, dewy, and welcoming, with a slight breeze carrying us blissfully through the lunch hour. Evenings in the shade have been magical to be outside working. The crew is taking the day off, so it’s just you and the leaves and the birds as you go about your chores in the perfect weather. Mandy physically cannot be indoors if the weather is anything other than terrible, so she’s always working on something outside “after” work, and I do all the peony harvesting 3 times a day for about 6 weeks,...
That Twinkle 4/25/25
Posted on
Happy Friday Y’all!Exciting news for us! Mandy and Rachel have been working with the good folks at Brown Parcel Press for almost a year now to really elevate and beautify our seed packages, and they are finally ready to share! Introducing our new seed packet designs! We never really intended to be a seed company, but so many things changed for us during the pandemic, due to significant family medical issues that kept us from returning to markets. When we shifted away from farmer’s markets, we stopped growing tons of beautiful varieties of flowers that don’t ship well. Most of them were grown by seed, so we had a ton of seed sitting around at the same time that supply...
The Beauty of Decay 4/18/25
Posted on
Happy Friday y’all!We’re heading into a stretch of mid to high 80’s now. Time to fire up the a/c a bit.That section of spring where every single thing is bursting with freshness like you’re living in an 80’s commercial about mint gum or Irish Spring has come and gone. Beautiful plants are still emerging from dormancy, but all around them, things that were recently dripping with crisp freshness are now showing the other half of life. The hard truths we all must grow to swallow. Snowball Viburnum dropping its petals! I’m fascinated by people who utterly embrace the beauty of decay. Floral designers who treasure an arrangement in all stages – who love the dropped petals and wilted foliage as...
Where It's At 4/11/25
Posted on
Happy Friday y’all! I’m looking forward to this weekend because we gots stuff happening in this Mayberry of a town we call Comer.Fourteen years ago when we drove across country with all of our belongings (mostly tools and bee boxes) in 2 trailers. It was a harrowing adventure. We got a flat tire on a trailer just leaving the driveway. That set the tone for the whole trip. 5 flat tires, 2 failed fuel pumps, a faulty ignition switch, some electrical problems, a trailer that almost flipped, a jack that busted and almost dropped the whole car on my leg, and much of that in the dessert Southwest during the heat of late summer. We slept nights in the tiny...
Synchronicity 4/4/25
Posted on
It’s Thursday evening and I’m sitting outside in the faint breeze with a couple of the neighbor’s dogs. It’s been a muggy day, our first of many, and the breeze and shade of a Japanese maple are kindly taking the edge off. It’s quiet, but for the occasional sighing exhale of Chaos, the birds chirping, guineas cacophonously being guineas, and Kali and Naomi laughing over in the studio while trying to film a video for Instagram and realizing the absurdity of all the little details required to do something like that in a way that seems effortless to the viewer. Everything is blooming on the farm! We are smack dab in the middle of Georgia spring here. Dogwoods blooming, spirea...
quick links
contact us
135 Francis Hill Road
Comer, GA 30629
info@3porchfarm.com