Fall Y’all   Happy Friday y’all! Fall has been beautiful thus far as we narrowly averted an early freeze and have maintained enough of our dahlias to feed the monarchs, swallowtails, bumble and honeybees.  Every time I frantically run from one overdue project to the next and a monarch floats past my head, I feel my whole body unclench a bit and find a smile drift onto my face.  Their numbers did diminish significantly after 2 nights at 33 degrees, but enough stayed to maintain the magic.   I didn’t write last week, because we had friends in town Thursday-Monday and they’re the kind of friends that keep your belly full of laughter and your cup full of libations.  Some of...

Hello and happy Friday y’all   Our hearts go out to everyone suffering from the impact of the hurricane.  We’ve heard from customers whose towns were heavily impacted and just learned that our dear friend’s mother lost her home and vehicle in Asheville.  She herself was not hit as hard as her mother, but also suffered from the storm and is still without power.  She did share though that despite the significant hardship and loss, that  “It’s been really beautiful seeing people come together around this.  It’s been really powerful.”  Telling stories of whole communities coming together in her little nearby mountain town to try and rescue stranded people and salvage beloved storefronts and businesses that were waist deep in water....

  This Wednesday morning, we lost one of the most magnificent beings I imagine has ever walked the earth.  To go through life in pain and suffering for a half a decade with a melange of illnesses and maladies, yet remain not only upbeat, but endlessly charming, funny, and perpetually thinking of how to help others until his final moments is a magic that I wish to carry, but don’t believe that I’ll ever achieve, or even come close to.  An integrity that permeates throughout his history in the corporate world (not known for its emphasis on compassion, generosity, and selflessness) is something of a marvel to me.  The stories that poured in about his good deeds, from old colleagues...

Happy Friday y'all!   Wondering how many of you saw the Harvest Moon/Super Moon/Lunar Eclipse celestial triple feature the other night.  We caught the moon over our neighbor's field the night before and it was gorgeous, but unfortunately had full cloud cover during the main event.  I hope a few of you got a glimpse and it was a good one.   We got our friend and studio lead back on the farm and shipping off flowers to your homes this week.  Kali worked as a floral designer in Atlanta for many years before we kidnapped her for some farm work and rural living 4 flower seasons ago and she's been living on the Broad River and working with us every shipping...

Happy Friday folks.   Tomorrow our heirloom chrysanthemum cutting pre-sale goes live to everyone!  If you are looking for a late fall flower for your market booth, look no further.  Every single variety has been vetted by us to be a perfect cut flower.  All big yielders, strong stems, long stems, beautiful flowers, with super long vase lives that make customers giddy with excitement.  We make tons of bouquets with them for Thanksgiving and people love them.  We've been trialing and selecting the best of the best for a decade, so you don't have to waste years figuring out which ones look good in a photo, but turn out to be a dud as a cut flower.  There's so many options...

Happy Friday y'all!! It's a big week of announcements.   The Fall Plant Sale is happening now and the Farm Store opens back up for Fall season tomorrow at 10 a.m.   Originally we planned for 9:00, but the neighbors (and 20 of their friends) will be dove hunting in the field that hosts our parking lot until 10 a.m. so we thought y'all might wanna skip that part.   Not to fear though, because Comer Coffee is opening back up this weekend too, so if you arrive early and want to avoid rain showers of birdshot, you can grab a latte and doughnut and check out acclaimed photographer Daniel Dent's art opening featured on their walls this weekend.  You can always...

Happy Friday y’all! It’s been hot out there.  Heat index in the hundreds yesterday. Everything is crispy and stressed.  Really hoping for that potential rain forecasted for this evening.  Everyone needs a drink.  Myself included. Local gardeners, the Fall Veggie Plant Sale starts tomorrow online!  Get out your gloves and tools and get your garden beds ready for next seasons bounty and start planning what you want to grow. Pickups begin on September 7th.  Just to be clear….this is for locals only.  We will not ship these plants.  All plants must be pre-ordered online and we will get your collection ready for you to pick up on your selected pick up date. Don't forget to book your appointment to pick up...

    So I got kicked out……     Starting this farm on a budget 13 years ago meant building every structure and repairing everything myself.  After the first 3 big projects I got so tired of inefficiently having to dig through a pile of tools to find what I needed and drag it out, only to have to put it back in a tight pile in the barn, that I decided to build myself a workshop. I had been wasting half of my time just finding tools.    I did the design, the grading, forming, concrete, framing, roofing, sheathing, trim work, electrical, and finally had a place to both store and easily find all my tools as well as a convenient...

Hi Everyone,    I’m here again and will pick back up with a weekly update on farm life.  I hope you’ve had a nice few months and have enjoyed a vacation or at least a dip in some refreshing body of water, even if it's just a baby pool.    We appreciate your patience with our absence on the newsletter front.  Sadly, Mandy’s father has been confronting some serious medical issues, so we’ve been focusing most of our energies towards helping out there and actually haven’t been living at the farm for the last couple of months.    Fortunately we’re only 20 minutes away from the farm, so we’ve taken to helping in evenings and the overnight shift, which has given us the...

Happy Friday y’all!   We are busy planting thousands of dahlias right now.  We’ll be planting them all through June. We stagger the planting so we can have a succession at harvest.  It’s important for farmers to succession plant a lot of crops so that they don’t get a huge harvest at one time.  That used to be the mistake of a lot of beginning farmers (maybe that’s different now with greater access to information).  You’d see them at market one week with a full booth overflowing with beautiful produce or flowers.  Then the next 3 weeks, they’d have almost nothing.  The result is that customers think you’re unreliable and start shopping elsewhere, and on the week you had a large...