Quotable Sunday 06/30/2013

Summer is Here!

Yes, summer is finally here.  The calendar says we are in the summer season. The weather says it is summer with days in the mid- 90s, rather hot for Oregon. But the truly interesting thing is, our customers are telling us non-verbally that it is summer by the flowers that they are choosing. 

We love watching how people interact with our flowers through the months and even years we have been selling at our farmers' market. Even though we can have many varieties of flowers throughout our season, there still is a seasonality to what folks will choose.  Sure in the spring many flowers are in the soft colors of spring with a fair amount of purples. (One year, at one market, about 80% of flowers were purple shades, we declared it "National Purple Day") Anyway, choice is more on the pretty spring pastels.  Since Mother's Day we have been offering and selling out our sweet peas. We have been told over and over, that they remind folks of spring days in the garden with a favorite grandmother, aunt or mom.

Today, we had a limited number of sweet pea bunches which all sold but we noticed that the demand for them has changed. Those folks who really love them, wanted them one last week.  But most everyone else was interested in our bouquets.

We offer flowers by the stem so folks can make their own or just buy a few stems for vase by their bed; we offer bouquets that I make on the fly and custom bouquets requested by the customers. Here are some of the flowers I had to work with in making our bouquets.

                                                                               Dianthus

                                                                           Feverfew

                                                                           Brodiaea

                                                             Snapdragons and Sunflowers

 

Dahlias

                                                       Four different colors of Asiatic Lilies

Lots of colors and lots of different combinations. I usually make two different bouquets, a cool color and a warm or hot color bouquet.  The cool bouquet consists of the pinks, blues and soft color dahlias and lilies.
The hot bouquets are the super bright colors of reds, oranges, yellows and deep purples. 

Working fast and furiously I made bouquets while the folks picked and chose, and what bouquet did they choose on a 90 degree day.  The hot bouquet!!!  I could barely keep them stocked.  Over and over a incredible bright, bold and in your face hot bouquet was sold.  All the cool ones sold also eventually when there were no more flowers to make hot bouquets.  They wanted hot bouquets which happens every year. We keep track of flower trends throughout a season and every year it happens.  They seem to know it is summer and the flowers they love are the  bright and summery blooms. They will go along on this trend until one Saturday this fall,  the colors will change again. 

 Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quotable Sunday  04/21/2013


Two Large Steps Forward, One Giant Step Back


Wow, what a week!  We worked our tails off and provided a huge amounts of cut flowers to everyone who wanted them.  We reorganized and prepped for our first of the season summer farmers' market and cut a thousand more stems for the market.

 

It is was a great day at the market, the sun came out, the kids were in costume for the Earth Day celebration and  folks wanted pretty flowers.  We were busy and excited to see our faithful customers and meet a new bunch of folks who were first timers or just visiting the market from out of town.  We sold about 90% of the flowers we brought and all of the ranunculus we had.  It is a very popular flower for our springtime customers. Wow, what a great day!

It was a really big week for us and we were making plans for how we can continue to improve, grow more and meet the demands of friends.  We were really excited and felt we were really kicking butt and moving this little operation forward!!

But then, reality checks in and kicks our ass and knocked us down to the ground.  We have discovered we have a problem with our well, or really with the power to pump the well.   A couple of weeks back we had a leak of the well pipe that comes up to the house that irrigates all the fields and greenhouse.  Our house is on a separate well. 

 Farmer Tony dug out the driveway to have the pipe repaired and while the expert  pump guy was checking things out, he noticed that the electrical connection from well pump to holding tanks up in our garage were not as they should be.  We could possible have a system failure at any time.  It appears that the system failure is now.  There is no water in the greenhouse or any of the irrigation stations in the field.  The possible fix will be several thousands of dollars and so the many hoop houses we had planned to build, will go back on the waiting lists again.  Just can't grow flowers without a water system. 

So this week ends on a bummer of a moment, all we worked for and earned now goes to repair bills.  For the moment we think this sucks but we will move past that in the morning.  It will be a new day, with lots of chores and new ways of working around the water issue. The weather is warming up this week and our flowers will need to be watered.  We can't be bummed. We have to pull our buns out of the mud and get back on the road of growing flowers.  This is what owning a farm is all about, two steps forward and one step back. It is still progress even if it isn't at the speed we want. This is a labor of love and not a get rich scheme.  My father always said that to make a million dollars in farming, you start with 3 million. 



Determination gives you the resolve to keep going in spite of the roadblocks that lay before you.
Denis Waitley

Flowers For This Week


I have had flowers in our home every week since last February 15th, all were our flowers up until this last 2 weeks.  I bought a small bouquet of spring time tulips and iris from a fellow flower farmer at our local indoor winter market on Saturday.  It was cold at the market, it is cold outside and it is even pretty cool in our home so the flowers were not open when I did the Sunday blog. Today the flowers opened up so very nicely and I am sharing them with you.   For all who are shivering in the cold wintery days, spring is just around the corner.  Get yourself some flowers (locally is best!!) and dream of the coming of spring.

Quotable Sunday 01/20/2012


Healthy

I was reading somewhere that to declare a word of the year was important in achieving those things that are important to you.  What word do we want to focus on this whole year? We decide it should be HEALTHY.   But it is not limited to physical health all though that is part of it but healthy in every aspect of our lives.  Here's how we see it this year.

Healthy Bodies:  Farmer Tony has been gluten free for about a year and is feeling soooo much better.  He has put on weight and muscle and thinks he is stronger that before.  He feels he may have been sick for years and just didn't know it, till it got bad.  I am gluten free as of November but we both are on a very low carb diet so no gluten or grains at all.  It is working and the weight is coming off and the mind is clearing of all the cobwebs that high carbs were causing.  All this requires a serious change in food, lots of greens(salads,salads....) and a ton of healthy veggies.  So two things have to become a priority with us.  Buying even more from our local farmers' markets, trading flowers for veggies.  We have a really great indoor winter market with tons of healthy veggies, lots of meats, mushrooms, eggs and the yummiest breads and treats. The winter market runs right up to our summer market where we also sell our flowers and so we have access to good local food pretty close to year round. We highly recommend everyone support their local farmers who are growing wonderful  produce.

And second growing a garden in a much larger way.  We have always had a garden of fruits and veggies but the importance of growing year round is here and we must incorporate that part into our flower growing as it is just as important as the flowers.  It all has to get done. What goes into our bodies is only going to help us succeed in everything else we want to do. 

Healthy Minds:  Working on listening to more music, and watching less television.  More reading books that interest us, less hanging around the computer reading trash.  Pursuing other hobbies like quilting, stitching and creative cooking; less wishing we did those things. 

Healthy Farm: Continue to work on sustainability here on the farm.  Our biggest challenge continues to be the process of rebuilding the health and diversity of our soil.  We want to do this in sustainable way that incorporates natural processes. Much of our growing area was previously farmed using conventional practices for raising annual rye grass seed.  These previous management practices have left  our growing areas severely depleted in key minerals and organic material.  This has and can have adverse effects on our plants. The goal is to build soil fertility to its optimum and thus growing plants that are outstandingly healthy.  The healthier our soils a more diverse communities of soil organisms will flourish and the healthier our flowers will be.   

 
We began the process last year of converting our farm to using no-till practices where possible. This includes the use of winter cover crops and use of these in a summer mulching system.

We also have been committed to using our own compost teas made from our owm vermicompost. The tea maker above can make 50 gallons in a batch. 

Healthy Flowers:  Continue to provide the freshest, healthiest and most vibrant flowers we can without chemicals.  Although we are not certified organic, we practice organic methods and are not willing to subject our selves or customers to flowers that are not completely healthy and safe to put on the table next to food.

Healthy Attitude:  To have a positive attitude, give it all we can and then be happy that we did our best.  Focus on what is good and positive in our lives and letting go of all the negatives.  Realizing that living is not a competition and doing ones best is all that is required.  We may not be the best grower or designer but we put our heart and soul into every thing we do and will continue to do so but with a happy attitude and smile.

So we declare HEALTHY  is our word of the year.   Bring on the health!!  How about you? What is your word of the year?

The message that underlies healing is simple yet radical: We are already whole.... Underneath our fears and worries, unaffected by the many layers of our conditioning and actions, is a peaceful core. The work of healing is peeling away the barriers of fear that keep us unaware of our true nature of love, peace, and rich interconnection with the web of life. Healing is the rediscovery of who we are and who we have always been. ~Joan Borysenko

Quotable Sunday 10/07/2012


The First Week of October

We have been at this cut flower business for 9 seasons. Normally by the first week of October we are usually done with marketing our flowers at the Farmers' Market.  Since we are primarily a field grown grower, the Autumn weather  of cool temps and rain would finally put an end to our business for the season.  But this year, due to unseasonable warm and dryer weather and season extending  hoop houses we are able to go a couple of more times in  October to the Farmers'  Market.  In fact we will attend a record number of Saturday markets  this year.  We have had a few tense nights this past week with close to freezing temperatures and Fall rains are predicted to come later in the week, we hope to squeak out a couple more markets for this season.  Here are some of the flowers we have had to offer to the Fall markets.

This is only just a few flowers we have had available this October, I wish I had taken more photos but the market was busy.  Also notice how deep the shadows are getting.  It was a sunny morning but cool, needed a sweatshirt till 11:00 am.  

Here are few photos of our late flowers in the field.  They are growing in Farmer Tony's no-till  field.  Although they are producing flowers, they are not producing as vigorous as we had hoped.  We had the soil tested and although there is some good news, there is still more that needs to be done to improve the soil. Farmer Tony will share more on that on a future blog about this year's no-till experiment.

 I hate to see nice flowers go to waste, so after we share them, place them all over the house, I try to dry some of them for permanent arrangements.  The rest finally are composted for the improvement of the soil for new flowers next year.  Here are some permanent arrangements from our dried flowers.

 

Hope you all having a wonderful Fall!

"In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought
and care and toil.  And at no season, safe perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as
from August to November."
-   Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden

Quotable Sunday 08/26/2012

Market Day

I never have time to photograph our flowers at the market.  I still have a camera instead of a phone, so whipping out the camera  takes time and thought, of which I rarely have either when we first get to the market.  The setup is time consuming and the first customers are ready to buy way before the actual market is open.  The last several weeks, I have had bridal parties picking up their flowers for their big day and that keeps us hopping and running around like crazy.  So today I had a moment in  the market day when I remembered my camera and took a few shots.  This is a the midpoint of our market so many flowers are already gone. 

 

We offer our flowers by the stem to make your own, small little posies, our standard bouquet, various flowers bunched together for a set price.  There are many price points for our customers to buy a few or many flowers.

Our booth is open and inviting and large enough to accommodate strollers and families.

Today was a great day at the market, the weather was warm, not hot and there were a lot of folks out shopping.  Our market is a producers only market so people are supporting our local veggie farmers, the fruit and berry folks and a couple of local flower farmers.  We are very thankful for all who shop with us and support local agriculture.  Thanks so much!

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy;
they are the charming gardeners
who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

Quotable Sunday 07/01/2012

Its Still Raining....

For the second week in a row, our Saturday Farmers' Market was rainy.  Last week it was just showery but this week it Rained.... its June 30th for pete's sake.  While the rest of the country is so very hot, we are wet. It was warm and humid for us.  I forgot my camera but you would have seen canopies filling with water and massive waterfalls splashing down on people, tables and flowers.  I know the flowers like the rain but the rain kills a market day.  God bless all the people who came out and bought from us drippy farmers.  At the end of the day , everything and I mean everything is now trying to dry out.  The cube van has all 3 canopies drying inside.

                                     All the tablecloths and the banner and our windsocks  are drying inside

I have loads of wet laundry and there is work to be done in the fields but it is raining again.  After being rained on all day, an evening of a nice dinner and warm coffee is planned.  Tomorrow we will be out planting again.  Hopefully not in the rain.

                                                           Whether the weather be fine,
                                                           Whether the weather be not,
                                                           Whether the weather be cold,
                                                           Whether the weather be hot,
                                                           We'll weather the weather,
                                                           Whatever the whether,
                                                           Whether we like it or not
                                                                   ~Author Unknown