Raising Flowers and Horses
The “It-Girl” of Flowers
Dahlias remind me of those candy by the pound stores where you can dip in your scoop and pull out all those pinks and purples and oranges. The intense color coupled with the anticipation of all that sweetness was the same feeling I’d come to associate with the dahlia bed.
What Does a Flower Farmer Do in the Winter?
I often get asked, “what does a flower farmer do in the winter?” It’s a good question. It’s often cold, sometimes the ground is covered in snow, clearly there aren’t any flowers to harvest, so what does a flower farmer do in the winter?
My first thought is a quote I often see bandied about: “Anyone who thinks gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year; because gardening begins in January with the dream.” Josephine Neuse, author of The Country Garden.
My winter has been a little different.
Finding My Inspiration
When I decided to retire from teaching and start the flower farm, I struggled with the idea of starting something brand new as I was retiring. The physical work would be too much, the learning curve too steep. I knew I would make a lot of mistakes. Besides, all the flower farmers on Instagram were mostly in their 20s and flower-field beautiful. I don’t consider myself overly concerned with my age, but I realized that a lot of my fear was about my age. Maybe I was too old to do this. I was quick to blame social media and the outside world for my trepidation. I had read the Atlantic article (and numerous other articles) about female invisibility after 50, but I also questioned whether I was doing enough to search out my own inspiration. Lately, in addition to learning how to be a flower farmer, I’ve been cultivating my own “over-50” inspiration.
Hope Amidst the Native Plants
When I was finishing many of the fall chores last week, I found myself talking to myself, and starting many of those sentences with the words, I hope: I hope the ground doesn’t freeze before I get the ranunculus in the ground; I hope the covering for the low tunnel arrives before the baby plants freeze, I hope there can be world peace.
Frost and the Power of Endings
As I looked out my bathroom window this morning, I saw the tell-tale sign. It looked like a light dusting of powdered sugar all over the yard. My yard is in a hollow, lower than my flower field, and the coldest temperature the night before had only been 37; there was a chance my flowers were spared. A brisk walk up to the field told me what I already knew, my remaining flowers had been kissed by frost. It makes sense, it is October 24 after all, pretty much on the nose for our expected frost date. Still I’m never quite prepared for the end of the season. It feels like a Sunday afternoon after a holiday weekend, when the kids leave our home headed to their far-flung cities. I’m tired from the celebration, grateful for the beauty and communion, and already longing to do it all again.
Ode to Women Who Garden
In this age when the planet feels like it might crumble beneath our feet, hope, the powerful antidote to feelings of helplessness, is in vastly short supply. It is hard to watch the effects of a warming climate and feel the fragility of the earth. It all feels so perilous. Yet, when I talk to women about their gardens, I feel hope. Women who garden deal in hope. Every plant in the ground is a vote of confidence that tomorrow can bring joy and beauty. It replaces monoculture lawn with a diverse source of plant life for bugs and birds. It creates color, beauty, serenity. While we wait and work for systematic change, planting a garden and cultivating beauty is a powerful act of hope.
Flower Farming Secret for the Home Garden
Flower farming reminds me of the childhood game of hopscotch. Every turn in hopscotch requires some quick plotting as to where you will put your feet. Every week of farming feels the same. Each time I feel like I’ve gotten a handle on the week’s “issue,” a new one pops up that requires a whole fresh round of problem-solving skills.
Looking at Weeds or Flowers?
Get flower farmers together and the conversation usually focuses on the Ws–weather and weeds. For me July has been a big dose of both. The heat and humidity coupled with infrequent and then torrential rain poses all the predictable problems.
Lots of Babies and a Fair Bit of Disquiet
May was a beautiful month here at the farm, day after day of cloudless skies and cool nights. There is new life everywhere–baby bluebirds, fawns, and, of course, new flowers are blooming. Most days I’m in awe of the beauty of it all. There’s magic when a fawn goes from wobbly- legged newborn to a frolicking deer in less than a week. I love watching the bluebirds progress from all mouths and no feathers, to tiny replicas of the full grown variety, after eating thousands of bugs
First Times
When starting out as a flower farmer, there are so many firsts–the first seed started, the first bouquet sold, and the first crop disaster survived. I like firsts because they put me in the mindset of a child, a place of curiosity and wonder about what this first time will be. Yesterday I had a beautiful kind of first, my first fall-sown, cold-hardy annual bloomed. It was also my first blue flower.
Bluebirds and Tulips
All three of my bluebird boxes have nests, and this year they all seem to be housing bluebirds. The arrival of the bluebirds is my favorite time of year. I love the electric blue of their bodies, an intense color that you can’t miss when they perch on the pasture fencing. I love how both the males and females are invested in brood-raising, and mostly, I love how many bugs they eat. Each bluebird eats upward of 2,000 bugs a day, and this year our farm is swarming with bluebirds.
Cheerful and Resilient: The Power of the Seasonal Landscape
There is nothing like going away to help me appreciate my home and my farm. It is always hard to get ready to leave, to make all the arrangements necessary to keep the farm going, but the time away only energizes for the season ahead. This trip was no different. Seeing the power of the seasonal landscape in a far different setting was a powerful reminder to look for its magic at home.
Small Problems Under a Big Sky
Sometimes I allow my small problems to feel like big problems. Lately I’ve found myself fretting over the small things. What will I do about my too wet field after all the rainy winter? Is it time for another fight with the insurance company about coverage for a minor, but expensive, medical procedure? Do I have enough help so that I can leave the farm for a couple of days? I know these are minor problems, even good problems to have. (It could be an insurance fight over a big medical procedure!) Yet, they take up too much of the space in my head, and they get stuck there.
Childhood Play
When I was a child, my sister and I would spend hours playing “Little House on the Prairie.” We would recreate scenes from the books that we loved and imagine what it was like to survive with only what we could grow or forage from the land. We imagined tending to our livestock (our dogs), and toted water from our well (our outdoor spigot) to our barn (a pile of sticks arranged in the footprint of a barn). Some of our favorite days were those rare Maryland snowstorms when we could put on our snow gear and tromp around imagining how hard we were working to save our farm animals from the extreme weather.
Welcome
Welcome to Cool Breeze Farm, home to flowers and horses. The flower farm started in 2022 when Marnie retired from teaching and felt a strong need to create something. Habitat is what she decided to create! We took a one acre hay field and slowly began planting perennials and annuals that would provide a healthy home for native birds and insects.
Thinking about summer flowers in January
January is a funny time to be writing a newsletter about a flower farm, but it is also the time of year that I think about New Year resolutions and heading into my second season of growing cut flowers, it is potentially an opportunity for many goals and resolutions. Resolutions are something I have always embraced. It is my family’s tradition to gather round on New Year’s Eve and read last year’s resolutions and make new ones for the coming year. We always self-assess which ones we feel like we’ve achieved. I’ve usually fallen far short!