Previewing the Season Ahead

Nearing the end of May, our growing season is in full swing, and we have some exciting crops planned. Like last year, we went big on dahlias, and we’ve just finished planting over 300 tubers — nearly a quarter of our growing space! We’re excited to bring forward some rare and coveted beauties for wedding and design work like Cafe Au Lait, Bloomquist York, Peaches N Cream, Crichton Honey, Caitlin’s Joy, Sweet Nathalie and many, many others (I can’t help myself when it comes to dahlias…. but that’s another story).

The lisianthus we seeded in February is coming along nicely in the greenhouse, and will be ready to plant in the hoop house within the next few weeks. If you haven’t worked with lisianthus, it’s truly the summer’s stunner, second only (in my humble opinion) to dahlias. Lisianthus have long, strong stems and silken blooms like roses (minus the thorns), and last 10-14 days in a vase — they’re among the most coveted blooms, earning their rightful place as some of the top flowers floral designers seek out and love working with.

We also have zinnias, sunflowers, calendula, amaranth, and cosmos on tap — all direct seeded — just starting to push through the soil as the temperatures continue to warm up. Soon we’ll be planting out basil, strawflower, and marigold starts, with some new perennials like echinacea and lavender also in the mix. One of our experiments this season is to work with drying flowers to be able to have some everlasting bouquets and arrangements available through the winter months. Stay tuned!

Our second-year peonies are still too young to harvest from, but we’re looking forward to seeing them grow this summer. Fun side story here: our irrigation failed last summer along the peony hedge, and in the chaos of the growing season, this was something that got missed. I assumed they were all dead, until, miraculously, I stumbled upon a tiny pink marshmallow-head bud on Mother’s Day no less (#plantmom) — and discovered that not only did most of the the peonies survive, but they are thriving after all this past winter’s rain.

Last but not least, we’re cultivating some fabulous fillers and foliage, having planted out bare root woody perennial plants like hydrangeas, lilac, ninebark, bush honeysuckle, and astilbe, to name a few. We’re excited to see these take root this season and track their progress over the summer months.

So much happening here, and we’re just getting started! Here’s to an incredible growing season ahead!

xo,

R

What’s In Bloom: May 2024

Spring has sprung and here’s what’s currently in bloom on the farm:

• Snapdragon

• Campanula

• Foxglove

• Delphinium

• Queen Anne’s Lace

• Orlaya

• Honeywort

• Bells of Ireland

• Chinese Forget-Me-Nots

• Eucalyptus (Baby Blue & Silver Dollar)

• Nigella

• Bupleurum

• Yarrow

• Honeysuckle

Most of these are gracing our current seasonal bouquets and arrangements. Reach out for additional details or to place an order!

The Symphony of Farming

We’re in that interesting gap season for flower farming — cool season spring blooms are done (farewell, ranunculus and anemones, we miss you already!) and warm season summer crops have just been planted. This time of year is a transition time between those flowers that prefer the cooler edge season of spring and those that thrive in heat.

One of the ways flower farmers bridge the gap is with a magical little category of plants called biennials. These plants include beauties like foxglove, delphinium, and campanula (aka Canterbury Bells or Bellflower). They’re sown during the hottest summer months (usually late July) and then planted out in the fall to bloom the following spring. This was my first season growing all three, and wow, can I just tell you what stunners they are to work with!

The joy of farming for me is this type of exploration and discovery. What works? What doesn’t? There are no failures here, only learning.

So what were the results of the biennial experiment? Well, the campanula was a clear success. These blooms came on fast and strong in the hoop house starting about two weeks ago, and they’ve been so fun to work with in arrangements. This is definitely a crop I’m already planning to grow for next year. The foxglove bloomed early, and then faded just as fast (I think dedicating more space to them next year will provide a steadier supply), and the delphinium was a second-year trial to see if last year’s crops would bloom for a second season. I didn’t get as many blooms in the second year as I’d hoped, so this is a crop I’ll plan to grow as an annual going forward, re-seeding each year for new plants.

This is truly a hands-on profession. Unlike other industries, farming moves according to the pace and rhythms of Nature. We often have to wait many months, and in some cases an entire season, in order to evaluate the success or lessons learned from a particular crop.

The farm is a living experiment full of opportunities to troubleshoot, learn, and iterate. We’ve navigated pest issues, plant disease, and soil nutrient deficiencies from the start, learning what works mostly through trial and error.

But when it comes to problem-solving, Nature is our greatest inspiration.

Taking cues from Mother Nature, a farmer’s goal each season is to create harmony within the macro and the micro components of the whole ecosystem. She is the invisible hand behind the scenes that holds the vision and keeps the beat, very much like the conductor of a symphony.

Like a conductor, a farmer must know the entire score and the parts each individual instrument — or plant — will play. She composes a crop plan for the growing season ahead, aligning her tasks and actions to all kinds of variable conditions like temperatures, hours of daylight, and seasonal transitions. And if she’s growing biodynamically, she’s working according to root days, leaf days, flower days and fruit days, mapping her daily tasks against the cycles of the moon and planets above to invoke the greater elements of earth, water, air, and fire.

Like anything else, farming can be boiled down to a science of inputs and outputs — it can be quite mechanical if you look at it from the left side of the brain only. But to us, farming is equal parts left brain and right brain. It’s seeing the whole farm and its component parts. It’s including ourselves as part of as a living, breathing, evolving system, each component like cells in a greater body. And above all, it’s acknowledging and honoring that we don’t control Nature — instead, we partner with her, co-creating according to her own seasonal rhythms and cycles.

Our regenerative farming practices are grounded in the premise that the health of any ecosystem is only as strong as its weakest link. For this reason, we must become perpetual students of the earth, its seasonal rhythms, and cycles of time. It’s through both left and right brain methods — a truly holistic lens — that we can understand and measure the impact we have over time on the land, the soil, and our greater community.

Farming is a science, yes, but equally an art. And when everything blooms in its own perfect timing, it’s quite the symphony to experience.

xo,
R

Are you sure you want to be a farmer?

When I moved to California in 2014, in the midst of scant rainfall and receding reservoir levels, the state’s natural resources were in crisis. Even before I was a farmer, just by nature of living in California I’d already internalized the urgent need to conserve water. At home, we took shorter showers and turned off the faucet while brushing our teeth. We went without washing our cars and watering our lawns, or we replaced lawns all together with more sustainable landscaping and native plants. In public, restaurants brought water only upon request, and much of the local news and conversation revolved around social awareness campaigns to conserve water.

By my first season of farming, I’d already begun asking a lot of questions to understand water sources and supply, as well as ways to mitigate drought conditions throughout the growing season. I’d been in conversation with experts at the local, state, and federal levels, working specifically with the USDA’s office of Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) in order to develop and implement sustainable practices and conservation efforts on site. While I knew I still had a lot to learn, I was up for the challenge.

What I wasn’t prepared for, however, were the climate conditions of late 2022. The phrase “atmospheric river” had only entered the cultural lexicon within the past year or two, and what came next shocked us all.

That winter, it started raining in December, a deluge of waterfall that created flooding, mudslides, and washed away bridges and roads and thoroughfares throughout the state and along the California coastline. It rained, and it rained, and it rained some more. After a biblical 40 days and 40 nights solid of rain, we rang in the new year with a state of emergency declaration from the state’s governor. Within a few short months, California’s previously empty reservoirs were filled to overflowing, and many began to speculate that the drought was over.

All of that was great news. Except for the fact that there I was, in my first season of farming, with a field that was utterly unplantable. By early spring, it had turned into a muddy lake.

My very thorough and optimistic crop plan was the first thing to go. The precise timing needed to sow seeds, and then to plant them out according to schedule became a backlog of too many seedlings in the greenhouse with nowhere to go. With everything delayed, greenhouse plants became rootbound and stunted in their growth. And all the moisture in the air without time to dry out created conditions of damping off, killing a significant portion of seedlings. The forward momentum, or what little I had of it left, came to a dead halt. There was nothing to do but wait for it to stop raining and for the field to dry out.

That was the first time the question formed in my mind: Are you sure you want to be a farmer?

It felt like the universe was testing me. And despite all that had happened, the answer was yes. Even though I didn’t get plants into the ground until late April, I still felt triumphant once the flowers bloomed, albeit later than planned.

Fast-forward to a year later, when I had the opportunity to sit with that question yet again: Are you sure you want to be a farmer?

At the end of last year’s growing season, bone tired and spent, I nearly collapsed from exhaustion. I didn’t have it in me to clear the farm beds or cut down the dead plants. So there they sat through the winter’s freezing rain, like scarecrows standing guard over haunted ground. And to be honest, the farm was haunted — ghosts of the season past hung low over the field like a heavy fog.

I welcomed the first hard freeze in October. After a nine month season of sleepless nights, constant troubleshooting, and non-stop work, the freeze was my permission to finally give it all up, to let go.

In the depths of heartbreak, I somehow found the strength to tackle just one of many daunting fall tasks: digging up the dahlia roots to divide tubers for winter storage. Would I even grow dahlias next season? Who could say. But there was peace in the simplicity and absorption of the ritual — just a girl with her shovel and pruners: dig, divide, repeat.

The farm sat dormant through the winter months, and so did I. By early spring, and after another winter of record-breaking rainfall, the field had become overgrown with thistle and weeds. As days and weeks went by, to my own chagrin, I still couldn’t face it. What should have been a manageable farm task quickly spiraled into a big, thorny problem.

In hindsight, it may have been the dahlias that saved me.

At the start of May, I finally emerged from hibernation, once again in touch with what made me love farming in the first place. It was the thought of all those dahlia tubers, patiently waiting in storage for their turn in the sun, that beckoned me back to the field.

Where before I’d felt groggy and overwhelmed, I soon found myself waking up naturally with the sunrise, eager to get back to work. Days went by as I worked sunup to sundown, pulling weeds until my fingers were numb, and hauling out dead plants one wheelbarrow at a time. I finally found the courage to face the ghosts of seasons past and give it all back the earth in devotion, like compost that nourishes the soil for new life and new growth.

Small wins turned into big wins. Despite my winter neglect, the plants still grew and blossomed. The plants’ resilience and tenacity was a reminder of my own — our own.

Three weeks later, the farm is thriving and so am I.

Dahlia tubers are in the ground, and zinnias, amaranth, sunflowers, and cosmos are also beginning to sprout. It’s going to be an epic growing season, my friends.

I share this story as a reminder of how we all have the capability to do hard things in life. Chop wood, carry water, as they say. Or in my case, chop thistles, carry weeds. But somehow in the mundane moments of it all, I found myself marveling with sheer gratitude for the opportunity I had ahead of me — the opportunity to grow something beautiful and to co-create with Nature, once again. Once I reconnected with purpose, the necessary steps forward came with ease and fluidity.

This was my task. And I believe this is the task we all face, whether we’re farming or pursuing our own unique dreams. What I share with you today is that all of the the small, incremental steps add up. And before you know it, your garden — whether literal or metaphorical — returns to life.

As for me, I can’t wait to share the bounty of what this season has in store.

xo,

Rachael