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