What A Ride Part 1

Okay friends it has been waaay to long since I have posted on here. This was a summer quite unlike I have ever experienced before. I think I may have had more sleep the summer my son was born (probably not but it felt like it).

Since the farm is not open to the public at this point, I thought I would give you a little recap of what the last 7 months have looked like for us beginning with April-July. There were amazing highs and lots of lows but in the end we were left wanting more and are ready for 2018!

APRIL

This month was pretty cool. We launched our website and Facebook page on April 1st and the immediate response was not at all what I had expected. People were so excited to have local fresh flowers that they could get their hands on. I went small scale on pretty much everything this year because I wasn't sure what the response would be. We planted about 300 tulips and this weekend we will be planting about 1300 for next year. I learned this year that tulips literally can be picked 2-3x a day. When they decide to bloom they like to come on all at once. We also had daffodils and anemones which totally stole my heart and I want to figure out how to grow these little beauties better in the years to come.

MAY

So after the high of April and all of the awesome interest, May was a bit of a let down. All of those bulbs and corms were done blooming and I had about 3 1/2 weeks of no flowers, lots of inquires for prom and Mother's Day and sadly I had to turn everyone away and tell them we didn't have anything. Until I have some type of a covered structure such as a greenhouse or unheated hoop house I do not see this changing for us. May just may continue to be a month of planting and getting ready for the upcoming season. I was so disheartened at the time but looking back realized this is okay for where we are right now. I am still working part time and this gave me the time to get seeds in the ground and new babies started without trying to harvest and cut everyday as well.

JUNE

This month I again felt like I stepped over the cliff as we started selling our bouquets at Squire Browns and Revival Kitchen. I really didn't have any huge gorgeous focal flowers blooming and wasn't sure if people would even want my flowers but we cut, we bundled, we wrapped and we set up shop and they sold beautifully at Squire's. At this point we had things such as Bells of Ireland, Larkspur, Calendula, Bachelor Buttons and Nigella blooming. For some reason they didn't sell as well at Revival so at the end of June we decided to focus solely on one Reedsville location instead of two. Liz and Michelle are both amazing women and awesome to work with and I hope you support their establishments!

JULY

This is the month I seriously just about lost my marbles, no joke. It was hot, the japenese beetles came rolling in like the plague, I seriously think it rained every single Thursday evening when I had to cut for the store orders on Friday, I was getting about 5 hours of sleep every night, the house was a MESS and the WEEDS oh the WEEDS (I'm really trying to learn to just embrace them). After a slow start to July because of cooler temps we rolled right through it and everything really started blooming away. I documented how I was feeling, what was blooming and happening in hopes to thwart some of this for next year and sitting here looking back I am really glad I did.

Hope you've enjoyed this little glimpse. Next post I'll show you what August, September and October looked like for us.

See you back here next Friday!

-Katie