We bought our first plugs back in 2021 for the 2022 growing season. It was the first time we ever bought flower plugs!

We started with Lisianthus, enough to fill a 16' X 50' Farmers Friend high tunnel. And the decision to do so was the product of a completely failed attempt to grow Dahlias in this very same tunnel. The high heat and humidity left us with the saddest, unhappiest Dahlias around, and a fellow flower farmer and friend suggested we try again with a flower that would thrive in the same high heat and humidity. That conversation led us to Farmer Bailey and our first Lisianthus plugs!

When we saw the volume that actually arrived, I panicked and thought we had made a terrible mistake, but our trusted flower friend came out to the farm and helped us plant every single plug in one day, and that began our journey with Farmer Bailey + the Farmer Bailey flower farming community.

Lisianthus was our starting point, our spirit flower, our floral muse, and a flower which we have continued to grow every year in ever-increasing quantities. Last year, we dedicated an entire 30 x 96 tunnel to this beloved bloom and we still ran out of space!

While we grow lisianthus as our signature flower, we've also expanded our repertoire to a whole host of long-stemmed annual blooms, including Campanula, Hummingbird Poppies, Delphiniums (this year), heirloom Mums, and lots of Snapdragons. For perennials, we've focused on Alstroemeria, Veronica, Verbena, Phlox and Eremurus, and, this past year, we dove deeply into bare root woodies and more robust perennials. Lots of pivots, but still we always honor where we started.

The whole team at Farmer Bailey has been a tremendous support to our business and really the roots from which we've grown as a flower farm. Farmer Bailey has been our primary source for discovering what's new on the flower scene, what's super special and also what's tried and true. I love when new improved varieties are introduced because it gives us choices, and the website always goes into great detail explaining the differences between more traditional and newer improved varieties, which, in turn, helps us make more informed decisions, as growers. I know that Farmer Bailey makes us better, more knowledgeable growers by sharing the provenance and breeding story behind the flowers, plants and shrubs, and, providing us with accessible growing guides for each item. I absolutely love these guides, and I've integrated links to them in our own internal Standard Operating Procedures, to guide our work crew. They also save us A LOT of time, by starting us off with excellent quality plugs and bare roots.

Lisianthus has definitely been our most profitable and successful flower choices and we have customers that look forward to these premium blooms all year long. Each year, we add new varieties and refine our selection, based on what works best for us and our markets and what we (and our customers) LOVE. The choices are outrageously large, so it's always a big and exciting process selecting our annual plugs, and we always make sure to add some new varieties, too, like the gorgeous sprays that came out last year!. We grow all of our lisianthus in high tunnels in order to get large premium quality blooms and tall stems, and we make sure to rotate our crop each year for disease control. Ever year, we try to better understand the growing needs of this very particular flower, with its tendency for root diseases and weak stems, if not given the right growing conditions and care.

I'd say our flower focus on the farm is long-stemmed premium cut flowers, grown with a lot of care. Campanula and Hummingbird Poppies have also been hugely popular and successful. For florists, definitely the Eremurus, which we started growing last year in all available colors, and this next year, we're going big on Alstroemeria with all the exciting new varieties coming to the US via the Netherlands and Farmer Bailey.

The biggest challenges are almost always disease- and pest-related. With ever-increasing weather extremes, and with some very wet seasons, fungal disease is ever-present, root diseases, and heavy pest pressure. Learning how to ramp up our arsenal of options for disease prevention, treatment, pest control and soil health is a big win.

A few things. First, you MUST embrace failures as your most valuable lessons. You will fail at things you try, and, most likely, you will fail big (like a whole high tunnel of dahlias decimated by powdery mildew), but, those are the lessons that will make you a much better grower, if you take the time to understand the reasons behind your failures and learn from them. That can turn into a big success. Don't give up when things go wrong, and don't beat yourself up. There is not a farmer in existence, beginner or experienced, who has not failed big in their journey to success.

Try new things and realize that your farm is ever-growing and evolving , just like you. Don't be afraid of letting go of things that are not profitable for you and of trying new things that may be a better fit. Take the time to get to know yourself, as a grower, and develop your own unique Point of View. As tempting as it is. try to resist looking at what every one else is growing and feeling the pressure to do the same. Instead, look for what resonates with you, what YOU love, what appeals to your aesthetic, and also what complements your growing zone and growing facilities. In time, you'll develop a crop list that is uniquely you and customers will know you and value you for that. Very few growers can manage to grow everything, and very few would want to! Learn to make smart choices, trial new things in small numbers, as you built your repertoire, and always with a focus on quality blooms.
Invest in yourself to be the best, most knowledgeable grower you can be and never stop learning.

Going on 8 Years

We sell primarily through farmers markets (2 year-round and another 2 seasonally), and we also sell wholesale to a limited number of florists and designers. Winter, spring and fall, we also run a floral CSA for our community members. We pivoted to farmers markets three years ago and that quickly became the bulk of our floral sales. We really love connecting directly with our community each week, becoming part of people's lives and sharing the stories behind the flowers. It invigorates us every week and makes flower farming very personal.

There's not a lot of non-farming time, and most of what I enjoy on "off-time" is farm-related! If I can steal some quiet time, I love reading a good book (though usually having something to do with farming, flowers or food!), cooking and baking something delicious, and knitting something special, especially with yarn from our sheep.

We wear a lot of hats on the farm (as most farmers do!); Hans is an photographer and architect by training and has designed and built many of the human and animal structures on the farm. And I used to be a professional grant writer and worked for the United Nations in humanitarian assistance, and I also trained as a baker and pastry chef. We're lucky to have had many chapters in our book of life, and all of them come in handy, here on the farm.