Bringing the flowers home year highlights

Here’s me ending the long season with a smile on my face, with a body that gets to finally rest a bit, loaded with a million flower dreams for 2023. When looking back over, like I do every year at the long list of amazing happenings I can’t help but wonder, what would my son, Luke think? I’m pretty sure he loves it as most of the time I feel he’s never ever really that far away.

I knew for sure at the end of last year that I wanted to open our on-farm seasonal Flower Shop Market on a more regular basis but I wasn’t quite sure if we produced enough flowers to do both the shop and keep going to South Anchorage Farmers Market. A question I kept asked myself was why would a business walk-away from a lucrative fast paced farmers market? It seemed like an easy choice. But being home on the farm, having our customers come to us had been on my heart for a long time.

However, I kept agonizing trying to figure it out anyway, even wept a few tears. The market was hard to let go of. But in the end I decided to drop market since at the moment it’s not going anywhere and to go for it. 

I’m happy to announce overall I’m very pleased with my decision. Even with the strange not like Alaska at all 80+ degree June that halted bloom time and brought in the bugs. Even with the pouring down rain the rest of the year that made for a huge Sweetpea flower crop failure and wet sloppy ruined petals on others. I don’t ever remember in all my years of living here of this much rain.

Come to find out Alaska had the wettest July and August on Record. We had many slow cold rainy days at the Flower Shop. But you know me, on those days I’d make arrangements and post them on social. Like this one that was shared numerous times and viewed more than 400x on our socials places.

However, we still had many flower varieties bloom very well despite the conditions. The best part by far though was being able to really connect and visit with all our amazing customers. My heart is deeply touched and can’t wait to serve all our flower lovers next season. We have a ton of amazing flower magic, events and customer appreciation lined up. More on that soon.

Until then have fun scrolling through our highlights. It’s been fun reviewing our summer in blooms. It’s amazing what happens in such a short growing season.

Talk about an upgrade. Having a studio and processing space has been heaven sent, not to mention useful. Everything finally has a home. If you are wondering why it looks the way it does is because we repurposed old baseball dugouts. We also used lumber we already had and these incredible weathered beams from an old broken down colony home that was on our property.

Hopefully before we get into winter too much further it will get a skylight and doors, yes repurposed too. 

   Although our tulip crop was a failure, our Ranunculus, Anemone and Poppies were so pretty. You can bet we are expanding our spring/early summer flower line-up for next year.

Also our spring flowers and early summer blooms kicked off the series of photoshoots we had lined up for the summer with Sydnee, who will miss very much as she heads out for new adventures being a traveling nurse. 

We will miss you Miss Sydnee!

I attended the Peony Retreat in Homer at Scenic Place Peonies at the end of July. I was thrilled to see another “flower event” in Alaska. There were many flower related workshops by Kelly Shore where I made a centerpiece, a bridal bouquet with photo op in Seldovia where we flew in a small plane with all our blooms and took a sea taxi back across the bay.

By far though the most groovy highlight was creating my first ever botanical couture. Where I “dressed a mannequin” in flowers. You can meet Blooming Babe here.

Up next: The the wonderful opportunity to be featured in Bloom Imprints Slow Flowers Digital Journal, “Botanical Couture Summer 2022 edition” with my article Flowers From The Heart; The purple Dahlia. I loved seeing my words about my very personal experience that got me started flower farming. I’m deeply moved and honored. You can check the rest of that story out here.

And how can I not mention our Field Grown Cafe ah Laits Showing Off! Not much more needs to be said. 

Every year our events and dinner tours are always the highlight. We gear almost every aspect of our flower season around them. It is extremely important to us that our guests and customers have the most memorable time. That when they leave they feel “filled up” and want to bring their loved ones and friends next year.

From the flowers, food and scenery to who we collaborate with is showcased with thoughtful intention. This year was no different. If you’d like to know more about our events we wrote a post about our Dahlia Nights Dinner Tour. You can also view our 2023 event line-up here.

Want first dibs at our events and dinner tours be sure you are on our newsletter list. See top of the page to subscribe.

Pumpkins, Fran, and flowers in October.

To be honest I never really liked Autumn up here in Alaska for the shear fact that it goes by in a blink of an eye. This dislike changed when I started growing pumpkins the same summer I started flower farming. We do have a fall, yes shorter than most other the states, but it’s there. Ours starts in August subtly at first, in full swing by September, finished by the end of the month.  As for this year fall went almost all the way until Halloween. And for that I’m sure our dahlia loving, boney lady Fran loved it. 

And I loved the fact that we still had flowers in October. Here is a picture of some of the last ones I brought in for the table. I love how the cooler temperatures make the blooms look nostalgic. 

The last highlight hot off the press is our dahlias produced the largest number of tubers that I’ve ever seen to date, so we decided to have our first ever tuber sale on a hand full of varieties to see how it’d go. Oh my gosh, the response was incredible and has me planning for the future for sure.

What a year, I’m thankful the “wins” outweighed the numerous mistakes this farmer made. Many of which weren’t in my control, the others, well lets just say I’ll keep bringing my focus back to the positive.

You’ll find me over here ending the long season with a smile on my face, with a body that gets to finally rest a bit, loaded with a million flower dreams for 2023.