Reflections on spring, risk-taking and going into year three on our land.

The brown shoulder seasons hold all the in-betweenness of the year. Muted shades cover the landscape. Matted layers of dead plant material cover uncleaned beds. Shoots from daffodils and peonies signify rebirth as they emerge while stalks of dead plants stand tall above them. Dark and lush soil holds birth and death. Deja vu of moments in Fall, where all is brown and quiet and ice comes and goes, when warm days meet cool nights. Deer prints and droppings scatter the farm after heavy snow pulled the fence down most of the winter. Voles keep us setting traps to save the tulips. We cover plants and check the weather again.

This time is quiet and exciting but full of unknowns and remembering the patterns of things again. The farm has so much energy underground and you can feel it whispering. That whisper is what keeps us busy, getting the word out about our subscription, preparing floral quotes for nearlywed couples and taking care of all the other ins and outs of running a small business. Soon we will be mostly away from the computer and caked in dirt, shifting focus but still managing it all. 

Each year we learn a little more about our farm, the land itself, the systems that work for us, different flower types and more about ourselves. This season will be our third year on the property, our fourth year growing and selling flowers and my sixth year of farming. The first year I worked on a farm was 2021, living in Chicago during the height of the pandemic. I was in search of another landscaping job when I came upon an urban flower farm that was looking for help. In my early twenties I, like most people at that stage in life, was trying to find a way to connect the dots of my life. Flowers came into my life and I fell in love. Of course they are the truest essence of pure beauty, but they also showed me grit and sturdiness and risk.

The summer on that farm I realized how dreamy things are, yes, magical of course, but when they are tangible they are no longer a dream. They are of this earth. They withstand and have needs and downfalls. They are beautiful but not perfect. Nature is a duality. It is goodness, beauty and flow but that fullness exists only alongside disease, destruction and the composting nature of death. And sometimes that duality is the beauty of a farm that only exists with the gritty hours and logical brain needed to make it happen. We often get told that we are living a dream by other flower lovers that chat with us. I do agree, we are living a dream, the one we dreamt up way back and decided to take a risk and try to make it happen. But the thing about dreams is that when they become reality, they are no longer a dream. Once a dream is set into motion one must shift out of a dream state and into a mode of getting down to business.  Risks have more weight and everything always feels in flux. Each day is work to intentionally keep a dream alive and a day to day reality. 

The first summer we grew flowers was nerve racking but we were dedicated. I took everything I knew from handling flowers everyday in flower shops I worked at and applied it to growing them as well. The way certain stems are or how I saw them bunched and stored taught me a lot about how they would be grown. Em and I combined are knowledge of landscaping, vegetable farming, gardening and urban flower farming, as well as Em’s skills in building. That first year took so much mental energy and prep and working through fear. We had to confront so many fears of the unknown, failing, losing it all, and confront within ourselves our ability to loosen control. 

Things moved quickly out of a dream state and into the tangible world. Months ahead of the ground unfreezing, nights were spent organizing pricing info, detailing a farm plan, sending out cold emails, and reading as much as we could on different farm practices. There is an endless sea of knowledge in so many directions to take with plants and farming. Thankfully every year it seems you can chip away at it further as you build working knowledge. 

Farming will teach you more about yourself than I ever realized. No big fancy spiritual event required, simply following the seasons for a year, putting all your eggs in one basket, hoping and praying to make something out of a risk, and you will come to know your strengths and shadows. Frosts and rainstorms and disease and pests will keep you up at night and you will learn your true threshold for letting go and trusting. I found out quickly how much I tend towards worry and control. The first year these things really bothered me, not being able to know for sure that we could pull off having what we needed for events or subscriptions that had been paid for. And all that pressure and risk falls back onto you. As we move into this fourth year as growers and third year on our farm I am finding a little less pressure, a little more room for error and trust in risk. 

In Spring the farm wakes up again and so do we. We have stayed busy all winter between dried florals, events, taxes, website updates, marketing, crop planning and catching up on our rest and home projects, but with spring we have to wake up a different part of us. The part of us that knows the dirt and the routine of hard work and holding the feeling of risk in your body. Luckily spring eases you in and allows for a soft gradual awakening. 

Tulips have just started to peak up and I spend a lot of time checking for lupine sprouts, peonies and daffodils peaking out and little greens unfurling at the base of delphinium and lady’s mantle. Farming starts with deciding when to work the soil again. We are able to get into the soil in our tunnels as soon as mid March, but it's a gamble to know when we are ready to broadfork, weed and prepare for the earliest plants. 

Our ranunculus and anemone are some of the earliest plants that go in, followed by our early season annuals in the greenhouse and lisianthus. These early plants require so much attention. They need layers of frost blankets through April and a tunnel to be opened and closed with the sun. It is a full commitment, a tangible act of labor that is all meant for a flower to come. It is of course a risk; it always is around here. The risk has to be worth the reward, or at least that is what we have gotten better at trusting. Our systems are getting smoother, a few years under our belt give us something to go off of, and the trust in ourselves has built. We have had to come to the realization that the only way to do what we do is take risks, big and small, to find what works for us. A few years is only a little slice of wisdom, but it is hopeful to see a pattern of gaining a little more knowledge each year. A little bit better understanding of seasonality and this place. A little bit better knowledge of a different perennial or specialty crop. More information gained on season extension and field planning. With time, things only get better. 

We cover extra some nights and set up heaters when the temperatures drop low enough to require it. We try to keep up with our seed starting indoors as we focus on preparing the farm and babying these early planted corms. The risks and worries all stem from the cycle of nature itself. Rabbits munching on new seedlings, voles destroying bulbs, frost blackening green leaves. 

Part of taking risks is also realizing it is not a risk at all. It is just the way things work. That nothing is promised and everything that is not in the now exists in the unknown. You can’t hold on too tightly to something you can’t control, which is the reality of all life on earth. The only thing we can trust in is the divine wisdom and patterns of nature itself. The knowledge of plants. The inevitability that death will always follow life and life will always follow death. 

We are lucky to have work that through the risks and all the effort is inherently grounding. No matter how much you can get lost in the overwhelm of it all, the unknowns and the fears that rock you to your constitution, being with plants and the systems of the dirt will pull you back down, to the here and now: the tangible reality that is a dream in action.