The flowers have our backs

Every season is different and every year we learn a bit more about the flowers and ourselves. My favorite thing about working with plants is the never-ending layers they have to offer. You think you know a plant well and it shows you something new, a part of its personality you haven't met yet or a new challenge it faces. The well-loved zinnia, one morning, shows itself in a new light. A glimpse is caught of an iris bloom in the early hours of sunrise, all closed up in a pattern and shape you've never seen. A deep knowing is formed of flowers in their green seedling stage, as well as in their death. An intimacy builds through the challenges the same flower faces in different seasons. Perennials we establish get more boisterous and show us more bounty as they mature. We get to greet new varieties we haven't met yet. Blooms come at slightly different windows every season depending on our timing and the weather's. There is a consistent inconsistency to farming. A natural pattern deeply embedded in the language of all things here in this earth system- mirrored so delicately in the labor and bounty of farming.

The season always starts slowly, there is a sweet mildness as spring unfolds, but by the solstice it transforms into a whirlwind of a green thickness. Somehow we have already arrived to the bounty of July where rows of seedlings and weeding done in earnest back in early May transformed into a field of magic. Flowers as tall as us, a warm sea of colors and the humming of life takes the place of open soil we were just busy broad-forking. Some nights we walk out there and have to pinch ourselves: This dreaminess is truly tangible and all came from some potent little seed packets, rains, good soil, worms and hard work.

Larkspur as tall as us :)

The early season brought some new growth and inevitably, challenges for us. It was our first year offering our spring CSA subscription. Tulips we had tucked into both the greenhouse and the unprotected field were meant to bloom for weddings, spring subscriptions and our wholesale offerings for local florists. We had also planted hycanith and other spring bulbs last October, including some new daffodil varieties. On random winter days, a thought would cross our minds, are those tulip bulbs okay? What if all that time and money invested into them doesn't pay off? But besides making sure the voles stay out and they stay watered, it truly is a waiting game and a letting go of control.

The tulips came up hopeful at first. Little nudges of green arrived from our temporary raised beds filled with compost. But we watched as the first batch of tulips came in underdeveloped in our tunnel. The blooms were small, mushy and short, or there were none at all. We began digging only to find disease that had rapidly spread amongst the whole tunnel. We ran into other issues too- hycainth bulbs that ended up being planted to shallow because top soil eroded away. Daffodils that came in with stems too short to work with. It was easy to start spiraling about our outlook on spring, a time where every stem counts and gets used. As a land-based floral practice, we always come back to the root of why we started this: our commitment to source everything from our farm, to walk a seasonal path with the flowers that exercises our intuition, and rekindle the threads of the ancient practice of seasonal ritual and adornment. A big dreamy and beautiful concept that was conceived out of a necessity and passion to take a new approach, but sometimes the weight of how ambitious it really is, can feel impossible to carry.

Our tulips in the tunnel showing themselves at mid-april. Many of these were lost to disease.

In May we did our best to handle the losses and support each other through the emotional ebb and flow of these challenges. We had no choice but to trust that we would come up with solutions and be honest about the process. It is in times like that, that it can be easy to doubt the magic. Things are going wrong, money is lost and there is a real possibility we won't be able to pull off all the floral offerings we committed to at the caliber and standard we pride ourselves in. But at the root of all of this, is the truth that there is only so much we can control. In our commitment to a seasonal practice we follow the patterns of what the land offers us, even when the land offers what feels like catastrophe. It is still what the sky and the soil and the wind and rains have given us. And that is the point right? The beautiful juxtaposition of life and death. Of love and loss. Of pure magic and malevolent darkness. It is the way two opposites pull on each other and create the lovely web of in-betweeness that is our human lives. That is all a farm really is. A big long nuanced string between life and death, pulling back and forth between the two on any given time of the year, day, or moment.

Clouds rolling in on a June night over the farm.

There is always a grief in any achievement and a destruction through any bounty. But from our human perspective, the lack of control can feel astounding at times. There is a great surrender to the systems that mysteriously work beyond us required to do this work. To give into the grief and accept a loss on the farm is to also accept the loss as a business- a monetary one, a pride one. How can there be a sacred time to sit with grief and feel reverence for the cyclical nature of things when there are real world consequences to these happenings? There is tug between a world of wild magical, sometimes destructive and disease-ridden, pathways of nature and the world of straightforward structure and certainty. There is a challenging of the concept that if you do one thing well, something else will surely come to follow. That life is as simple as formulas. The paradigm we are taught in school, that hard-work pays off and allows both a tangible reaping of benefits, and a sense of control comes crumbling down when hard-work, planning and weeks of devotion to details does not result in the direct desired outcome. The most stunning thing about farming is how this mode of thinking is almost never the case and how it never really is the case in our human lives anyways. No matter how much you know, how many times you've relied on a method before, something can always go wrong and changes come up. That is where the lessons of this work lie. In the self reflection and the ability to adapt and look within. The benefit is not always as simple as earning the thing you wanted. It is sometimes secretly embedded in the lessons learned so deeply through lived experience. Farming sure has a way of subtly mirroring your emotional life back to you, bringing things to the surface.

Sweet peas staying busy growing their tall tendrils and preparing for high scent blooms.

In our fury of problem-solving and feeling the grief of these losses, Em was busy quickly building a temporary cooler from scraps. Last year we operated without a coolspace- besides a makeshift AC set-up in our house. As the small cooler was being finished up, the first flush of tall daffodils were coming in hot. We were delighted to have these tall, beautiful, usable stems! We frantically cut and stashed them in that cooler, already trying to problem solve how to divide them up for our events and subscription.

Next, the Tulips that were still healthy in our raised beds out in the field came in one big sweeping mass over the course of a week. Although we grew different varieties for early and late blooming, an unseasonably hot week caused explosiveness throughout the whole bed. A perk of tulips is that they store well in the cold with their bulbs attached- so we stashed every stem on our shelves. We fiddled with the AC unit in the cooler, which kept giving out, spooking us that all those precious tulips and daffs we were relying on would be lost. We started to build hope as we went through our first weeks of spring subscriptions with enough beautiful bounty to give to our members even through our loss. It is surely a puzzle in the early season to count stems and decide what flowers should be held in storage for an upcoming event, while also considering keeping enough weekly diversity for our subscription and other offerings.

A variety that was a true winner for us, producing long straight stems both in and outside of our high tunnel.

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Our first wedding this year was the last weekend of May. The narcissus held up well in cool storage, with a few later varieties still trickling in. The day before wedding design day, we noticed a bleeding heart tucked into our fern patch was delicately hanging its train of blooms in full show. A few days prior, the first lilac gently brushed up against my cheek as I walked by, with her sweet inviting scent and mesmerizing panicles. I paused, and stared at her sweetness with so much gratitude for the way she shows up such force here for the span of a few weeks. Lilac in all shades is a staple for our early design work as she ushers in the spring to summer transition with pure beauty.

Unexpectedly, our first ranunculus budded up in our tunnel, letting us sneak some of those early buds into the design work as well. And lastly, the flowering branches were in their moment of intoxicating abundance. Fluffs of crabapple blossoms and tightly closed drooping clusters of chokecherry flowers finished off the magic of spring. The trust in the seasons is what truly allows the abundance and blessing of the land to be so clear. The flowers love to adorn. They want to be there for us and ease our worries. They want to dance with their friends in bouquets and garlands and celebrate love. It is easy to get caught up in wanting to control the process. To make sure the timing is right and to fool ourselves into thinking we get a say over these patterns. But the tides of the seasons truly know whats best for us with a deep ancient wisdom. It is humbling to watch the flowers show up for you. To remember they have desires too. Having a land based floral practice is more than using our knowledge to farm and plan what varieties bloom when, but it is a commitment to rely on the beautiful pattern of what naturally just is.

Our first May wedding so sweetly captured the innocent love of spring. High-scent lilac and flowering branches got to dance with their friends tulip and narcissus in this wedding bouquet.

Our next wedding of the season was early June, a time where most flower farmers and growers alike struggle to exist in a gap between bounty. The early crops of spring bulbs and foliage have slowed down, but the heat loving annuals haven't quite hit their stride. We rely on our corms and perennials for this time frame, but are still working on building a solid team of perennials, a project that will take time and patience as plants establish. This was the first year we booked a full-service wedding this early in June, but we tend to gravitate towards that which challenges us and we were over the moon to say yes to this lovely couple. I knew it would be such an elegant time of the wheel of the year for wedding blooms, if we could just get the timing right. We were hypothesizing and planning recipes for arrangements months out and walking the fields a couple weeks before trying to predict if certain varieties might just open and make their June arrival early. I took endless notes on what was growing around the farm, bushes and shrubs, wild greenery and branches. I came up with recipes, counted and sorted what was in our cooler, and checked on our stash of dried flowers for a back up plan. These are the moments when we long for the days of bounty in July and August, when there are no worries about having enough and the worries switch to selling enough. The shoulder season of spring is a favorite for wedding work but a challenge for us as growers here in the North. There is an inherent risk in scheduling a wedding in a time when there isn't an endless bounty and when we have made a commitment to sourcing from the land, but once again the flowers showed us they always have our backs.

Our tulips continued trickling in with the last our late varieties, beautiful peony type blooms the most elegant shades of purples and sugar dusted pinks. The sweet lilac was in full force still on the edges of Lake Superior in all her marvelous shades. Lily of the valley had grown tall underneath our big cedar tree and was the perfect length to utilize in centerpieces. Branching flowering shrubs added the airiness and structure that pairs so well with the sturdiness of spring flowers. Sprigs of chives and our first butter yellow iris that I dug up from my late grandmother's cottage garden were tucked into the design work as well. We were blessed by the flowers, giving us more abundance than we needed. We were able to pull of a full slew of centerpieces, bouquets, cake flowers and an altar install all with June's natural precious bounty.

June's dance of blooms adorned our early full service wedding.

Part of our floral practice of using what is in season on our farm is tuning in to the natural, delicate language flower beings share with each other. The way certain flowers bloom in the same windows and so effortlessly compliment one another. The perfumes of one spring flower ebb and flow into the buds and textures of the rest. A floral dance occurs. A silent language of scent, depths of colors and undulating curls of green is spoken through every small moment of the design.

Through all the chaos of spring, the loss of control, the letting go of what could have been and the openness to the land's offerings, the flower beings held us through it all. They watched over us during our anxieties and impatience and waited to send us little lessons and love on us with their bounty. They eased us and calmed us, they showed up for us. They waited for our trust and offerings and love back. Their magic works their way into our lives through this land-based practice, but also into the lives of the couples we adorn. The flowers show up for us and for the nearlyweds, tying them into an ancient tradition of floral adornment that has always been rooted in the seasonal flow of flowering beings. Flowers have so much love and sweetness for humans. There is a reason flowers show up for love, at the core of their being that is what they are, a pure embodiment of love, patience and the magic of the ephemeral.