Hello, dear friends! It's been a great week of scramble to the harvest starting line. Last minute things like shoring up packaging and buying a delivery vehicle (stay tuned for the Mystery Machine:). Okay, these shouldn't really be last minute-ers, but we've been a little busy figuring out next year too. Anyway, we have a few UPS trips coming to our little farm in the next week, and we'll go up to King Cargo to pick up the van in the next few days. We're on the brink of flowers, flowers, flowers, everywhere!  

 We've harvested a few snaps and pops out of the hoop house for delivery to the Birchwood, Seward and Wedge Co-ops this week. Whole Foods, CSA members and others, next. Yeehaw!

The field flowers are finding their roots and the sun and rain of these days will serve them well as they begin to take off.

The celosia kind of hated the 36 and 38 degree nights in the field, but most of them toughed it out and they're rallying.

Oooh the bells of ireland! So beautiful.

Perennial phlox next to the road. Love it.

Cover crop rye in the field.

GOE's sweet corn is just peeking its delicious little heads out of the rich soil.

Sunnies to harvest in the next couple of weeks.

Hope you're enjoying the firsts of June. We are savoring these beautiful crisp mornings and light days. I love the beginning of summer with its light spring greens and tender leaves. Each part has its own charm, but beginnings of things are so new and sweet. There's so much anticipation in the possibilities.

Be well, take deep breaths and pauses, and look for flowers all around in the next couple of weeks. :)

xo

J,M+E

Hello, dear HPF friends! Sometime in the next few days I will circle the farm with our camera to show you all the beautiful exciting growth around here. We're about a week away from harvesting flowers! Eeeyikes! It's early, but so exciting! Especially after the light, steady rain all day yesterday, and the warmth and sun today, the plants are exploding with growth.

For now, we'll share these beautiful children and their parents who joined us for our Flower Children's Garden Planting Day. It was so fun, and we had a lovely day. 

Our blank canvas

Presenting: the Flower Children's Garden!

Earl and I ran through the sprinkler a bit afterward while we admired the finished work. Can't wait until July. It'll be so beautiful.

Thanks to the parents and children, and Emily. It was a lovely day.

xo

J,M+E

Whew, it's been a busy coupla' weeks. Goodness gracious. We weren't planning on tripling our sales this season AND figuring out our whole entire future, but quite often things don't go as we plan. And they go even better than what we planned. We'll see how it all shakes out, but just know that we're working really hard to make sure we're growing flowers for many years to come. 

More on our whole entire future soon. For now, we have so many flowers in the ground! In the hoop house, in the field, in the other field. It's so exciting! Emily and I have been rocking out some serious transplanting, and we harvested tulips all week. They're short-stemmed, but so pretty and we brought them to our promised co-ops, and the Birchwood. 

I was concerned about the short stems, but went to an upscale grocery in the city today and they have petite bouquets and mason jar bouquets. :) I said to Mike, "I'll make them some petite bouquets!" Anyway, it was just so awesome to see our buyers. LOVE my job.

Little craspedia plants, or billy balls in the landscape fabric.

Dianthus and snaps in the field. 

 Rudebeckia or black-eyed susan.

These are the tulips we lost. They were too short, and we just let them go. Abba is the variety. They looked awfully pretty in the field. 

The hoop house is rockin! It's amazing how much taller flowers get, and how much faster they grow. 

 

Lavender, tulips and happy chickens.

Field planting.

Sunny Alley!

Emily is proving to be a really solid addition to our team. We're so happy to have her. She also does marketing for Spiral Natural Foods Co-op in Hastings, and a number of other really cool things. You'll hear from her soon, as she's agreed to guest-blog. Yay!

The rain was also so awesome. A perfect soaker. We could use a few more just like it. Earl and I put on our slickers and went for a walk, but ended up in the tractor shed. Sigh. He just loves them so much. I'm glad he's focused. 

Have a wonderful week! Happy Mother's Day to all!

xo

J,M+E

Hello friends. Thanks so much for all your kind words and support last week. We're making some plans and really, it's all business as usual around here. We have more and more and more flowers, and some are already planted in plastic-covered ground. Tonight's low is 26, but then it's supposed to warm up, so we're hoping for the best. We have four varieties of specialty tulips coming up in the caterpillar tunnel in time, we hope, to make some mamas very happy. The caterpillar tunnel is a relatively inexpensive, easy to construct, small hoop house made of PVC bows, rope, ground stakes and screws, and rope. It looks like a caterpillar. Farmer Mike is a pro with them. We've used it every year, but not to its potential. This year we're doing better. The tulips are rocking, and last year's lilies are on their way with the warmth last week, and Earl and I planted snapdragons and some filler flowers as well. I'm soooo excited for the tulips. They are heartbreakingly beautiful. Double flowers that look kind of like peonies in a sweet orange and red, and silver parrots, a fluttery pinky silver, and a pointy lily tulip in a dark maroon.

This is an earth anchor that screws into the ground about a foot and holds the ropes that secure the plastic on the caterpillar.

Healthy tilled ground getting ready for some flowers! That's our little house, and the happy chickens in the front yard in the distance.

Last fall Mike planted barley as an over winter cover crop. It adds and holds nutrients and water in the soil. Last week he tilled it in and we hope to plant early next week. 

It's still springish despite the bitter cold wind and yesterday's flurries.

And in the new hoophouse Emily and I planted 900 snapdragons, 200 delphinium and 90 icelandic poppies. It's so exciting to rent hoophouse space from GOE this year. This is a new level for us, and key to our future success. Bring the learning, we say!

AND, there are all these to be planted! 2100 sunnies are str-etching their stems trying to find the sun that has made itself scarce this week.

Healthy happy celosia and friends!

Here's Earl's college education, or the lisianthus. We've had great germination in most of our seedings so far this year. (Yay, that means we're learning!) We expect to have lots of lisianthus in fall.

Be well this week!

J,M+E