And just like that... it's coming to a close

It’s mid-September?! How did this happen so quickly? And why is it already dipping into the 30’s at night? Tom and I have mixed feelings about the end of the season. On the one hand, we are so tired, I think we secretly long for weekends when we can just chill and hang out with our kids again. On the other hand, this sort of malaise starts setting in as the annual flowers begin to brown and fade. The shorter days and colder nights make them unhappy and within just a few days the fields begin looking spent and ragged. The dahlias enjoy the cool down, but of course true to form, they don’t like too much of a cool down. The dahlia divas prefer a 75-degree day and a 55 degree overnight temp, thank you very much. We try to remind them that we live in Maryland, but they don’t seem to care.

So we have begun to tear out the annuals to make room for the bulbs, corms, and bare roots that we ordered in abundance this year. We are hoping for a slow end to the dahlias, as they provide the last push of revenue in a year that has seen such scarcity.

As the fields change, so do we. We begin shifting focus and reflecting on the season; what went well, and what we’d like to change. There have been such highs in 2020 in relationship building, and our flowers this season have been the strongest and best blooms we’ve ever grown. It is clear that soil amending, fertilizing, and daily attention to field management has paid off.

We have some things we are going to change too. Working smarter, not harder seems to be the trick to an economically sustainable flower farming business. We are refining our target market, planning crops so that we are more focused on spring and fall. We are ramping up off-season revenue streams, forage focused offerings during the winter, dahlia breeding, and cutting sales for spring.

Owning a business is the greatest and most challenging thing Tom and I have ever done. There are so many moving parts that we are trying to manage. We mostly get it right, and the trick this year, as we begin to reflect back, is to give ourselves some grace for the things that we’ve missed. 2020 is going into the books, that’s for sure. Our hope is that we can say it was the most transformative year we’ve ever had.