2021 Year In Review Part 1 of 3
Our high tunnels in January after a snow storm.
What a year 2021 was for us. It was full of great successes and challenges like most years. We grew more flowers than we ever have before and it was amazing, a lot of hard work but the end results were amazing. We wouldn’t have been able to do anything with out our great team we had. With their efforts we were able to have one of our best years yet at the new farm.
January & February
The beginning of January each year brings a whole new year of endless possibilities and this was our 5th season at the new farm. We were ready to take on the season ahead. We spent countless hours planning our seeding schedule, mapping out the fields deciding what flower would go where and how much we would need to grow of each flower. We tentatively planned out each week’s grocery store bouquets and florist availability lists. Taking the time to plan as much as we can in the beginning of the season helps guide us when we are in the height of the season and don’t have time to think. Let me tell you when you are exhausted from harvesting all day and packing orders most evenings there is not much mental strength that can go towards what has to be seeded next. Our future selves thanked us this season with all of the preplanning we took the time to do.
The best part of planning is that we can stay inside in our comfy clothes sitting by the fire watching the snow fall outside. Oh and there are lots of cookies (homemade of course because we actually have time to bake), tea, and coffee to keep us fueled as we plan a great season.
Here are some of our favorite companies that we like to buy our seeds, plugs, and bulbs from.
Ranunculus corms ready to be pre-sprouted before being planted in a high tunnel.
The winter months are also for our continuing education. We like to take classes during the off season to keep up with the best way to grow the best flowers for our customers. Also how to run our business more efficiently and how to better serve our customers. We even built this new website on our own from taking the classes. We aren’t just farming, we are trying to run a successful business and keeping up with the ever changing times we live in. Here is a list of our favorite resources of classes that have helped us grow our business:
One side of our gutter connect high house with anemones and ranunculus growing. We also planted lettuce, kale, and other cold hardy veggies for our family’s winter food production.
During the summer of 2020 we reconstructed a gutter connect greenhouse that we had taken down and moved from our previous farm to the new one. It sat in a heap since the great move in 2016 mocking us every time we walked by it saying “please put me back together again.” Now that the greenhouse was up we were determined to get it ready for spring flowers. Any nice day we were out there moving soil and compost in to create our beds for growing the flowers. We were able to have nine rows in the gutter connect house with one dedicated to eucalyptus. By the end of January our anemones and ranunculus were ready to be transplanted in to the new beds in the gutter connect house.
Ranunculus growing in our gutter connect house.
By this time we were starting seeds and trying to stick to the seeding schedule we made. Most of our days were spent in our propagation house tending to the new seedlings, covering and uncovering the anemones and ranunculus depending on the temperatures, and getting our other high tunnels ready for planting.
One of our high tunnels with fresh compost on the beds before it was incorporated into the soil.
Kate’s daughter, Charlotte, helping transplant anemones in the prepared high tunnel beds.
We started to divide dahlia tubers. Dividing dahlia tubers is a work of love and adventure. Every variety is different, some have large tubers while others are very small. While dividing you may only get two or three new separated tubers per clump while another may have as many as 10 or 15. It can be tedious at times due looking closely at each clump looking for the “eyes” which are need on each tuber for it to create a new plant. Our end result was over 8000 dahlia tubers which we planted in June.
The first anemone buds stared to appear in our high tunnels at the end of February. Seeing the first flower each year is quite the delight to our senses after the typical gloom of winter weather in our region. The first flower keeps us motivated that spring is really around the corner regardless of how much snow is on the ground outdoors.
Our first anemone bud of the 2021 growing season.
March/April
Margie transplanting pre-sprouted ranunculus.
In March we continued to transplant ranunculus and anemones in our high tunnels. It seemed like this task would never end because we planted more than ever before. We trialed many different verities of ranunculus in loads of colors. Some worked better than others and we found out that we just didn’t have enough room to grow certain ones again. Maybe when we have more growing space inside will we bring back the other types.
Margie and Kate finished transplanting the last of the ranunculus in the high tunnel.
In March we started to harvest the first anemones of the season. It had been many months since we had fresh flowers from our farm and it was a great feeling to have them again. It takes several weeks for the anemones to produce enough flowers to sell. We took full advantage of the fresh blooms and enjoyed them ourselves.
A white anemone flower.
We continued to seed many flowers and we ran out of material and seedling trays quickly. In years past we would be able to get the product we needed in the spring time in a timely fashion. Not this year! Like so many others we were effected by the broken supply chain. We weren’t able to get the trays we needed to seed our flowers. We use a vacuum seeder to seed our 128 count trays, it is fast and efficient. But when we couldn’t get more 128 count trays anywhere this spring, we had to figure out something fast. We reached out to the company we bought our vacuum seeder from and ordered seeding plates for 72 count trays because it seemed all the suppliers had those readily available. Whew, now we could get back on track with the seeding schedule that we spent so much time on.
Kate holding the first bunch of anemones of the season.
Our propagation house full of seeded trays.
By the end of March we were harvesting loads of anemones and watching the farm come to life. The daffodils and tulips beds were starting to grow, plants were arriving that we had ordered last year, and we were even able to start working our fields.
Lisianthus transplants being planted in our gutter connect house.
April started off with the first round of lisianthus, snapdragons, and stock seedlings planted in our gutter connect house. We tried our hardest to get as many transplants in the ground before the tulips were ready to be harvested because once the tulips started to bloom it was all hands on deck. The wonderful sunshine and warmer days brought the tulips on fast. First the tulips in the high tunnel bloomed. There were few hundred of each variety in the tunnel to get the tulips season started. We said this was the warm up round for the thousands we had in the beds outside that were not far behind.
Then the tulips started to bloom outside about a week later and all we did was harvest tulips. Well it seemed like that’s all we did. The tulips were beautiful and our favorite varieties were the Salmon & Apricot Impression, Apricot Parrot, Icoon, and all of the fringed types. In all we harvested, processed, delivered, and sold 13,000 tulips this spring. It was pretty intense and amazing.
Our outside beds of tulips.
Kate harvesting tulips.
The weather was so nice in April we started shipping early in the month to florists and grocery stores. the bouquets were filled with colorful cheerful spring flowers. To say we were busy during this month in an understatement. If we weren’t harvesting and packing orders we were seeding, transplanting, watering, and still trying to keep a household of eight going. It was a bit of a blur.
A full cart of harvested tulips.
Tulips packaged up on their way to grocery store in and around the Pittsburgh area.
There was two more major tasks that needed to be completed for us to have another successful season. First the barn floor needed to be concreted. It took a few months to get the best contractor for the job and they did a great job. We could now use the barn that we had build the previous summer and move the business out of the house. It was huge! Second was the electric. The electric was finally installed and also installed into our gutter connect house. There was still loads of work to do to be able to start processing flowers in the barn but we were well on our way.
Our new floor in our barn. This new work space helped move the flower processing out of our house.
Here’s a few more highlights in April because they are too good not to share.
An arm load of Apricot Parrot tulips. One of our favorite varieties.
A bed of Stock growing nicely in our gutter connect house.
Champagne ranunculus blooming in onr gutter connect house.
A ranunculus, daffodils, and anemones harvest.
