2021 Year In Review Part 3 of 3
September/October
September brought the start of the change to fall on the farm, however that doesn’t mean that the work load slowed down. This was one of the busiest harvesting time of the year on our farm. All the flowers that we had planted when our summer help was here was now blooming abundantly from amaranthus, marigolds, zinnias, and dahlias. Most of our energy was put into harvest harvesting dahlias. I’m pretty sure we were even harvesting dahlias in our sleep.
Mixed bouquets ready for delivery.
Mixed dahlia bunches ready for grocery store deliveries.
The 8,000 dahlias that we had planted in the spring were now fully mature plants. The dahlias were producing so many blooms each day at one point we were harvesting 2,000 flowers off of them each day. It took many hours each day for us (my mom and I) to harvest that many dahlias. We spent more time in the dahlia fields this fall than we did anywhere else on the farm besides the packing barn. The dahlia plants were so big, some reaching 5ft tall, the walkways were almost gone. It was like a full body workout getting to the flowers sometimes, we definitely did lots of bending, stretching, and lifting of heavy buckets. We didn’t get netting or staking done on the dahlia plants this year and that probably would have made it easier to harvest the flowers, but we got the job done. There were only a few varieties that fell over in the storms we had. The majority of them stayed upright the entire season.
Kate harvesting dahlias.
The upper dahlia field in bloom.
When we weren’t busy harvesting flowers we were in the barn packing up orders and delivering 4 days a week. That meant that my dad, Mark, was off the farm delivering more now and my mom and I were doing all the farm work.
Not only did we harvest a ton of flowers but we also had to pack them in either a mixed grocery store bouquet, a straight bunch, or in a florists order. We made a rule in the packing barn that wherever we were at in packing orders we would stop for the night at 11 PM. This rule was put into place because we spent one too many nights down in the barn packing orders until 1:00am in the morning and that just wasn't feasible for us to keep going with no help.
We would crank up the music to help the bouquet making progress go as fast as we could. Then one night my dad had told us story about an older company he had seen a on a YouTube video. It was about the rise and fall of this company. He is a great storyteller and it was fun to listen and learn from the companies story. So we made him have a new story about a different company each night we were making bouquets. It got to be a bit of a joke but it was so much fun talking and creating more memories as a family while working.
Mixed bouquets loaded on a cart during a bouquet making session. These bouquets were for grocery stores.
Bunching flowers can get messy but our new puppy Claire didn’t mind.
While our focus was directed to harvesting so many flower, which was great. It meant that some thing just had to give at that time of year. We had every intention of planting all of our fall seedlings that we had started before our summer help left but we just didn't have the extra energy. So as hard as it was to see thousands if seedling just died because we couldn’t get them into the ground we knew that it was OK. The best part of farming is that we can continually keep changing the farm to meet our needs. We are always saying the farm works for us we don't work for the farm.
The frost seemed like it would never arrive this fall. We had a few nights where we covered the flower fields. It looked kind of funny seeing such a large area of our farm covered in frost blankets. All of our efforts paid off because we got several more weeks of harvest off of our dahlias. We couldn't believe how long the dahlia crop lasted this fall. It was amazing! Toward the end of the season the dahlias were starting to slow down on their production, the plants were tired and so were we. We kept saying the frost was like waiting for that overdue baby. Finally the frost came and it was welcomed as we were just as tired as the dahlia plants.
We covered as many dahlias as we could with frost blankets to protect them from the frost. It worked and we had dahlia blooms for several more weeks.
Margie harvesting pink zinnias and the last crop of marigolds on the right were just starting to bloom.
Margie harvesting the dahlias.
Then once the frost finally came in late October it was time to start digging the dahlia tubers up for winter storage. It took us several weeks to get them all dug and back to the barn. The dahlias just keep on giving even when they had no more blooms to give, they gave us awesome tubers and lots of them. You can read more about our adventure of digging the dahlias in, The Great Dahlia Dig.
Kate bringing back a full cart of dahlias to the barn.
A full cart of harvested dahlias.
A dahlia covered by ice crystals from the frost.
The dahlia fields on the morning of the first killing frost.
In late October we also started to receive all of our spring bulbs, corms, and seeds for our spring flowers. We were waiting patiently for all of our tulips bulbs this year as they were delayed for many weeks due to the supply chain disruptions. Once all 23,000 tulip bulbs were here on the farm we were under a time crunch to get them planted.
The tulips finally arrived!
Dahlia tubers waiting their turn to be processed for winter storage.
November/ December
November brought a slower pace to the farm. Our heirloom chrysanthemums started to bloom in our gutter connect house. They were beautiful! Each of the 35 varieties we grew were different from the color, to size, the shape, and even the timing of when the bloomed. The last variety bloomed the week of Thanksgiving. We don’t have heat in the gutter connect house that the mums were planted in and they unfortunately froze. This meant we weren’t able to sell any of the lovely blooms. This was a huge disappointment but we took it as a lesson learned that we do need to heat the mums in the fall. We enjoyed the mums for ourselves and kept documenting each variety for the future.
An heirloom chrysanthemum, Mocha.
An heirloom chrysanthemum, Seaton’s Je’ Dore.
We also were busy planting our tulip bulbs outside in raised beds that we built. It took us several weeks to plant the 17,000 tulip bulbs that were designated for outside production. We were planting them and finishing digging the dahlias at the same time. The goal was to have both projects completed by Thanksgiving and we made it happen. We were all so tired and ready for a rest after both jobs were complete. To see how we plant our tulip bulbs check out, Growing Tulips.
A raised bed full of freshly planted tulip bulbs waiting to be covered with compost.
Margie planting tulip bulbs.
It took us most of December to finish putting all of the dahlia tubers that we had dug from the field into winter storage. When we dug the tubers we brought them all into the barn and we had them everywhere. Everywhere you turned in the barn here were dahlia tubers stacked up in piles waiting to be processed. We packed all the tubers in bulb crates, milk crates, any kind of bucket we had, and even a few small trash cans. Anything we could store them in we did. They all were stacked up in our walk-in cooler. In the cooler we can keep the temperature around 45 which is perfect for the dahlia tubers.
Our walk-in cooler used as winter storage for the dahlia tubers.
Kate processing dahlia tubers.
The rest of the tulips were planting in a high tunnel mid-December. We plant tulips inside to have them early in the spring allowing us to have an extending tulip season. We increase the number of tulip bulbs we purchase each year because you can never have too many tulips.
One of the most exciting things that we did this year was purchase a new high tunnel. We had set a goal in the beginning of the year to buy a new large high tunnel by the end of the growing season and we did just that. At first when we went to our supplier we were told that we wouldn’t be able to get the high tunnel for a year. Our supplier came through and the new high tunnel arrived 8 weeks after we ordered it. Getting it constructed took a bit longer. We had to have the land leveled where we wanted to put it. We live on a hill so this was necessary. It took weeks to get in touch with our excavator, then a few more weeks until he was able to get to our job. The final step was getting our contractor here. Our contractor got it built and finished it on Christmas Eve. We couldn’t really ask for a better Christmas gift! It took us about 9 months from planning to finished product.
The last of the tulips bulbs were planted in a high tunnel for early blooms in the spring.
The new high tunnel 34’x96’.
Inside the new high tunnel with a bit of extra plastic from the construction. It’s a clean slate with so many possibilities, we can’t wait to start growing flowers in it.
We also installed a heater in our propagation house. My husband, who is not afraid to tackle something new, installed our heater for us. The propagation house is now at a comfy 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the plants will do so good in there, not to mention how nice it is to work. With the heat in there the plants will no longer be shocked with the fluctuation from daytime to nighttime temperatures.
Once the heater was up and running in the propagation house we were able to start digging our heirloom chrysanthemums up to over winter them. Some of the mums we grow can survive our winters but we don’t risk it and we dig them all. We do this so that we have mother plants to take cuttings from in the spring to make new plants. It has taken us serval years to have the collection of mums we have and there are always new heirloom varieties that we find to add to our collection each year.
Freshly potted up heirloom chrysanthemums.
We hope you have enjoyed our 2021 Year in Review 3 Part series as much as we have enjoyed looking back a on great growing season. We couldn’t do what we love to do for a living with out the support of our customers and our team at the farm.
Here are a few more highlights to good not to share!
Many of the different varieties of dahlias we grow.
Isabel, Ann, Charlotte, and Rosalyn Kate’s daughters holding the last of the dahlia flowers for the year. An annual tradition.
An heirloom chrysanthemum, Coral Charm.
An heirloom chrysanthemum, Moira.
The dahlia field in full boom.
Ali Oop dahlia coverd in a layer of frost.
An heirloom chrysanthemum, Champagne Beauty.
Mix dahlia bunches ready for grocery store deliveries.
