I whipped up this wild little bouquet last spring, on the first week of May. I love having past snippets to measure how the current season compares with the others. We are certainly late this year!
The rain keeps coming; at this point it’s just comical. Nothing to do but shrug and carry on I guess.
I called a long time grower last night and the defeat in his voice was hard to hear. He’s announced it will be his last season farming flowers. It’s time to retire, not work so hard, escape south for warm winters and more sun. He grew up on a bulb farm in Holland, is the 6th generation to carry the tradition forward and has no one to pass the torch to.
I pray I have been a good student and have soaked up enough of his wisdom to carry some of the magic into the future.
In the flower farming world, there seems to be a changing of the guard. While it’s a bit scary to be “the new generation”, I have a feeling that us newbie’s are going to rock the boat... in a really great way!
If you represent the way flower farming might be going...BRING IT ON!! And yet, so many generations for your grower friend with no family to pass it on too, that must be hard.
ReplyDeleteI am afraid we have your sunshine - over a month without a single drop of rain, unheard of in an English spring. My garden is turning into dust, which has its own worries, but for proper farmers? -a commercial nightmare I should think. I hope the fields dry out for you soonest.
What Belinda said.
ReplyDeleteIt's a hard life you've chosen for yourself, but a beautiful one.
Both for you and for us, the happy customers.
Keep it, don't let the rain dampen your enthusiasm.
xo Jane
And again I must echo Belinda and Jane, less articulately. I am getting a similar sense that the smaller, more diversified, broadly-thinking, creative and conscientious flower farmer is the key to the future survival and success of this industry here in the US. Certainly I would like to be buying every single stem I design with from an operation like Floret Flower Farm! I'm sending a big thank you for all you do and the inspiration you provide.
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