Garden Picture Escape
I just want to share some beauty with you! Here goes…
A few of my early dahlia varieties! Can I just say, I am loving these :)
Ready for bouquet making! My backyard gets transformed into a floral studio at least once per week.
Poppies! These are some of my favorite blooms this summer. They are bringing me SO MUCH JOY!!
A quick afternoon harvest. During the peak blooming months I’m harvesting 3 times per week.
A seasonal bridal bouquet using stock, ranunculus, peonies and ladies mantle.
May 12th Two Minute Garden Tour!
This summer I’m inviting you to join my digital garden tours! I’ll walk you through the garden (2 minutes at a time) to showcase what’s up on the farm.
Here’s my first one, taken on May 12th. About half the garden is planted and irrigation is set up.
The garden always looks a little worrisome this time of year. Plants get a bit shocked going in the ground and every year I worry!
But I promise, by my next tour, things will have perked up and in no time I’ll be sharing some gorgeous blooms with you!
Enjoy :)
How I started flower farming
Want to know how all this started?! Thought it would be fun to indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events by taking you through my farming start-up years.
Read on to find out how this all began. I’ll take you back to 2013. Back to our time just outside Madison, WI. Back to a wild, homestead turned commercial farm.
But my farming actually goes back even further, to when I was a child. I’ve always had the plant-lover in me, even from a very young age. I remember insisting on having my own garden, apart from the family plot. And one of my favorite crops: strawflowers! I still grow them to this day. They remind me of being a kid and the magic of growing - from seed to flower.
My very first job was in a greenhouse. I have very fond memories of biking 10+ miles (I couldn’t yet drive) from Eagle River to Muldoon to work at the now-gone Alaska Greenhouse.
I was all set to take this passion further into college but changed course at the last minute from Sustainable Ag to Ecology and Art. In retrospect what a perfect major for a gardener. Being a gardener is part artist, part scientist, part naturalist.
Here I am with one of our laying hens. In addition to flowers we raised 200 + laying hens, turkeys, meat chickens, sheep and pigs!
But honestly I lost touch with gardening for some time and pursued other interests. It wasn’t until I found myself living in the midwest that reconnected with gardening and farming in a big way.
My husband and I moved onto a 40 acre farm in south-central Wisconsin in the summer of 2013.
This was after he worked on a variety of farms in the Madison area. And boy, does he have some wild stories to tell - from milking cows on a raw-milk dairy to holing up in a donut shop to avoid a tornado on the way to his job as manager of a vegetable CSA farm.
His love of animals and the desire to work outside was the motivator in making this farm happen. We started with a flock of 200 laying hens, pictured above on a a property we found to rent on craigslist for dirt cheap.
As a life-long gardener, I was thrilled with the opportunity to go from having my neighborhood community garden plot to having ACRES to grow.
Soon we added meat chickens, turkeys and pigs. Sheep came soon after as a means to mow the pasture on our property.
8 foot tall ragweed in the perennial flower bed :(
There was a small perennial flower garden on the property that was covered in 8 foot tall rag weed. I conned my mom to help and we practically broke our backs weeding that thing. In fact, most of the growing area on this property was covered in ragweed. We weeded and weeded and weeded.
This was my first taste at flower farming and I loved it!
A pic of our market stand. Flower bouquets and stems by the each on the right.
The following year, I planted a patch of annual flowers and grew for a flower subscription and a tiny new farmers market in Madison.
Spring planting! There’s always so much hope and potential that comes with planting. Plus sore backs and endless work.
Here’s me and my farm dog Max, netting my first bed of snapdragons.
Our son was born on the farm during that third growing season. What a joy it was to have him come into the world.
Living on a 40 acre farm, working off farm and trying to grow a family was a lot!
When our son was 8 months we made the painstaking decision to leave the farm and move back to Alaska.
This was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made. I’ll probably never forget Jason and I walking the rural road with our dogs running and baby in the backpack, ruminating on this decision over and over.
This picture just sings BOUNTY! You can see our turkeys in movable houses to the left. And there’s me taking stock of my zinnia bed at the height of summer.
Here’s me harvesting for market. And there’s the farmhouse in the back. Our son entered the world in that house with the help of three fabulous midwives.
After leaving the farm I knew I had to continue growing. I just had no idea how this would happen. After a hiatus from farming and growing a small home garden in our yard I discovered that people were farming in the city! Who knew?
Llewyn reaping the benefits of a small backyard garden.
I poured over google earth and online property tax info to find the dream properties in my neighborhood.
I wrote a few letters to the land owners got interest! An amazing couple was open to having me garden on their vacant lot!
And so began Turnstone Farm 2.0 - an urban flower farm. The first two years I also grew herbs and salad mix but have since decided to focus my growing strictly on flowers.
My current flower farm is a small plot on a vacant lot.
So what’s next for the farm?
I’m always looking for more land. I have my eye on a few properties in the neighborhood. And wouldn’t turn down something rural again if an opportunity came.
But more than thinking about expanding the footprint of my tiny farm, I want to 1) make a profitable business, 2) pay myself a living wage 3) grow demand for Alaskan flowers 4) make really happy customers!
The urban flower farm in full bloom.