The Blooms and the Bees
#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk
This week started off slowly. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were spent weeding (or, attempting to with some vicious wind!). But by Thursday, the temperature got up to the eighties, and several peony varieties finally bloomed. There’s a lot of joy in bloom season. I loved finally seeing the different shapes and colors of the flowers, watching honeybees trying to crawl inside the petals to greedily get the pollen inside, and carrying dozens of stems at a time to be processed. There’s also a lot of adjustment, as my quiet days of weeding have now turned to a mad dash of cutting the peonies at just the right moment.
While last week I learned how to process the flowers (which came in very handy this week), this week included lessons regarding what to look for when cutting peonies, sustainability, and on a less essential but very fun note, how to drive a four-wheeler. My site host can attest that up until Thursday, I was often seen walking the Peony rows, squeezing the buds, asking “are they ready yet?”. Every variety is different, but most buds are ready when they show a lot of color and feel like a marshmallow (hence why I was squeezing the buds). Some are also ready when a couple of the outermost petals begin to open. I learned that its sometimes better to cut the buds a little earlier, especially if they are a variety with prominent stamens. This is because honeybees, while delightful to watch, trigger the end of the flower’s life cycle when they are pollinated, reducing the life of the flower in a vase. So, while some varieties aren’t ready until they are very large and just slightly open, others need to be cut before that point.
With this in mind, my site host taught me to leave a few buds on each plant. This is both for the benefit of the bees, and for the health and future of the plant. If too much is cut-off, there is less vegetation, resulting in less stored sugar in the roots for next year’s plant. This challenges my previous views of sustainability. Sustainability is important to me. If I have an operation of my own, I want to use practices that keep the environment in mind. While the farm I am working at does not explicitly label themselves as “sustainable”, they use many practices, like the one mentioned above, that are mindful to the health of the plant and the nature around it, while also maintaining a successful yield. I think I can get too caught up in the mainstream view of sustainability sometimes, and I forget that sustainability at its core is actually quite simple and intuitive.
This week has given me several skills to carry with me as I think about a career in flower farming. Such skills include asking myself questions to evaluate what sustainability would look like for my operation. How do I work with my environment? What does the environment need? What do I need for this operation? These are important questions that will help me create a mindful operation. Additionally, this is just the beginning of bloom season, and the things I am doing now to stay organized, such as counting how many stems of each variety I cut a day and counting the stems that are in each water bucket, will keep me and my site host from being overwhelmed later on.
Lastly, a lot of my site host’s information about starting her farm, and how to improve it, has come from other flower farmers, whether it be through online courses, DM-ing on Instagram, or attending conventions. The flower farming community seems to be very supportive of each other, quick to give tips and tricks and eager to celebrate the successes of others. This is networking at its finest. My question is how do you network, especially in a niche community, such as flower farming? How do you make these lasting connections to strengthen your own operation, and help strengthen others as well? It’s a beautiful thing to watch, and I doubt I would be able to get very far without it. These are questions I will ask my site host when she gets back from her conference. In the meantime, its time to continue the chaotic but enjoyable time that is bloom season!
Submitted by: Emzie Coop
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team
