Adventures Amid the Blooms
#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk
Although the peonies are not blooming in full force like they were two weeks ago, there is still plenty happening in the peony world. I accompanied my host this week to Jackson, which is where she primarily sells her flowers. We woke up early on Tuesday morning to wrap 75 ten-stem and 25 five-stem bunches in her garage. We then spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon making deliveries. A bulk of our deliveries went to a boutique in downtown Jackson, where my host keeps a pop-up shop. This is where she has her farm share pick up their bouquets every Tuesday. We also drove to multiple coffee shops she supplies with fresh flowers. We would drive to one location, unload buckets of flowers, then drive to the next, and do the same thing. Rinse and repeat. Finally, we would return to the garage and load up with the remaining flowers, including any special orders, and deliver those. Turns out, deliveries are more tedious than I expected, but essential as a small flower farmer.
Assisting with deliveries also gave me insight into how my host interacts with her customers, and how the public receives the peonies. The owner of the grocery store my host sells to was concerned about how the peonies were bundled. Normally, my host sells peonies at wholesale price, which is $36 for a five-stem bouquet. Normally, this is a price her customers are comfortable with, and many will buy two or three bunches at a time. Last week, my host bundled the peonies in 10 stem bunches and sold them for $72, figuring that since this is the amount customers usually buy, she would just combine them into one bunch and keep the same price as if she was selling two five-stem bunches. Funny enough, no customers bought these bunches, because they seemed more expensive, despite being the same price. It is interesting to see how our brains work. It was also entertaining to watch my host make deliveries because many people recognized her from Instagram. My host is very friendly and excited to meet new people, and this helps establish good relationships with her customer base.
I got to participate in the customer side of peonies myself on Friday. My host put me in charge of creating the “flower recipe” for ten five-stem bunches that would be delivered to a local store in DuBois. I enjoyed this task because it gave me creative freedom and put me in charge of quality control. I got to choose what varieties I wanted to include and the flowers in these groups I wanted to use, depending on freshness, size of the bloom, and stem length. It is very important to my host that the flowers we sell are amazing. We want them to last long in the vase and look beautiful to ensure the customers get their money’s worth. I also got to wrap these bunches, and I am happy to say my wrapping skills have greatly improved since week two! I also enjoyed walking into the store and talking with the owners. I am starting to feel like a true professional!
Now that peony season is almost over, my host and I have more time to explore other aspects of flower farming besides just the harvesting and marketing side of things. Some projects we will be working on include tending to the other cut flowers my host grows, making products out of the remaining blooms, such as jelly and salves, and deadheading. Lots and lots of deadheading. We will also be doing some experiments, such as taking some of the remaining stems out of the cooler to see which varieties have the longest vase life, and exploring different methods of expanding the vase life of the blooms (some of which include using Sprite, of all things!).
As my host has been saying, we are working in reverse. As soon as I got to the farm, I hit the ground running learning how to cut, process, market, and deliver flowers. While these skills are the essentials to a cut flower operation, I think the most important thing I learned was how to manage these aspects together. You can’t let one part of your operation fail in favor of the other. You have to balance them. Seeing my site host manage her many hats of flower farming, how she got started, and the mistakes she made along the way, is invaluable information that few aspiring flower farmers get. These are experiences and lessons I am very grateful for. Now, I am excited to explore the other sides of flower farming these next few weeks to increase my knowledge of this business.
Submitted by: Emzie Coop
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team
