• Flower Farming

    Flower Farming Diaries: The June Gap

    You know the saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know”? Yeah, I’ve definitely been feeling the truth of THAT this whole first year of flower farming. I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent individual, so when I approached this whole idea of actually going for my flower farm dream, I did a LOT of research. And I mean a LOT. Even now, several months in, I’m still studying seed catalogs for fun and browsing through a flower farming or flower arranging book nearly every day. But in all my research and all my spreadsheet-making and all my careful…

  • Flower Farming - The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 16 May 2021

    Can I still call these The Homestead Weekly when I’m only averaging one of them a month? 🙂 Not surprisingly, basically all of my time has been hijacked by flower farming. Once I’ve planted out the first big wave of all the tender annuals (which will probably happen around the 24th of this month), I anticipate that things will slow down a *little* bit until about July, when I’ll be ramping up harvesting like crazy. For May and June, I’m basically just starting some more succession planting in the grow room, picking enough to cover the CSA bouquet subscriptions (which…

  • Flower Farming - The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 11 April 2021

    I want to be keeping up on these each week (if for no other reason than the fact that they’re so good for ME to be able to look back on!), but man, life has been crazy lately. Flower farming is so much work, and though I really love it, it does take up pretty much all of my time. But since it’s been 3 weeks since my last one, I really wanted to not wait any longer before doing an update, so I’m taking a break and completing this now rather than sowing more seeds like I should be…

  • Day in the Life - Flower Farming

    Day in the Life of a First Year Flower Farmer {Spring}

    Just for fun, I’m planning on doing a Day in the Life post for each season this first year of being a flower farmer. Not only will this help anyone reading to see the level of work that goes into managing even a micro scale flower farm operation (we’re only growing on about 1,000 square feet this year), but I’m hoping it will also be a valuable resource for me looking back. I will note, this was done on the 31st of March 2020, and it was a slightly different day than usual because my daughter was on spring break…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 21 March 2021

    Happy first day of spring on Saturday! After a lovely week of warm temps in the fifties and sixties, we celebrated the first day of spring by getting snow that night and then having the coldest night of the month yet last night :). So it goes! In the Kitchen After weeks of being insanely busy with flower farming stuff and neglecting all but the most basic survival stuff around the house, something had to change—I knew the pace wasn’t sustainable, and I didn’t want to feel like I was always making the kids and the house feel like they…

  • Flower Farming - The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 14 March 2021

    Whooooo, things have been crazy! I knew they would be when I decided to officially try out flower farming, but the past couple weeks have really proven to me that I’m definitely not used to “working” this much (aside from the work of homemaking and childcare, obviously). All in all, things have been going pretty good though, and I’m really proud of all that we’ve been doing and what we’ve accomplished thus far. In the Kitchen When I haven’t been working all day on flower farm stuff, I find I still take great pleasure in cooking, like yesterday when I…

  • Flower Farming - Gardening

    5 Things I’ve Learned About Flower Farming This Week

    Whew, it’s been a busy week! It’s crazy how fast this dream of doing a “little flower farm side thing” has evolved over the past few weeks. Basically what started out as a simple idea for how to gain back some of the money for my cut garden hobby has now grown into a legit business venture, and I’m putting in the hours to prove it. Not only do I need to do the actual WORK of producing flowers for selling, but I’m also having to learn a ton about marketing and business and all sorts of fun things. I…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 28 February 2021

    January felt like it was 1,000 days long, but I’m a bit incredulous that we’re already at the doorstep of March. That’s typically how February goes for me, though, just because there’s almost always the first whiff of spring in the air, and I usually start to get a good jolt of motivation to do All the Things because of it. This year was no exception, and my motivational jolt seems to have been more like a lightning bolt as I’m now throwing myself 100% into my latest dream, as you’ll see below. Note: There are affiliate links to products…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 21 February 2021

    When I was younger, I was really into journaling and kept a diary of some sort or another from the time I was six until my mid-twenties. However, as the years went on, there would occasionally be long gaps of several months when I didn’t record anything at all and inevitably, I kept putting off writing again because I didn’t want to take the time to “play catch up” and write down everything I’d missed recording. So I would go a few more months without making an entry. Finally, I just decided one year that enough was enough and that…

  • Homeschool Diaries

    Homeschool Diaries // Week One

    Sorry for the radio silence—there’s been a lot to adjust to over here, what with the move into my mom and stepdad’s basement, the fact that Matt is now staying up in Cache Valley for half of the week so he doesn’t have to commute for two and a half hours a day, and the start of our homeschooling journey (which was never in the cards in my original Life Plan). And I definitely WANT to be writing—oh, I want to be writing pretty much daily! I want to be writing about our (roller coaster) search for our next home,…