Happy Friday dear people,    It’s been a week of digging over here.  I’m developing webbed hands like a mole.  Stick the pitchfork in the ground, push with the foot, add leverage to the handle, repeat 100 times, then squat or get on knees, jam fingers into the loosened soil, pull up roots of mums, or tubers of dahlias, repeat ad infinitum.  Okay, not ad infinitum, but a lot.    We’ve almost completed the mum digging and re-potting and had to turn our attention back to the dahlias in anticipation of more cold and wet weather.  The more rain we get, the harder it is to dig up the tubers, because the days are short and cool, so the ground never really...

Howdy y’all!    We’re beginning an exciting transition and are currently digging up all of our mum plants from tunnel 7, potting them up, and moving them across the farm to create our new nursery in the propagation house.  The prop house is where we take all of our seedlings and grow them out in trays before planting them in the high tunnels (greenhouses) or fields.  Years ago I built waste high tables to fill it, so we could grow all our babies in there in an ergonomic fashion and they’ve served us well.  Change is inevitable however and our new mum project is so big that this one dimensional approach wouldn’t cut it anymore, so all of the tables are...

  Happy Friday from a rainy north Georgia.  We got down to 20 degrees Tuesday evening.  We had been gone for 6 days to visit my family in CA and when we left, the forecast was all warm temps, so we had low stress and good times.  We had a few hikes on the coast, a day burying the kids in the sand on the beach, lots of laughs with family, and a touch of the holiday traffic.     We spent 2 days with my brother in San Francisco too and saw coyotes 2 nights in a row.  On the farm, we are surrounded by huge packs of coyotes.  They howl and squeal and keep us up at night. It's kinda wild...

Happy Friday y’all! I hope you are enjoying a warm cup of something and a break from the hustle.  We’re spending some time with our family and loving every minute of it and are reveling in gratitude for not only the amazing families we have, but also for our life on the farm, our crew, and our customers.  We can’t thank you enough for all of the kindness and support you show us each season.  Your love for our flowers is such a gift to us and your enthusiasm to share our flowers with folks you love in hopes of adding beauty to their lives and bringing them good cheer is always so inspiring and uplifting for us as we...

  Happy Friday y’all!      For all you new subscribers that found your way to our farm through Floret, welcome! Mandy took Erin’s very first workshop over a decade ago and they’ve stayed connected ever since, with Mandy joining her on projects like weddings and assistant teaching at some of Floret’s early in-person workshops back in the day.  Floret has made the biggest impact of anyone on the small flower farming industry worldwide, and our lives have been forever changed by her directly and indirectly.  If you are unfamiliar, I wrote a blog about Floret last year that you can find here.  Very inspiring.    Like many of you, we first got into mums because of Floret.  She wrote a great...

Hey y’all,    We are out in the fields right now getting our workout and our wear out.  It’s dahlia digging time and we’ve got like 9,000 plants (roughly 2 acres) to dig up.  Fortunately the fields are pretty dry, so the earth isn’t fighting as hard to keep its potato bundles as it does during the wet years, but it's still a pretty laborious process.  Mandy and Rachel have been bumping 90’s hip hop and T Swift to smooth out the rough spots.    Here’s the process:  We pull up all the support netting and roll it up.  We pull out all the rebar support stakes and stack them up.  We do a high mow to take plant tops...

Howdy folks,   Frostmas has come and the dahlia plants are melting in the fields.  The butterfly filled fields are filled no more.  The tunnel alarms kept us awake from 4 a.m. on this morning as the inevitable annual kinks need to be worked out of the system.  In fact, one alarm is going off right now as I write this Thursday evening.  I’ll be off shortly to try and sort it out.    We are about to get ready for an overhaul in our propagation house, but have been waiting out the unfolding of nature. Some Passionflower vine took hold in our propagation house and we let it run wild to serve as a host plant for Gulf fritillary...

Hi folks!   Beautiful fall lately, but it’s about to get weird around here.  Heading back up into the mid 80’s for a bit, before finally falling down into a likely killing frost next Wednesday.  So, I guess you should grab your swim suits and head to the pool or the mucky Georgia pond you like to swim in with the snakes.  Or gators.  Depending on how south you are.  Mandy grew up with the occasional gator in her swimming pool down in Richmond hill.  Marsh girl.  Maybe just run through the sprinklers or cut off your sleeves.  Then grab a jacket.   Anyways, the store is open, but we are closing up Thursday and Friday at 4:00 now since...

Hey y’all!  Happy Friday! For those of you who came out to support The Plate Sale at last Saturday’s dinner in the dahlias….Thank you!  What an amazing evening!  Beautiful weather, beautiful flowers, beautiful smiles, and amazing food.  Thanks so much for being a part of it.  Keep an eye out for more events they are putting together.  I hear whispers of another special evening a bit further south coming soon. We also wanna thank Daniel Dent for accepting a last minute request to share his talent and expertise with us and photograph the whole evening.  We can’t wait to see the photos! My older brother and his lovely family just showed up late last night and the kids have never...

       How to address your mums for winter.   For the farmers that are new to mums, I’m reprising a post I made this week last year as we approached an early killing frost.  Those of you further north are likely experiencing “Frostmas” now, or soon, so here’s a few thoughts on how to help your babies:             Though the plants are relatively hardy, the flowers themselves do need frost protection.  Whether that is Reemay, Agribon, a tarp, a greenhouse, or sunroom is up to the grower, but unprotected flowers will get nipped by frost.  It is wise to take the insulative fabric off of the plant as soon as temps become favorable again.  Any...