I must have flowers always and always - Claude Monet.
I have dreamed of creating my own flower farm business for the past couple of years. It all began when I first started selling flowers at our local farmers market- Columbia Falls community market at the Coop. My sister and I set a booth with peppermint and flowers and sold Italian Sodas. It was so much fun to see how my flower bouquets made people so happy!
From there flowers became a big part of my life. The next year I really started to get into flowers. My great grandma, who loves flowers just as much as I do, gave me permission to start a cut flower garden in her hay field next to us. Very quickly I began to learn how to start and grow flowers. I experimented with different soil types and germination, and worked hard to get the soil in my garden to a good place. My Nana was always giving me tips about flowers and making things beautiful.
My family has been really supportive of me. Mom let's me use her greenhouse to start plants, and I even convinced my dad, I needed to set up my garden with landscape cloth and drip lines, just like Erin from Floret Farms in Washington. My mom follows her on Instagram and we bought her book Cut Flower Gardens. Then, Erin sent me a surprise package with a ton of amazing seeds, a t-shirt and notebooks (my mom had tagged a photo of me in my garden on Insta). She really encouraged me as an aspiring flower farmer.
This is the third year of having my cut flower garden, and I am glad to have subscription bougets to sell. The first couple of years, I mainly entered my flowers through my 4H project at the North West Montana Fair in Kalispell. It was so fun to get ribbons for my flowers and learn about what I needed to do to help my flowers have a longer vase life and look their best. This year I planted Dahlias for the first time - they are a new favorite of mine!
I'm always learning - there is a lot to learn. And I'm always weeding - it is a never ending job! But the reward for the hard work is a field of beautiful blooms that make me smile.
I'm super excited to be able to share my flowers with my neighbors and friends (ok, they are probably mom's friends because my friends are twelve and broke). I'm going to start with a weekly bouquet subscription through the month of August.
I hope to be able to offer my flower subscriptions for more of the summer next year and maybe even have a flowers stand at the farm. I have big dreams.
xoxo,
Evie
