I love growing flowers. I think it’s an agricultural extension of my art school days- color theory was one of my favourite classes. Color, texture, pattern, shape- growing flowers offers all of that food for the senses, but it goes beyond just the intellectual combining of colors and shapes. For me, growing flowers is sheer joy.
2009 was an aborted growing season for us, although it ended in us buying 46 North Farm, so it was worth the frustration. In 2010 we planted very few flowers, largely due to the combination of no elk fence to protect them plus a lack of time, a result of our full time work that was (and is!) paying the bills. The dahlias struggled, and even if I had managed to get some flower seeds started, we barely had any beds to plant them in.
For the 2011 growing season I had the motivation of knowing that we had a big wedding to supply flowers for in early August, plus we wanted to participate in the first season of the River People Farmers Market. I knew if I had enough flowers and herbs growing, between that and our edible plant starts we could pull it off.
There are flowers that I had been growing every season since we began farming that I hadn’t seen blooming for two years. I missed them deeply, like dear old friends I hadn’t seen in far too long. When they started to unfurl early this summer I would snatch a bit of time whenever I could to go and see what had begun blooming that day, quietly whispering “Hello!!” to each flower so that Eddie and Squeaky wouldn’t laugh at my sentimentality.
It was wonderful: bachelor buttons in deep blue, purple and burgundy black, all the tall golden yellow and deep red marigolds that make such long-lasting cut flowers, calendula in shades of peach, orange and yellow, and the lovely nicotianas! My favorite lime green, the delightful nicotiana langsdorfii with its dangling green bell-shaped flowers, and the delicious jasmine variety- white flowers that release the most amazing fragrance in the evening. Tall red snapdragons and drifts of White Bishops Lace flower, and the dark purple Bishops Lace flower whose name I forget. Towering yellow and burgundy coreopsis and deep pink cosmos swaying in the breeze. And of course the dahlias, rebounding with new enthusiasm despite the best efforts of an army of slugs.
And then there were all the herbs whose flowers and foliage mix so beautifully into bouquets–lavender, catmint, oregano, sage, thyme, fennel, lemon balm–the fragrance and colors were intoxicating, not just to me but to the waves of beneficial insects that moved across our farm, turning the flowers rows into a vibrating, humming fiesta. Honey bees, bumble bees, hover flies, wasps, butterflies and moths have been feasting on our flowers for months. Less desirable creatures showed up too, including grasshoppers, cucumber beetles, black aphids and the most impressive infestation of slugs I have seen in my life. Many of our visiting insects, slugs and snakes feasted on each other as well, which is all a part of the process. We’re still working on balance in our farm’s ecosystem, but all things considered the damages were outweighed by the benefits.
It is truly satisfying to grow food for people. I am excited about this evolving part of our farm, but I know I will always grow flowers and make bouquets for our market booths as well, because people pay us for flowers in ways that far outstrip money alone.
The young couple on their honeymoon who bought a bouquet at the Cannon Beach Farmers Market to decorate their hotel room. The proud mother who bought flowers to give to her young daughter after her first dance recital. The older woman who was taking flowers to the cemetary to put on a friend’s grave. The countless people whose faces light up as they look over the bouquets, trying to pick which one to take home. Shy boyfriends buying flowers for their girlfriend, presenting them in a flustered display of awkward adoration to their beaming sweethearts. A sister buying a bouquet to take to her sister who was in labor at Columbia Memorial Hospital. Customers who faithfully bring us back the canning jars that our bouquets are sold in, or who every week tell me about the vast collection of jars they are saving for me but forgot once again to bring to market that week.
Just writing out this list is making me smile–people invite me into such tender parts of their lives when they buy flowers from our farm.
There is a saying that is often attributed to the Koran, but which I believe is really just an old Persian saying: “If you have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy hyacinths, for they will feed your soul.” (I’ve also seen this quoted as a Chinese saying with lilies instead of hyacinths, and honestly wouldn’t be surprised to discover some version of the sentiment occurs in other cultures as well.) I can see the truth of this whenever we sell flowers at a farmers market, and why I will always believe that cut flowers have a place at farmers markets despite their being mostly not edible. (Even the Cannon Beach Farmers Market finally conceded the point.)
This growing season my soul was very, very well fed. I’m sorry to see the flowers beginning to fade now, but it’s time for them to do so. I’m letting things go to seed as much as I can so that we can save seed for next year, and plotting about how I’m going to fit in another row of dahlias somewhere. Winter is a wonderful time to daydream…when it is especially grey and stormy out, I make a cup of tea and pull out my seed catalogs–smiling at the photos of old friends, checking out some new flowers I want to introduce myself to next season, and planning a riotously colorful, buzzing, vibrating, joyful party for next summer.
