A Garden Becomes a Farm
Hello flower friend,
Today I’m sharing about changing my garden into a farm. I’m growing on the same 1000 sq feet I’ve been gardening on for years, but since I’m growing intensively with the purpose of getting a product out into the community, I’m calling the space, however small, a farm.
Gardening has a space for whimsy. A garden can be wild and haphazard or planned and strategic; it all depends on what brings the gardener joy. But farming is outward focused, and depends upon making a reliable product that brings the business a profit. It may seem like farming is what happens when a garden loses its soul, but I disagree.
I’ve always gardened more like a farmer. The truth is that I find garden design intimidating, so I’d rather grow for efficiency and find my joy in getting the most out of my small space. I also find the meeting place between coaxing something valuable out of the land and caring for the land endlessly fascinating. Even though farming tames some of the wild whimsy of a typical garden, there is something grounding to admit that our life depends on getting the land to produce things, and to strive to use that land in a way that gently trains it towards something that is better for having us in it.
So what about that word “profit?” That certainly isn’t a hot word in gardening! Can a thing like profit exist in a field of flowers without being a total buzzkill?
Yes!
Something I love about farming is the constant need to learn. Growing not just the plants, but also the inner workings of the farm as an organization, requires a nimble and curious mind. Humans love good work, and farming is good work not just for the body, but also for the mind. This mind work of farming has plenty of soul! Ok maybe a dorky kind of soul, but that’s me all over. There’s the science of living soil, the precision of knowing which seeds need what conditions to crack open and come alive, and the problem management of the many bugs and diseases that visit the growing plants. Then there’s the crop planning, organization, time management, and accounting that a small business requires.
Flower farming might seem dreamy, as if the farmers are skipping among the blooms and singing to the bees, but the farms that thrive are the ones that take good notes from the less dreamy fields–marketing, accounting, business management, and time/motion studies.
While the mind work of flower farming has been fascinating, it’s still not nearly as fulfilling as what hooked me on gardening—working outside with the plants! Making my garden into a micro-farm has brought me to places I’ve never thought I’d be–from reading about marketing strategies, to googling how to manage formulas in a spreadsheet, or looking up my local sales tax laws.
Pursuing a dream, even a small one, can require some scaffolding. I plan to start over a thousand seeds and do my best to shepherd these tiny kernels of hope from sprouts to bouquets in your home. So far, I’ve spent much more time this winter learning about website design, email marketing, and pricing strategies than I have spent with those plants. I hope that this time will be like scaffolding in a construction project-–not so pretty, but essential to supporting the end result of something beautiful and worthwhile.
Here’s to finding the soul in the nitty gritty, the repetitive grind, that is required of our biggest dreams. May your scaffolding days get you where you want to be too. Soon we’ll be outside with the flowers.
Until next week!
Your flower farmer,
-Meredith
