FIRST YEAR ON THE FARM.
As our one-year mark of Wild at Dawn flowers approaches I reflect back on my first year at the field.
There’s a saying that goes ‘Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life’, well I’m here to call BS on that saying. The saying should go something like ‘Do something you love and you’ll never work harder in your life but you’ll love every minute of it’. And that pretty much sums up my first year as a Flower Farmer.
Stepping into Flower Farming I knew it would be long physical days, navigating the local wildlife and mother nature, but I certainly underestimated the time and resources certain tasks would take and quite frankly how much rabbits eat! On the flip side I also underestimated how much incredible joy the wildlife and my natural surroundings would bring me, there’s nothing quite like the morning bird song to bring a happy tune to those 6am summer starts. The sheer amazement of watching and nurturing tiny plants from seed to full bloom is something that continues to amaze me as we head into 2023.
I guess you could say all those long hard days and worth their weight in gold when the field is in full bloom when there’s bumble bees, butterflies, and insects I had never even seen before flying around the field as I work. (Although if the horseflies can politely leave that would be great!)
Let’s take a trip back to early February 2022, the first time I visited the land, land which I didn’t know at the time was going to become the home for Wild at Dawn Flowers, I was just ‘taking a look’. Set in the beautiful Gwent/Monmouthshire countryside, just off the A48 in Penhow, surrounded by fields of Alpacas, chickens, a horse, some geese and a beautiful stream curving the boundary of the land. To say it was love at first sight wouldn’t be an understatement, and I left knowing that I wanted this to be the place where I spent my days flower farming.
Due to work commitments in my previous job I wasn’t able to start working on the field, until the middle of March. I spent all my spare time planning, ordering supplies, designing the layout of the field and A LOT of day dreaming. The first time I was able to spend the whole day at the field felt like a breath of fresh air as we (with the help of my wonderful Dad) marked out the flower beds and the Poly Tunnel and began turning over the ground ready for planting. The next step was to build the Poly Tunnel, a huge task for two people who had never built a poly tunnel before! We went in determined but naive as to how long it would take, (weeks instead of days) but the day it was finished we sat inside it with our flasks of hot drinks and admired our hard work and achievement. And the very next day I moved my seedlings in.
As spring turned into early summer seedlings were evicted from the poly tunnel and into the flower beds. Once they were in the ground I quickly discovered the local rabbit population. Having not seen a single rabbit on the land I was feeling confident that they wouldn’t be '“too much of a problem” I was wrong. VERY wrong. Rabbit fencing shot straight to the top of the do list as the next big task for the field, but with time and budget restrictions it took a little longer. Arriving each morning to the field wondering which would crop they had feasted on during the night. It was tough, but I knew eventually the fencing would be up and they’d be kept out. We pivoted and decided to just fence off the area I was growing on rather than the whole field (quicker and more cost effective) and soon the fence was up. (Thanks again Dad!) The following weeks were some of my favourite weeks at the field. The plants began to blossom, they began to grow remarkably fast without constant munching and digging from the rabbits, they grew bigger and stronger and soon the field was an abundance of flowers.
I’ve only seen one rabbit inside the fencing since, a tiny bunny which had tangled itself in the fencing trying to get out. Luckily I had some wire snippers to hand, I was able to rescue him unharmed (I have no idea if it was a male but of course I aptly named him Peter) and placed him into the undergrowth of the hedgerow outside the fence and quickly patched up the hole.
Jump forward to August, picture rows upon rows of flowers to harvest, grass to mow and plenty of watering! 2022 was one the driest years on record, not a great year to start growing flowers, but I quickly learnt a lot of the varieties I had chosen were extremely drought tolerant, allowing me to focus on watering the plants that really needed it and creating beautiful bouquets of flowers for customers.
A big highlight in August was welcoming little Blue to the Alpaca herd. A moment I was lucky enough to witness as his mother gave birth to him in the field next to mine. Watching his first steps, his first little gallops around the herd are moments I’ll always remember and feel privileged to have witness, it’s not every day one gets to witness an Alpaca be born at work!
By the middle of September the Dahlias, the true late summer show stoppers of a Flower Farm had finally kicked in to full production. I absolutely adored working with them in customer bouquets, and you all loved them just as much as I do! (Did you know Dahlias don’t travel/transport well, so you’ll rarely find them as an imported flower in florists or supermarket bouquets) The different colours, shapes and sizes that Dahlias grow have quickly made them one of my favourite flowers to grow and I’ll never do a season without them.
September. It’s early September and I had my first wedding with flowers grown by me in this very field. This felt like a huge achievement, as I worked to create beautiful bouquets full of sunny yellow and white tones, with beautiful Sunflowers and dainty Strawflowers for buttonholes.
Jump forward to October and we enter Autumn, the field is still blooming with Dahlias, Cosmos and Strawflowers, but with each trip to the field wondering when the first hard frost will be, killing off the fresh flowers and ending the fresh flower season. I’d frantically harvest the Straw flowers and Statice, flowers purposefully grown for drying, building up the stock for the winter months not knowing when Mother Nature would put an end to them for this year. The first frost was unseasonably late, not arriving until early December. By this time we had held Autumn wreath workshops, Christmas wreath workshops and were starting our Christmas markets. Beds had been cleared and flipped and planted with hardy crops for next year. Rows of foxgloves, honesty and sweet rocket putting down roots for the winter months. The poly tunnel becoming full of little seedlings and Ranunculus, growing sheltered in here for the winter. I’d be lost without that Poly tunnel, especially this winter, with the temperature dropping down to minus 9 degrees at night during a cold spell of the coldest winter in the UK for years (the weather has been challenging to juggle as a first year flower farmer). The tunnel allows me to extend the growing season, to keep my seedlings sheltered and with the help of frost cloth or two deter the frosts from touching the seedlings as they fight to survive these harsh winter months.
It's January now, and as I sit typing this, reflecting on an amazing, challenging but rewarding first year at the Flower Field, I look round at the trays of green seedlings, the rows of plants growing in the ground inside the tunnel, and remind myself that this time last year this was all a dream. A dream that seemed impossible and out of reach but with a lot of hard work (and help from both family and dear friends) I’m here, with dirt under my fingernails and mud in my hair but with big plans and dreams for 2023. A year full of flowers.
Come and see the Flowers for yourself this year, there will be open days at the field in the summer, and I look forward to sharing the Joy of the field with you all. And hopefully you’ll understand why I made this made this crazy decision to become a Farmer Florist!
Here’s to a flower filled 2023!