Flower Shares: Week Ten

Hello everyone!

We have arrived at our final week of flower shares. Thank you so much for your support this season. It has been a pleasure providing flowers for you, and I hope you all enjoy a fabulous end to the summer. This week we had a flush of new zinnias. Check out these bright, festive colors!

This week in your shares you will also find:

Ageratum (blue horizon and red flint)
Amaranth
Ammi
Basil
Celosia
Cosmos
Cynoglossum
Flax
Globe Amaranth
Mountain Mint
Nigella
Rudbeckia
Scabiosa
Zinnia

Here's a last look at the field in August:

With love, best wishes, and gratitude,

Stacy

Flower Shares: Week Nine

Hello everyone!

This week, we have an explosion of one of my favorite flowers, gomphrena, which is also known as globe amaranth. I love the flowers' vibrant colors and hardiness, and how fully the plants fill out a bed. If you are considering an annual to plant in your garden next year, I highly recommend this one!

Something especially wonderful about this flower is how quickly and easily it dries. I don't know about you, but I crave color in the winter months, and seeing these happy little globes in January helps me get by. As the leaves change, and our summer flower share winds down, those months felt a little closer this week. So I thought I'd send you a colorful gift for the gray times, should you choose to give drying flowers a try! 

Tuesday folks, this week in your shares, you will find a simple and vibrant bunch of gomphrena, in magentas, reds, whites, pinks, and purples. Thursday folks, you have hot chili and hot biscuits amaranth, perfect for fall decorating, and two varieties of celosia, the tops of which can be used to add a pop of color to wreaths or other crafts. Below, you will find directions for hang drying your flowers:

1.  If possible, choose a cool, dark, and well-ventilated space in which to hang your flowers. This helps keep the colors vibrant. An attic or empty closet is ideal.

2. Tie your stems into smaller bunches (up to ten stems), using a rubber band or string. Don't tie bunches too tightly, since creases in the stems can cause dampness and rotting. For large amaranth, hang each stem individually.

3. Tie your bunches, petals down, onto a clothes hanger, knobs, or nails. As long as your flowers as upside-down, you are on the right track! Check out this great photo from Better Homes and Gardens for an idea of what that can look like:

4. When your flowers feel dry to the touch, they are ready to be used in dried bouquets, wreaths, or other crafts. The drying process can take up to two weeks. 

And that's it! Best of luck to you in your flower drying experiments!

Thank you, and all the best,

Stacy 

   

Flower Shares: Week Eight

Hello all!

Welp, it is still wet. Wet, wet, wet. The plants are all a little soggy, but luckily my soil has a sandier makeup, and is continuing to drain. Many farms in the Pioneer Valley, and down the road at the Farm School, have more clay, and folks head out to harvest with puddles forming in the fields. We're all dreaming of sunnier days!

The wet weather also means a dire amount of mosquitoes down in the field. Here is a rare and very serious photo of your friendly farmer, in full harvest garb. Gloves and head netting non-negotiable at 6:00 AM down there!

This week in your shares, you will find a combination of:

Ageratum

Amaranth

Ammi

Buplerum

Cosmos

Flax

Hyacinth

Nigella

Scabiosa

Had a few more interesting insect sightings this week! Check out this Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillar in the cynoglossum:

And here's a slightly blurry photo of a Hummingbird Moth. It was tough to capture a clear, still image, since these guys can beat their wings at 85 beats per second! Check out this feature from PBS to learn more about these amazing insects. Are you a bird? A giant stinging insect sent to kill? Nope, just a friendly pollinator.

Lastly, here's a photo of an amazing two-toned calendula. Nature is pretty spectacular, huh?

Hope you have a wonderful week, all!

Best,
Stacy

Flower Shares: Week Seven

Hello all!

Here is a very important photo of my employer's kitten. I know, my goodness. He and his sibling followed me down to the field today, and it was the best of harvests.

This week in your shares, you will find a combination of:

Ammi

Basil

Cosmos

Nigella

Scabiosa

Sunflowers

Verbena

Zinnias

I went with fewer varieties this time around for a slightly different look. Hope you like the switch up! And just so you know, basil does not like to be refrigerated at temperatures below 50 degrees, so please keep your arrangement out on the table, or separate into various vases as you see fit. I learned that fact this week, so I'm very sorry if those of you with basil in your arrangements last week had some wilting!

You can also take apart your mixed bouquet to tackle a flower crown, or other fun craft, if you are so inclined. I cut flowers to take with me for a bachelorette weekend in the White Mountains, and we had a blast making crowns for the night out. It was a little tricky at first, but you should get the hang of it fairly quickly. Here's a tutorial if you'd like to give it a go! And here's a photo of Kate hard at work:

Last week, I also took down our buckwheat cover crop and discovered some tiny frogs living in the field. This guy was just slightly bigger than my thumb nail!

Hope you all are staying cool in this heat wave. Phew!

Thank you, and have a great week!

Stacy

Flower Shares: Week Six

Hello all!

The rain and humidity continue apace out here on the farm. And while we wade through the heat and damp of summer, August is right around the corner. Some of the leaves are even beginning to change! Ends and beginnings, cycles and change. As farmers, we are always thinking of the next season- even as we inhabit the current year. In July we think about sourcing garlic, to plant in the fall, for harvest the following summer. We think about cover crops, and new fields, and stewarding the land for those who come after us. We dream, and plan, and try our best.

This week in your shares, you will find a combination of the following:

Agastache (Golden Jubilee)
Ageratum
Ammi
Carnations
Celosia
Cleome
Cosmos
Flax
Frosted Explosion Switch Grass
Globe Amaranth
Lemon Basil
Licorice Mint
Nigella
Orlaya
Scabiosa
Snapdragons
Statice
Zinnia

Thank you as always for your support. And please check out this fabulous fellow! Madame Butterfly was flying along just fine, happily sipping nectar from the zinnias.

She served as an excellent reminder of this very sweet drawing I saw last week from this comic artist:

Hope you are being gentle and kind to yourselves!

Cheers,

Stacy

Flower Shares: Week Five

Hello all!

We're at the halfway point, woohoo! The weeks have been flying here, for sure.

On the farm this week, we've been dealing with some formidable rain showers. Some varieties, like the ammi and gypsophila, were pretty well flattened by the rain. Others, like the zinnias and strawflowers, have had to contend with some pretty serious disease pressure. This wet weather and humidity, coupled with the increased leaf density (and decreased air flow) of maturing and branching plants, has provided prime conditions for foliar disease. I suspect I'm dealing with alternaria leaf spot and/or botrytis blight. Both are pretty demoralizing! I'm using organic practices here, and my response has been to strip infected leaves, pull up necrotic plants, and spray with diluted neem oil. I had hoped that my plant spacing, and commitment to putting only the healthiest transplants into the plot, would reduce my chances of getting hit by pests and disease. And maybe it has! But I've certainly got something now, and all I can do is mitigate the effects to the best of my ability. And hope that the sun comes up and dries out this field!

Here are some before and after photos of my triage mission:

Pretty rugged, right? On the bright side, in your shares this week, you will find:

Ageratum

Ammi

Calendula

Celosia

Cerinthe (aka, Honeywort)

Cosmos

Cynoglossum

Delphinium

Frosted Explosion Switch Grass

Globe Amaranth

Orlaya

Salvia

Snapdragon

Statice

Sunflowers

Zinnia

And hello to this lovely pollinator, who braved the wind and rain to visit the sunflowers.

Stay dry, my friends. Wishing you the best!

Stacy

Flower Shares: Week Four

Hello everyone!

Hope you are all having splendid starts to the week. I've just returned from a weekend in my hometown, where I was celebrating two dear friends' wedding shower. I couldn't be happier for them, and I was excited to provide the flowers for the event. Check out this stunning balloon arch, courtesy of my friend and fellow bridesmaid, Courtney! Courtney is an incredible stylist and project manager, and I highly recommend checking out here work here and here.

I love that I'm at the point in the season where I can walk down to the field and have my choice of colors and textures to cut. And that these flowers can survive a two hour drive in the car en route to a hot event! The next wave of successions is just starting to come in, and I can't wait to experiment with some new styles of flowers (...looking at you, Celosia!).

This week in your shares, you'll find a combination of:

Ageratum

Ammi

Bachelor's Buttons

Calendula

Carnations

Cynoglossum

Delphinium

Frosted Explosion Switch Grass

Gypsophila

Larkspur

Nigella

Rudbeckia

Salvia

Scabiosa

Snapdragons

Statice

Sunflowers

Zinnia

Blue-Purple Ageratum

Thank you, and have a good week!

Stacy