Early Spring

Two thousand and Twenty Two started off on quite the high note for us.

We were having a baby!

While things started off smooth sailing, I developed quite a bit of nausea for a few weeks in the first trimester. Never having experiencing this before I was not prepared. People talk about how bad it can be, and some days it really was. This meant that a few of the plans we had didn't quite work out. But I am a firm believer in everything working out when the time is right.

Spring has sprung

Tulip season was a absolute blur. After a long winter we seemed to jump directly into instant summer. One day no tulips, the next, they were needing to be harvested 4 times a day. While not exactly how we wanted things to go, mother nature is always in the driver's seat. The result of instant summer was a fast and furious spring season, so again a few of our spring flower plans fell through. It seems a theme was developing for 2022. The year of the plans that didn't quite happen. Regardless of how it played out, it was a stunning sight to see our hard work pay off with rows and rows of tulips and daffodils.

This year we have our fingers crossed that we will be able to make up for it with a beautifully abundant spring. We are planning to open our preorders for Easter and Mother's Day bouquets soon! And no matter what, there are going to be armloads of flowers and hopefully a lot of sunshine.

Late Spring

Immediately after our late tulip season, we began planting our summer veggie garden as well as our annuals for summer flowers. For the first time ever we were attempting to grow enough of certain veggies to last us through the winter. I can tell you now, that it worked. Perhaps a little to well, our basement is still full of four different types of potatoes, and three different types of squash. It turns out there really is only so much squash a person can eat.

As May turned to June almost everything made it into the ground. A few trays of seedlings certainly did not. Which happens even in the best years, so I am giving us a pass. None of it would have been possible without Connor. He is the best partner I could ask for. He picked up all the slack, and this year there was a lot of slack. Some days I would just sit in the Gator and watch him plant all of our baby seedlings, row after row and I would just keep growing our baby and try to stay awake.

Summer's Highlight Reel

Summer flew by. Another Two thousand + Twenty Two trend, time is flying!

Fortunately, my morning sickness had come and gone and now there were flowers everywhere! Our roadside flower stand started to have regulars and it was so nice to know our flowers were heading off to someone's home. Our flower table was taken from the end of our driveway, but Connor surprised me by quickly replacing it. While it's not the same without our little table, flower sales were back.

Throughout the summer we continued to succession plant flowers like cosmos, sunflowers and zinnias to keep them coming. We had two special events in late summer and early fall so we wanted our flowers to be perfect.

Mooo...ving

Everyday or every other, the cows needed to be moved onto new grass. At times this can be quite consuming, but it is a huge part of our regenerative farming plans. The cows love it as well, a fresh grass buffet daily. We also get to see them everyday and build a special relationship with each one of them.  Except Gail. If you read our last post you know that she really hates humans. And some days I get it, I'm not a big fan of humans either.

Once they were use to moving everyday, we would just have to call big momma and she would come running right to us knowing that new grass was waiting. She made things significantly easier and another reason why she's my favorite.

Chickens Everywhere

All of our chickens began to lay, and we still have more eggs than we know what to do with. They proved to be a big help in keeping the bug population down in the gardens, even if they did eat a ton of tomatoes while they were at it. And while free range chickens on a farm sounds picturesques, it is less so when they start to live on your stairs, or on your lawn chairs and poop everywhere. The girls will still be free range in 2023, but on the move away from the house. More about this in our next blog.

Wild weather

It was a interesting summer weather wise, we sustained a wild storm that had us without power for a week. Not a good time. Without power we had to bring buckets of water from the pond to water all of our creatures. It certainly added a "fun" old school element to our days. Who doesn't want to slug water pregnant.

On the other hand we seemed to be in a little pocket geographically that recieved a good amount of rain. Our gardens required very little watering and our fields stayed lush and green.

Late Summer

We were thrilled for the opportunity to share our flowers at a very special wedding at Cheeky Duck Vineyard in Lakefield. What a dream it was to create. We will share more about this later!

Finishing off our summer with more flowers! We were fortunate to be asked to design the florals for Lakefield College Schools beautiful donor dinner.

We hosted a few pick your own flower workshops on the farm and we loved it. We are finalizing this years workshops and will post about them soon.

Here comes the fall

No slowing down now!

Unless of course you are 6 months pregnant. Then you are definitely slowing down, which was not ideal when you have a giant garden to put to bed, dig 150 dahlias, plant thousands of tulip and daffodils, or when you ordered 300 new peonies in the spring that now needed to go into the ground. If that wasn't enough, we thought it a good idea to double our garlic planting. The word slow doesn’t even begin to cover how long it took me to do my part of these tasks. I was quite literally crawling along the ground in October because getting up was too much.

Reminding myself that when the first tulip makes its appearance it will all be worth it. And in 3-5 years when we are harvesting arm loads of peonies it most certainly will be worth it.

Finally it’s November

It finally seems as though it’s time to rest and it couldn’t have come at a better time. 8 months pregnant I was ready to be horizontal more than vertical. That’s one of the nice things about a second pregnancy, you relish the little extra time you have to relax, watch an extra show, sleep in a little longer. And November and December are the perfect time to do so.

We had a quiet Christmas and New years soaking up the last bit of time of just the three of us.

We are so thankful for each and every one of you and the opportunities that have come our way. Sharing a little piece of our farm and our passion for caring for this land means the world to us.

Until next time,

Emma