Here, There & Everywhere!

Holy smokes!...I've been slacking on the blogging lately.  We've been up to...A LOT!  Tilling, planting, cleaning, traveling...a little bit of everything!

This coming weekend will bring more of the same.  Travis is off to visit some relatives while I stay home to do wedding design, work at Deere & hopefully get the dahlias dug.  40 yards of compost is arriving tomorrow for the flower rows!  We'll till more 50' rows and get the compost all worked in so we're ready to go with planting next spring.  Travis will be home Saturday night & we'll hopefully take ourselves out on the town for a date!  Sunday morning, Travis is going to pickup our new/used hoophouse!!!  I cannot wait to get it setup, covered and begin planting in it this spring!  It's going to be a great help in extending our growing season!

So...about the wedding design that I'm doing this weekend...I sort of took it on as a favor for a lady that I work with at Deere.  Her daughter was getting married in 3 weeks & then headed to Japan.  I knew that I wouldn't have flowers on October 29th, but I agreed that we could order the flowers.  While the customers have been very kind, I will never, ever, ever...EVER...order flowers again.  The quality is really unbelievable...in a bad way.  I will make them work & it will be a lovely wedding...but when you work all season long with fresh, unchemicalized (is that a word?) flowers, you really develop a standard for what you expect a flower to be.  To me, these are not flowers.  I'm disappointed...and sad.  It's so sad that these dilapidated, scentless, vibrancy-lacking "flowers" are what the average consumer expects flowers to be.  My fresh, local, sustainably grown flower mission has become even stronger with this experience...... 

Anyway...I will save my sad flower ranting for another day.  For now, enjoy a few photos taken before our hard frost...

Prioritize.

For about the past 15 years...since my fresh/soph year of high school {I'm getting old!!}, I have been planting & growing flowers on my parents' land...and for the past two years, about an acre of my grandfather's land.  I have been very thankful for this, but haven't felt like I could really set permanent roots for Seeded Earth.

Now, having 10 acres of *our own* land available to grow on gives me a great feeling of permanence & an actual beginning! 

Starting a flower farm takes a lot of work...and like most new businesses, a lot of money.  We know what we need to prioritize when it comes to equipment.......

But when it comes to plants, prioritizing gets tricky {especially for a plant addict!}.  Of course, we'll have a huge selection of annuals -- most of which I begin seeding in January/February.  The hard part comes in deciding which shrubs, bulbs & perennial plants to invest in first.  We have a good start on many perennials & I think we have a good plan in place for continuing to add new plants each year.  If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see, let us know!  In the meantime, I'll do my best to stick to the plan.

Here are a few of the plants that I'm excited to get growing this fall!