Summer on the Farm - an update
The last few months have been rather hectic in all honesty, but I have ensured I had some time to just enjoy the flowers too.
I have been fortunate enough to flower three weddings so far this year - a huge honour for me as I still consider myself very much as a teacher who likes to moonlight as a flower farmer! I provided bridal bouquets, buttonholes, wrist corsages and table centres, all in the best seasonal and scented flowers that the field had to offer at each moment in time.
The grass that makes up the rest of the field (as I have not time to flower the entire 2.3 acres just yet) has been growing longer and longer and longer… I finally organised myself to get in touch with a farmer to make lovely cheap hay for my well-rotten manure creators, and then the heavens opened, just enough for a month long hiatus on any hay cutting! I guess they never say farming is simple and controllable… The job of cutting the grass finally got done today, though the vast volume of thistles that crept up in the intervening time means it will probably not make it to the greedy cob down the lane after all. Sorry Nuala.
The long grass meant that right back at the start of the season, my carefully selected, solar-powered electric fencing was obsolete, as it shorted out on a blade or 500 of grass within a day or two of my cutting it. And realistically, I have only had time to cut it properly a couple of times over the season. The electric fence didn't stand a chance! Fortunately I do not seem to have lost too much, mostly just the lone rose has taken the brunt of the Mr & Mrs Muntjac, and even that has only had a light grazing. I am sure it is pure luck and chance that I have got away with this and shouldn’t rest on my laurels - I just have zero time or brain space to worry about it until I absolutely have to.
What I have loved this season, is the peace and silence the field has provided me. Every time I have a bespoke bouquet order, or every Wednesday evening when I am at the farm after the baby is in bed, cutting flowers for my Thursday shop and subscription deliveries, I can just spend a couple of hours cutting the flowers, keeping a close eye on things, and listening to the birds, the numerous types of bees (I have spotted at least a couple of bumblebee species and some honeybees, but I need my hubby to come and geek out to tell me what they all are), and even listening to the conversational stylings of my bank vole family that have taken up residence somewhere between the row of borage and the row of Cosmos.
The voles, the muntjac, the bees and everyone else in between, as well as my wonderful customers and own obsession with flowers (that quite frankly needed to be made into a business simply to sustain the shopping habit), are why I do this. It has been really easy to feel very overwhelmed this year as I have undoubtedly bitten off more than I should have, in all areas of my life, but that is just what I seem to do. And if the flowers do not all get cut for customers, then they are there for the animals. And the animals put a very large smile on my face.
It probably makes me a terrible businesswoman. But life is short. Maybe I shouldn’t give up the salaried teaching job just yet…!