I have a spreadsheet titled “The Plan 2023”. It is supposed to be a well thought out master plan for the next growing season.

Right now the first line says “What the heck am I supposed to do?”

If you had asked me in August what the plan was I could have rattled off a plan pretty similiar to this last season, Farmer’s Market, nice long summer subscription, lots of different annuals. A few smaller changes, for both my mental health and to make more time with my family. Things like a smaller spring subscription, and no Snuck flower share, now that we have their own cut flower garden up and running.

But bigger changes were coming.

For the last three years I have had the beautiful opportunity to grow on a property that was not my own. We call it the sister site, named so for the two wonderful sisters who live there. These two have become dear sweet friends. They have been my cheerleaders, patient and kind no matter how filthy and tired I might be on any given day. It’s been a win-win type of situation. The burden of caring for a large property was reduced for them, an opportunity for me to grow more than I could on my own land, and lots of flowers for all of us to enjoy. Both growing there and getting to know them better has truly been a blessing for me.

As life happens, their situation changed in the blink of an eye and by October they informed me that they would need to move and their home would be sold.

I am so grateful for the time I had to farm there, so grateful for their friendship and kindness. It was a lovely three years and I am beyond grateful.

It has been bittersweet as we have cleaned up this fall. We moved a few perennials back to the home farm, and made it as neat and tidy as we could. We have left the infrastructure (drip tape and landscape fabric mostly) till Spring, with the hope that maybe the new owners will be open to keeping us around.

In the meantime, it’s been back to planning. With our growing space reduced by about 60% I ‘ve been thinking about the best way to manage the remaining 40%. Here at our homesite we have a good amount of our space planted in specialty cut flower perennials that bloom in Spring and Fall. Perennials are an investment in time and money and I wanted to focus as much our attention on them as possible. Most seasons we harvest exclusively at our home farm site through the end of June, so it made it (kinda) simple to choose to focus on a new, longer Spring bouquet subscription. It takes time for perennials to establish and I am so glad that we will have so many mature beauties like Peonies, foxgloves, clematis, baptisia, and others to harvest from this spring. We are also growing lots of our favorite bulbs, like daffodils, tulips, ranunculus, allium and anemone. I’m especially glad that we should have enough to attend our favorite market in June for the beginning of the season.

After the spring abundance is over we will switch gears and focus on a smaller planting of some of our late season favorites. Lisianthus and dahlias typically bloom in August and September and will be a beautiful way to wrap up our season. Along with our perennials, dahlias, and lisies we will be looking for every free spot to sneak in a few more annuals like gomphrena, basils, and asters.

Change is hard, but sometimes there are silver linings. I am looking forward to our first July off in six years! It will be nice to spend more time with all my teens before they spread their wings and leave home. Time is fleeting and we’ve got to make memories while we can.