Pivoting in the Chaos: are flowers relevant during a pandemic?

Here we are.  In crazy times, filled with a number of uncertainties. For years, we’ve been touting the importance of flowers to our customers.  We definitely have a list of reasons but with the world standing still, an economic downturn and bizarre panic buying with barren shelves, are flowers truly a necessity?

The cop out answer is yes and no.  I know, a more profound statement is in order!  By the end of this blog filled with my ramblings, perhaps you will have a more solid answer for yourself.

The global cut flower market has come to a sudden stop.  The videos of thousands upon thousands of stems getting trashed, events cancelled and florists have been considered a non-essential business is all incredibly alarming.  The florist industry is hurting.  I would dare speculate that it is one of the most affected industries in the world at the moment.  With events cancelling and shipments being interrupted or completely stopped, its been a rough few weeks for the florists.  Without a crystal ball, it is anybody’s guess as to how the florist industry will bounce back, especially in the coming season.

Somewhere amidst this cloud of insanity lies the flower farmer and even the farmer-florists.  

Where do we stand? 

How is it going to effect us this season?  

The Crash of the Global Cut Flower Trade and Cancellation of Events

If you are a farmer-florist, the floristry side of your business has probably been impacted as well.  Hopefully, not to the degree of the mainstream event florists.  

For us, we have had one rescheduling for next year.  Heartbreaking for the couple and disappointing for the growers who have been babying their flowers for months already.  To have only one reschedule so far, we’re fairly fortunate but it does leave us uncertain. 

Will we have more last minute cancellations and reschedules?

Or will we have more last minute event orders?

Only time will tell.  

On the upside, there has been an uptick in demand for local products, both vegetables and flowers.  The playing field is being leveled and it is truly a time for local growers to shine.   To come in and essentially save the day!  Now, events are not being booked at the moment and some more may be cancelled.  On the other hand, we may see an increase of last minute orders for flowers with last minute weddings and other events being planned.  I don’t know about you but a good chunk of business for us over the years has been last minute bulk bucket orders and wedding bouquets.  Sure, we prefer to plan ahead of time, custom grow blooms and secure a date but that most likely won’t be the trending theme this year.  I suspect, between direct customers and florists, consumers will be looking to their local growers to secure some flowers!  

The imported cut flower market took a big hit.  The full consequences of that hit is still left to be seen.  Will the florists be able to get product?  Will it come with an increased cost?  Florists are uncertain.  We are all uncertain.  As flower farmers we have one piece of certainty in our back pocket: our flowers will grow. Also, if there is one thing you learn to do by being a farmer is to be quick thinking and a problem solver.  Many of our fall planted crops are still actively growing and are ready to begin producing.  Seeds sown in January are still being tucked into the field and the seeds for summer blooms are still being sown.  Though the moving of the product may take some creativity, perhaps more than what we thought just a handful of weeks ago, we will still have product.  That is something.  That is more of a “something” than most people have at the moment.  Fortunately, as flower farmers, though event florals do demand the highest profit, this does not mean it is the only egg in our basket.  We also must take comfort in that the farming side of our business is still considered an essential business.

Reassessing Sales Outlets

When we sat down over the early winter months and began planning out our year, one of the first things I decided to cut out: home deliveries.  After years of providing home deliveries for our subscription members, the one year I finally move away from it was the year it is needed the most.  It is incredibly laughable at this point.  The whole world is trying to figure out how to handle home deliveries and here I had been running away from it just to be running back to it in the matter of moments!

I’m not going to lie: home deliveries are a little tedious.  Having pick up sites with a window of time where I have to wait for customers to pickup is actually even worse, in my past experience.  I can get deliveries done a lot quicker in our area than for me to wait around for people to pickup.  This year, we had joined forces with some different local businesses for our subscription members to be able to pick up their bouquet at their convenience.  Though we are hopeful to go back to this pick up model come summer and hopefully can also bring some of these businesses back some customers, we have gone back to home delivery for the spring season.  We are going contact free, which one of my bigger problems with delivery in the past was everyone wanting to visit, those five/ten minutes per stop add up big time!  Usually we trade out mason jars each week for our customers but this year we will not be doing that.  To keep less contact, we will be providing them one vase for the two months and having them leave it outside with water pre-filled.  This way, they don’t get overloaded with containers and we are not left handling and potentially spreading germs from taking the container back each week.

Farmer’s Markets are still very much in the air. Having cut flower vendors there, even more so. This year we were preparing on pulling back from the frequency of being at farmer’s market. Now, we may have no choice. The good news is, people are loving the idea of having products delivered to their homes. This is not something that is new, I mean Amazon built their success off people loving the convenience of home delivery! Home delivery can be more work but it can also be a great relationship builder between you and your customers. Other growers are also getting creative with drive thru pickups and such. Truly, your creativity is your limit! I recommend having fun exploring different ways to deliver your product into your customer’s hands. Also, re think packaging and water sources for blooms, to make your product as safe as possible for your customers.

Thinking Outside the Box

Flowers are considered a luxury by many, at the same time they are a reachable luxury in a world where much has been shut down or cancelled.  Still, most people have been trained to see flowers as a luxury and many people are out of work.  Diversifying your product offering can help you to ride the wave out. 

Thinking outside the box and problem solving are unspoken skill sets in a farmer’s arsenal.  We were made for this, we got this!

A few weeks ago I went out of my comfort zone and responded to an email sent out by the magazine Growing for Market.  They asked how, we as growers, have decided to respond to the Covid-19 situation.  I responded in a very raw fashion, not anticipating seeing my sloppy email in print word for word, haha! Truly, I’m humbled to see my ramblings useful enough to publish and hope they are helpful.  The article shows the resourcefulness of various growers and overall leaves us with the silver lining in this icky global situation: growers are essential. This article is loaded with ideas from delivering to packaging.  You can read that article here. 

Some flower farmers are adding vegetables to their production, even if just to feed their families.  We have decided to add vegetables.  Now, I will caution that adding vegetables is a whole new level of an insane amount of work from crop planning to opening new ground or reassigning growing areas, harvesting, packaging, delivering, etc.  Take everything you do for flowers and at least double it.  If you are not familiar with growing vegetables then you will be back to learning some basics as well.  

Simply because some growers have chosen to add vegetables to their product offerings does not mean every flower farmer should do this.  Actually, if you have zero interest in growing and selling food I would say then don’t do it!  If you have some interest, I would say your growing skills are needed and there are not enough market growers to produce the amount of vegetables that local communities are demanding.  With that said I will dive quickly into why we decided to add vegetables into our product offering and essentially double our workload this season.

First, our family was already on a journey to better health with eating lots of vegetables, quality protein and no grains, dairy, sugar, etc.  Once the insanity hit overnight, we couldn’t get fresh vegetables for weeks which drastically changed our diet!  We had already been planning on growing more vegetables for ourselves this summer because, let’s face it, we know the produce in the stores are half dead and inferior to locally grown products.  It’s the same story with produce as with cut flowers.  Dredged in toxins, harvested too early, stored, shipped, bleh.  Food security became a thing for us.  It was tight for a couple weeks and unsettling.  This is not something we want to go through again, especially when we have the skill set to grow our own food!  Through our personal journey we experienced firsthand the vitalness of having fresh produce and the impact it has on our immune systems.  The second we switched back to the typical American diet… I got a cold.  After months of not even having so much as a sniffle, within a week and a half of switching diets I had a cold.  Fresh produce is an absolute necessity.  Flowers can be questionable but food security is a true thing.  We need food to live and nourishing, nutrient dense produce is needed to thrive. Obviously, this is not a profound statement.  Especially to my fellow growers, I’m pretty much preaching to the choir on this.  

Market growers have been selling out of CSA shares, the demand is there, why would we leave it on the table?  In our local community, growing anything is not for the faint of heart.  We live in a beautifully rugged area that it takes quite a bit of skill to be able to grow and get produce from your garden for more than a couple months in summer.  We also live in a community where there is a big elderly population.  The very people that need the fresh produce the most but are also the most vulnerable to be going out purchasing fresh foods and are not physically able to keep up growing enough of their own food.  Knowing what we know and having the skills of growing like we do, we felt convicted that we needed to do our part to bring our community members the true immunity booster: locally grown produce in the safest manner possible.  

Even though we are adding vegetables, we are still moving full steam ahead and growing more flowers than we ever have.  We believe in nourishing the physical and emotional parts of the human body through vegetables and blooms.  We also want to continue to secure our flower farm as essential.  The best bet is by also producing consumables.  These are bizarre times and who knows the effects this will have on the future.  Government agencies could name floriculture as a nonessential business.  I think it’s a far reach but let’s not deny that the thought has crossed all of our minds.  

I have seen many of the “greats” in the specialty cut flower industry get creative.  Overall, it comes to being willing to get flexible and pivot as the waves of chaos come crashing down. I do have a Mother’s Day floral arranging class with some signups.  If it does come down to we are still social distancing, I will be offering it as a virtual class and providing them their supplies instead of cancelling.  This idea was inspired after seeing other flower farmers doing just this. I think it is a great example of making lemonade out of lemons and will still provide an enjoyable experience, maybe even more so, to our customers.  Who doesn’t want to play with fluffy ranunculus and decadent sweet peas?

Other flower farmers, who may not be interested in growing produce to a final product, have seen what I’m sure we are all seeing: people are wanting food security and are starting their own gardens.  This is something that the flower farmer could easily capitalize on and have some quick cash flow by selling vegetable starts. You can get extra fancy and sell herbs and edible flowers. Within in a few weeks, you can be pumping out some transplants.  I will say, in past years, vegetable and flower starts have been a big seller for us. It is a great way to get your brand out in the community, get a little engagement with your customers and further bring value to your brand into your community.  Many folks are intimidated by starting their own seeds, this is a simple way to utilize your skill that is mutually beneficial to you and your customers.

Final Thoughts

We are coming to a time where there is a cross road.  As we get further into spring it is time to begin seed sowing/planting summer crops, not to mention placing fall orders.  Which way to go? To grow less flowers, to grow more flowers, to grow vegetables or to just stop growing? It all comes down to a heart thing and your unique situation.  I will say this, I believe that the playing field has been leveled out in so many aspects. From the collapse of the imported cut flower market, florists being labeled “nonessential,” super star growers are just as lost as the rest of us, consumers questioning our dependency on imported goods thus demanding local products, the world slowing down, etc.  A lot has changed and some of those changes we can greatly benefit from as local growers and small business owners. 

There is no right answer on how to respond to this historical situation. All of us, with varying business models and experience levels are simply trying to make the best of the situation to survive and hopefully thrive.  

There have been a lot of events and happenings that show that being a local grower has never been so powerful.  There has been a shift from being “trendy” to truly “essential.”  We always knew we were essential, now our communities are realizing that too.  Our communities are searching for some kind of stability and security, as growers, we can provide that.  Along with our flowers, the flower grower is the ultimate symbol of hope.  We can show our community that hope and beauty are near despite everything else.  The flowers have not stopped growing, nor has the flower farmer stopped farming.

I will say those of us who are willing to continuously change as we navigate these murky waters of uncertainty, will be the businesses who come out on top. During a time of crisis, any person or business that can bring some peace and happiness to their customers will in turn strengthen the relationship between the two.  Times like this, true colors come out.  I know we have all seen the icky side of people and the amazing side of people.  We have seen this with businesses as well.  As flower farmers, we are naturally big hearted folks, this is a much needed trait at the moment.  

There is a ton out of our control, what we can control is how we are going to respond to it today.  Today, we choose to continue sowing seeds for both flowers and vegetables.  We choose to open more growing areas by hauling river rocks out.  We choose to go out in the storms and hunker down those low tunnels over the ranunculus (that now have no wedding to be in but instead, to the many homes of our subscription members counting down the days until they bloom).  We choose to wake up and show up.  

Everyday we just do what is within our power.  As growers we are needed and yes, our local flowers are more than relevant during a pandemic.  We need to nourish all the broken spirits within our communities.  How we do that will take some willingness to change but overall, not much has changed for us.  Take this time to build relationships, engage with your customers, FaceTime your grandma more, build your portfolio, garden with your kids.  For many people, their worlds have been turned upside down.  Their worlds were shopping malls and sports, or are completely out of work.  For us, really, perspectives may have shifted but not a whole ton has changed.  We should be thankful for that. We are still sowing seeds, harvesting stems… doing flower farmer stuff. 

Let’s show the world how flower farmers, local growers, rock a pandemic by being their rock.

Happy Growing, we got this!

We are STILL looking forward to helping you hand blooms soon!

- Jessica & Graham