After the last of the evergreen sprigs are swept up off the floor from holiday sales, I finally feel like I can collapse into the calmness of the cold dreary days. With the daylight hours continuing to dwindle for the next couple weeks, I find it the best time to begin reflecting on the past season. On completing our eighth season of flower farming, I am finding myself being more nostalgic. Perhaps it’s the fact that my little girls have suddenly entered the sphere of being “tweens” or the fact that we are circling back to projects I had begun to lose hope on ever finishing. Those are only a couple reasons that arise in a sea of possibilities.

Nonetheless, I am finding myself revisiting the early days of my flower farming journey.

Years ago, I wrote a little blog called Advice for first year flower farmers and dreamers. Not to bore you if you have read it, but it was from my perspective as a mom of young children diving into the wondrous world of flower farming and what I would say to my first-year-self. That blog has had almost 40,000 visits since it was published four years ago. Thanks to your comments and emails, I know the inner turmoil and struggles of tackling your flower farming dream happens to each of us. I am humbled that my ramblings resonated with so many fellow flower farmers and dreamers over the years! We have also noticed an influx in visitors reading and engaging in the various content we offer first year flower farmers. Between seeing each of you and my reminiscing of those precious early years of flower farming in conjunction with so many more learned lessons… I thought it was time for some added advice.

Advice for first year flower farmers and dreamers… still relevant?

I did a thing and it’s a thing I tend to avoid: I went back and read my old blog. There’s two things about me: I don’t like reading my blogs and I don’t like watching myself on video. There I said it. I read through my typos and all (sorry about those…) since it’s been so long since writing it. Okay, it wasn’t that bad it was almost like visiting with an old friend.

After reading it, I would say that blog is still more than relevant so ditto it and now we’re done!

Totally kidding but if you are at an emotional fork in the road of your flower farming journey… go take a peek.

Kindness.

Patience.

Embracing.

I know I had to revisit this advice myself. I can’t tell you how vital it is to be kind to yourself, be patient and embrace your loved ones. This goes beyond first year flower farming but is something to continually practice. Since writing the first advice blog, one of my biggest supporters who showed up to help me plant gladiolas despite back problems or bring me a snack while I was nonstop working at farmer’s market, and my shoulder to cry on… she is no longer here. Everyday I would love to be in her embrace just one more time. When I had the opportunity, I was too busy building my dream. Granted, that may not be the reality but that is a stinging feeling that sneaks up on me still.

This leads me to my first piece of added advice:

Be the tortoise, not the hare

The flower farming journey is a marathon not a sprint. Take your time, slow down.

Just because you can take on something doesn’t mean you should or just because you do for a time doesn’t mean there isn’t a time to let go. No, no I’m not saying abandon your flower farming dream but I’m talking about sales outlets or offerings. Hear me out.

For years, we hustled. The idea of making hay while the sun shines… well, we took it to a whole new level.

At one point we had:

a 24 week bouquet subscription
a 24 week vegetable CSA with two size option and being able to add on a bouquet, which had two options
a la carte weddings
bulk bucket weddings
full service weddings
dried flowers
forced bulb kits
holiday wreaths
workshops
pop-ups/farmer’s market
home deliveries and five pickup locations over four towns.
business accounts
wholesale
dahlia tuber sales

In between all this we were weaving in writing blogs, hosting livestreams, making videos, and taking photos. This was all just for the flower farming business. We still had another full time business that also was in the active growth stage and needed attention. Time was flying and our girls were growing too fast for us to keep up.

Life became entirely out of control.

We were finding success, but at what cost?

We had to do some soul searching to find the existential meaning of our life…and the flower farming business.

The season I began to crumble under the workload, I think I quit flower farming at least once a week in my. head. Determination and grit were no longer enough to carry us through day-to-day. Burn out was settling in.

We needed to be able to slow down because constantly playing the role of the hare was depleting.

It is too easy to get caught up in the loop of tasks, to suddenly find your dream running you. The crazy part is, we knew better! Yet, in the midst of getting our dreams lifted off the ground we got sucked in. There becomes a phase in that you will have to figure out what products or services to offer. How do you know what works best without trying some different things out? There is a trial and error period while you figure out what works for your flower farming business and phase of life. The hard part in this process may be when you are finding “success” in every area, then how do you know what to let go of? Does it take every piece of the puzzle to create that “success”?

Perhaps you think juggling all the possible offerings is worth it. Perhaps you are finding yourself incredibly profitable and feel the need to have all the various irons in the fire. If you are starting to get burnt out, perhaps you just need some extra helping hands…this lead me to my second piece of advice.

Hiring help is not a solves all solution

Our business was profitable. We were doing great but we were breaking down under the immense workload to make it happen. We were ambitious. Graham still had his other full time career with with accounting that carries its own demands in time and energy.

We took a look at the numbers of Sierra Flower Farm and decided… hiring an employee was a doable solution.

I am going to tread lightly on this topic because we had some amazing, amazing employees. At a time when my spirit felt diminished, they lifted me up and helped carry us through a difficult time. I look upon them as adopted family. This is nothing on the people who showed up and worked hard shoulder-to-shoulder with us.

This is a reflection of: we weren’t ready.

Perhaps the numbers were there but we weren’t.

We had hopes that having employees was going to essentially “buy back” some of our time. That was not the case. Having extra hands did not solve the actual problem. The problem was we needed to better focus on our profitable offerings. To be able to simplify by letting go of the “what-ifs”. We needed to scale back but still grow our profits. This leads to me to my final piece of advice…

Letting go of the “what ifs” and scale back

The business got away from us. You may find that your business becomes a run-a-way train too. We were so driven in having a successful flower farm that, once we attained that success, it wasn’t enough and it became unsustainable. We had to go back to the drawing board in order to be able to scale back. It’s honestly not a fun task, and it’s not done within minutes or even days. It takes time to look, digest, reflect and discuss before coming to solutions. It’s a tough look in the mirror… a magnifying mirror. Some of the problems we had been puzzling over for years, finally, we decided to really trim the fat of our business.

Growing more volume of less varieties. We cut out the vegetables and focused on the flower varieties that were our most profitable such as dahlias, ranunculus and sweet peas.

I didn’t want to drive around everywhere, and some pick up locations were only benefiting a small amount of members. It was time to consolidate pickups and stop playing as a Door Dash driver. We dropped down to three pickup locations and completely removed home deliveries.

By pulling back our offerings and approaches we found ourselves with a feasible workload, without needing employees. This allowed us to scale back on business expenses by way of wages, product and insurance costs. Speaking of insurance costs, another perk of removing vegetables shares was also not having to pay for the added coverage on food items.

Offering a vegetable CSA and weeding the rows were the two biggest time sucks in our business. When radishes have to be sown weekly, harvested, washed and bundled then packaged for delivery then only snags a few dollars… I can get that from a single stem of a dahlia… wholesale. That dahlia gets planted once, watered on irrigation and other than harvesting is relatively hands off from there. I don’t have to bend over to harvest nor wash. The labor is actually a lot less with much more reward. Even the maintenance of lifting and dividing can be profitable in increasing stock and selling extra tubers.

Weeding, well the weeds in the field woke up and became rampant. We finally bit the bullet and invested in weed cloth. Not a fix-all solution but it made weeding much more manageable of a task between Graham and I. A one time investment for the same cost of paying an employee to work a couple weeks.

On the wedding side, we dropped bulk bucket offerings and a la carte options, choosing to focus on full service weddings alone. I found that I love the thrill and challenge of collaborating with brides from the small details of a boutonniere to the grand details of ceremony designs. Graham found he also loved the rush of working on the wedding: building custom arbors, setting up, seeing beautiful venues and meeting incredible people. Full service weddings were also our most profitable service worthy of the additional time in dedication along with the most opportunity for growth.

Along with scaling back we also did something out of our comfort zone.

We shortened our season.

We didn’t worry about starting the season super early, especially for our bouquet subscription. We scaled back from twenty four weeks to twenty weeks to the sweet spot of fourteen weeks. Instead of starting crops as soon as we could, we started crops as soon as it was best. Not only best for our climate but also by paying close attention to the current weather patterns. Some of this also came out of necessity, as we had a brutal winter and the demand at the accounting office also increased. Graham and I have become quite the duo tag teaming each of the businesses. I help during tax season, he helps during growing and wedding season. The result though, we had the most quality blooms ever. We were able to consistently deliver to our members without the added stress of late or early season frosts. We also didn’t find ourselves suffering from burn out, which in turn gave us more energy to continue to work diligently.

Happily ever after with your success

After reading all this you may think I have lost my love for flower farming. Yes and no. I am out of that puppy love phase but I am more in love with my flower farming business than ever.

The business became a living and breathing beast that needed to be tamed. You don’t understand the advice people give about running your business and not letting it run you, until you are deep in the trenches with your: investment, customers and time. Business isn’t supposed to be personal but when you pour your everything into it… it is personal. Its failure is your failure. Its success is your success… right?

But what does “success” even look like?

Well, there are a lot of flower farmers, influencers and courses that will define that for you, but, true success needs to be determined by you.

From the outside our business looked successful. Honestly, it has been. It just had the potential to be so much more manageable and profitable than it had been.

An irk I have is when people say they are going to talk about profits but only really talk about gross revenue. Okay, I’m getting accountant-y here for a quick moment. So what is gross revenue? It is your sales before deducting expenses. To say you made a $100,000 in sales means nothing. That is a sliver of the picture. and by no means does it tell you their true profit. It also doesn’t tell you what it cost them to make those sales, and I don’t just mean monetarily wise.

In 2022 we had a higher gross revenue than we had in 2023. Does that mean 2022 was more successful? No, it doesn’t. In fact, In 2023 we had less gross revenue than in 2022 but were more profitable; much more profitable. And those abandoned projects we felt we never would get back to? We had both the time and the money to get back to them, after four years!

However, profits alone did not make life better. Slowing down and re-prioritizing was a big chunk too.

We have been able to sneak in multiple vacations to embrace the ones we love out of state. We were able to go hiking, play miniature golf and snuggle with our girls all season long. The guilt and panic of “not doing enough” withered away.

We slowed down and scaled back. Stopped saying “yes” to everyone all the time. The results were like none other.

Success to me is being able to do what I love everyday. To be the caretaker of our field, to share the beauty, to be an artist with flowers… while still being a mom, a wife, a daughter and a friend. To not be caked in dirt all the time with green stained hands, but instead getting my hair done and painting my nails once in a while (even if the paint chips off within the day). Having the time and energy for self care so I can care for all the plants and humans around me better.

Driving yourself into the ground isn’t the way to attain success. In the short term, you may not feel it- heck! You may be feeling that what you are doing is successful. Though, in time, it will bog you down. Perhaps, you are there now and think that maybe, just maybe, flower farming is the solution to how you’re feeling right now. Whether it’s a job without passion or being home with children and needing an outlet, just know flower farming absolutely can be that solution; It was for me. Perhaps you have fallen out of the puppy-love phase of your flower farming business and are having a difficult time reigniting your fire of passion for it. Like most things in life, especially big things like owning a business, flower farming has pitfalls if you are not careful.

What success looks like to me may differ from what success looks like to you. What you need your flower farming business to generate may be different than what it is for me. Ten bucks says it is different because we each have our own unique origin story and our own unique journey. Where you are at today is going to be much different than where you are a few years down the road. Most likely your flower farm’s first year “success” is very different than what you need from it on year three.

Flower farming is its own beaten path for the adventurers, nurturers, creatives… and yes, broken ones. It’s all in how you decide to maneuver that path’s twists, turns, inclines and declines. It is every changing and evolving, changing you and evolving you with it.

Don’t give up.

Reassess and reevaluate, but if your heart belongs to flower farming, don’t let it go easily.

Instead, be sure to slow down from time to time to reassess your definition of success as it pertains to your life and flower farming business. Scale back when you feel like you’re drowning. Shorten your season if necessary. Say “no” when you need to. It is okay and if you feel uncertain, go back and read the list of everything we were offering towards the beginning of this blog.

Don’t let your dream deteriorate into a nightmare but don’t let the fear of a nightmare block you from your dream.

Until next time, we are looking forward to helping you hand blooms soon!

Jessica & Graham

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