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Ep.17: How Brooke Palmer Went From School Teacher To Full Time Flower Farmer
2.5k Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Brooke Palmer from Jenny Creek Flowers shares her inspiring story of how she seamlessly balances her teaching career with her blossoming flower farm for the past three years. However, her deep-rooted love for gardening and the transformative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has played a pivotal role in shaping her path towards full-time flower farming.
As Brooke opens up about her transition from a backyard gardener to a flourishing flower farmer, she unveils the strategic decisions and heartfelt moments that led her to cultivate her dream. From setting up infrastructure to conducting market research, Brooke's journey is a testament to the dedication and passion required to thrive as a cut flower farmer.
In this episode we also discuss winter-forced tulips and the meticulous process of growing thousands of blooms both in Brooke’s cellar and in the field. Brooke's commitment to spreading joy through her flowers is evident in every stem she nurtures, making her story a captivating blend of dedication and beauty.
Tune in to this episode of the Backyard Bouquet Podcast to be inspired by Brooke's remarkable story of growth, resilience, and the transformative power of flowers.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
- Brooke's Journey into Flower Farming: 00:00:57
- Brooke's Background as a Teacher and Flower Farmer: 00:01:37
- Impact of COVID on Brooke's Flower Farming Journey: 00:03:37
- Discussion on Growing Zones: 00:06:05
- Brooke's Gardening Experience in the Pacific Northwest: 00:08:10
- Transition from Gardener to Flower Farmer: 00:09:24
- Winter Forcing Tulips: 00:23:42
- Brooke's Decision to Become a Full-Time Flower Farmer: 00:38:08
- Brooke's Tubers Sale Preparation: 00:40:00
- Brooke's Partnership with Wide Awake Bakery: 00:46:28
- Favorite Tulip Varieties Recommended by Brooke: 00:48:32
Learn more about Brooke Palmer and Jenny Creek Flowers
- Visit Jenny Creek Flowers
- Jenny Creek Flowers on Instagram
- Jenny Creek Flowers on Facebook
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Transcript
Introduction to Backyard Bouquet Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Backyard Bouquet podcast, where stories bloom from local flower fields and home gardens. I'm your host, Jennifer Galitzia of the Flowering Farmhouse. I'm a backyard gardener turned flower farmer located in Hood River, Oregon. Join us for heartfelt journeys shared by flower farmers and backyard gardeners. Each episode is like a vibrant garden, cultivating wisdom and joy through flowers. From growing your own backyard garden to supporting your local flower farmer,
00:00:32
Speaker
The backyard bouquet is your fertile ground for heartwarming tales and expert cut flower growing advice. All right flower friends, grab your gardening gloves, garden snips, or your favorite vase because it's time to let your backyard bloom.
Balancing Teaching and Flower Farming
00:00:57
Speaker
Hi flower friends, welcome back to another episode of the Backyard Bouquet podcast. Joining us today is Brooke Palmer from Jenny Creek Flowers, who's not just a school teacher, but also a passionate flower farmer. For anyone curious about the full-time flower farming life, today's chat with Brooke will be incredibly enlightening.
00:01:18
Speaker
We're going to peek into her world of balancing teaching and tending to blooms, and maybe we'll even touch on what the future holds for Brooke. So you've been balancing teaching and flower farming for how many years, Brooke? For the last three years. For the last three years. And how long have you been a teacher? I've been a teacher over 20 years. I started teaching in 1999 was my first school year.
00:01:44
Speaker
And I currently am teaching 10th grade English in my local high school.
00:01:49
Speaker
That is amazing. Well, thank you for enriching so many children's lives for so many years. And now you are also spreading beauty into the world as a flower farmer. And I can't wait to chat with you today. So thanks for being here on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Of course, it's my pleasure. So if you don't mind, will you give our listeners a little bit of a background on your story of becoming a teacher and a flower farmer? Well, I became a teacher right
00:02:20
Speaker
right out of high school, to be honest. I started teacher college when I was 17 years old, which is crazy because now I work with 15 year olds and I can't imagine any of them really having nailed down what they think they want to do with their whole life. But nonetheless, I thought I knew what I wanted to do. And so I pursued teaching right out of high school, went to teachers college, started teaching when I was 21 years old and have really been since then I've taught
00:02:49
Speaker
fifth grade through 12th grade English. I've been a reading specialist, an instructional coach. And then for a short while, I really wanted to be a school principal. So I went and got my license for that. And it was really on that track, but then COVID happened. And so that's kind of where my teaching and flowers really intersect.
The Shift from Vegetables to Flowers
00:03:11
Speaker
Because I've been a teacher for so long, I've been using all of my summers off, decades of summers off to be a gardener.
00:03:19
Speaker
And really for such a long time, I've been in love with growing flowers and vegetables. And then it's really right around the time of COVID where the urge, the desire to have more flowers in my life and have that be more central came through. I love that. I think that COVID really shifted this internal desire in so many of us where we needed that connection with nature and just putting our hands in the soil was really healing.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yes, so so muddy. Yeah, at that time, I I pretty much turned my vegetable gardens just over to flowers and decided to support a local farm where they were having to pivot, you know, their sales model. And I thought, oh, just buy vegetables and it'll let me grow more flowers.
00:04:08
Speaker
I love that. I heard someone say recently, well, it was actually on one of our past episodes when I was talking with Christy Pirafoy, and we were chatting about her book, Seed Time and Harvest, and she had mentioned that she at first was thinking, is it selfish to grow flowers instead of food?
00:04:26
Speaker
because food or vegetables feed our body, but she realized at the same time that flowers feed our soul. So we're still feeding ourselves in just a different way. And I think that COVID really highlighted that for so many of us.
Relocating and Adapting to New Growing Zones
00:04:40
Speaker
So you are currently teaching, you've been teaching for 20 years. Where are you located? I'm in a small town called Truman's Berg. It's just outside of Ithaca in central New York.
00:04:53
Speaker
And I've been back home. This is home. I grew up around here. I've been back home for about three years. So as long as I've had my flower farm and previously my husband and son and I, we lived out in Portland, Oregon. So kind of out by you. And I lived out there for 20 years. So that was another big change that happened during the pandemic as we decided on pretty much
00:05:18
Speaker
spontaneously to put in an offer on a beautiful old farmstead here and kind of uproot our Portland lives so that we could move back home closer to family. So you spent quite a bit of time in the Pacific Northwest. Yes, I absolutely did. And I still I'm still very much adjusting to my growing zone when I think about things like flowering Daphne and plants that really I got so used to how they would mark
00:05:45
Speaker
the seasonal year out there. Oh, the Daphne is blooming right now. And oh my goodness, does it smell incredible around here? Oh, incredible. We had so much. And it's the one thing it really puts a little pain in my heart when I see images online right now. So you mentioned adjusting growing zones. What growing zone are you in now? Well, we're 6A. We were 5B, but with the update, we're 6A.
00:06:10
Speaker
Um, and you know, right now outside, it looks like we've got daffodils pushing up and tulips, you know, with some foliage, but pretty much all the trees are bare still. So a little forsythia happening, but it, spring comes late here. When is your last frost date of the year? Uh, around the middle of March of May. So a couple, what is that? Another five weeks.
00:06:37
Speaker
Last year we had a surprising, very late frost. So that's kind of, I think on the top of everyone's minds is to consider if it's worth calling the last frost the end of May versus trying to push things and get them in the ground a few weeks earlier.
00:06:53
Speaker
It's really great that you just mentioned that because we're not that much different in average frost dates than you. We were just moved to zone 8B and I was previously 7B. Our last average frost date here in Hood River is May 1st. However, there's a mountain that we always say when the snow is melted off there,
00:07:17
Speaker
That is when it's safe to start planting outside your annuals. Or as of recently, I heard that when the lilacs start blooming, that is when you can start planting your dahlias. Well, this year, I'm not trusting that because our lilacs are starting to bloom today. And there are snows on the hills. We got down to 36 last night, and I'm thinking we're recording this in the beginning of April.
00:07:44
Speaker
And the last two years we've had snow in the middle of April. So it's one of those things where you have to be really careful about judging and deciding when you can put your plants, those tender annuals or tender perennials and annuals in the ground. Yeah, absolutely. So did you get your green thumb while you were living in the Pacific Northwest or is that something you've always had?
00:08:10
Speaker
A seed got planted during my college summers where I worked at a wholesale nursery around here. And so I spent all day outside. We did a lot of propagating. I started learning the names of flowers and I really loved it. I loved being outside all day, but never really thought much about.
00:08:29
Speaker
that idea, aside from gardening. So I didn't really grow anything in New York. I had gotten a community gardening plot. I had planted it out for the very first time. And then a couple weeks later, I moved out west. So I never really got to see that first garden come to fruit. And then I learned everything that I know really out in Portland. We had
00:08:55
Speaker
along. We had one of those beautiful oversized urban corner lots and it was just all grass. And so over the course of five to seven years, kind of tucked plants in all over the place and made it a really beautiful oasis, ripped things out as I learned more, added things as I learned and made a really beautiful garden space.
From Hobby Gardener to Flower Farmer
00:09:18
Speaker
That's incredible. Did you grow in Portland for cut flowers or were you strictly a backyard gardener?
00:09:25
Speaker
I was just a backyard gardener. Flowers that I did grow there were I grew roses, I grew sweet peas, dahlias, nigella, sunflowers, cosmos, parks, glove, hellebore.
00:09:39
Speaker
Lots of beautiful flowers were within the garden, but it never occurred to me, not even once, I think, to sell flowers. And it really came out of the blue, this idea to do the flower farm. So we put this offer in on the place where we live. And the moment it got accepted, I thought I was going to be really excited about coming home and, you know, getting to live back in New York and be by family. And I was, but almost immediately
00:10:09
Speaker
at the top of my mind was, I'm going to have a flower farm now. And I have no idea. I try to look back and see, was there another kind of transitional step that got me from going gardener to flower farming? And there really wasn't other than the idea of having the land, I guess. I felt like our corner lot was really maxed out. It didn't occur to me that I didn't know much about flower farming then.
00:10:36
Speaker
There are plenty of urban flower farms that didn't occur to me that I could do that. And then as soon as I had the idea that there would be acreage here, I couldn't be stopped. It was an idea that I couldn't set down. How much acreage do you have? Our property in total is 40 acres. Oh, wow. It's big. Yeah, it's really lovely. I feel really, really lucky. 13 acres are tillable and 10
00:11:05
Speaker
acres are used by a neighbor who's been farming here pretty much his whole life.
Optimizing Small-Scale Flower Farming
00:11:10
Speaker
Um, and so I, I've sort of claimed this three acre hay field, um, which is now I would say about an acre, I've got about a solid acre, a little more than that fenced in with a deer fence. We have a lot of deer here. Um, and then within that fence, I've got a couple of high tunnels and I've got my field, like my annual
00:11:34
Speaker
field and then I've got my peonies planted. You can grow a lot in an acre. You can grow a lot yeah so I so I have an acre fenced in but I would say I'm probably still growing on half an acre maybe even just a little bit less but there's just there's space there now which feels really nice and the deer cannot get in.
00:11:55
Speaker
I want to go back to something you said and touch on it. And you mentioned that when you were growing in Portland, you had a large lot, but you never even thought about the possibility of being able to grow flowers on a smaller scale. I was in the same boat. I had a decent backyard in Portland. And when we moved here, I had a small backyard that produced a ton of flowers. And I think that as of recently with people like Galena at Microflower Farm,
00:12:22
Speaker
people are realizing that you don't have to have a ton of space. So if you're listening today and you've been wanting to grow a cut flower garden, this is your sign and your permission that you don't have to have a large space to have a cut flower garden that can be profitable as a flower farmer.
00:12:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in some ways, there's probably a simplicity to having a backyard flower farm versus trying to take a field and build all your infrastructure and all of those things.
00:12:55
Speaker
They're so different, I know, because we lost our main growing space. We've had to consolidate this year. And I'm kind of finding this joy and the simplicity of a backyard. And now having downsized and now having about a quarter of what I was previously growing on, it seems easy to me. And I recognize that for someone starting out, it would still be overwhelming, the amount of flowers I'm growing. But there's this beauty in starting small and having a very controllable amount of flowers that you can learn from.
00:13:24
Speaker
and grow. So that leads me to my next question for you. You moved back to New York, you bought your 40 acre farm and you decided I'm going to be a flower farmer. Was there a moment that you thought to yourself like I have to do this or what, what spurred you to say I've got to grow flowers here? It was, we were, I was, I was in our guest bedroom when I got the phone call from the realtor telling us that we got the property and honestly it just,
00:13:54
Speaker
It just emerged like I need more flowers. I want to grow flowers. I want to do this. My husband really pleaded with me like, that sounds lovely, but maybe we could put the brakes on that. We are moving cross country. We're coming out of a pandemic. There's been a lot. There's a lot going on. And I tried to temper that idea. But then when we arrived here,
00:14:18
Speaker
Um,
Building a Viable Flower Farming Business
00:14:19
Speaker
and I went out and just stepped into this three acre hay field. It was like, I could just see the whole thing unfolding before my eyes. Um, and I just, I went, I really just went for it. That is amazing. So it sounds like you just had this instant clarity that you knew down in your soul that you had to grow those flowers. I did. I did. And, but, and then I, but with that, so I did feel that and I,
00:14:48
Speaker
decided I want to grow flowers and I think this can be really viable. But then I did slow down enough to start to do my market research and really start to look at, OK, what does this really mean? Because I trust that I can grow flowers. I've been growing flowers for decades. But what does it really mean to sell flowers? So then that's kind of where, you know, that that's really the big difference, I think, in so many ways between a gardener and a flower farmer is
00:15:18
Speaker
really starting to understand what are my sales objectives and what are my outlets gonna be? And is there a space for me in this market here? How do I build a flower farm that has offerings that are unique to what other people are doing? And so I definitely spent in my first year especially, I spent a lot of time digging into those questions so that I felt like I was
00:15:44
Speaker
going to do this massive undertaking. And I say massive undertaking. Mostly, I mean, my first my first season, I was smaller than an eighth of an acre, but I was teaching full time. So it is a massive undertaking to try to build a business and a farm when you're working full time. And I also have a kid. Yes.
00:16:09
Speaker
Well, you're so wise to have done that initial research and figure out a business plan because I think it was Lisa Mason Ziegler, I heard say this, that without a plan and a way to sell your flowers, you're basically just a large scale backyard grower. And that's the one thing that differentiates a cut flower farmer from a flower grower is are you making a profit on selling your flowers? And if you don't have a stream or an outlet to move your flowers,
00:16:39
Speaker
it can be very costly to grow so many flowers. So that's very wise that you started out that way. It's expensive and it's really sad, you know, it's like to do, to create this beautiful bounty, but not have a place to, to send it off to feels really the opposite of what someone's actually trying to achieve when they set out to grow a lot of flowers.
00:17:05
Speaker
Absolutely. So when you first moved to New York, you started with an eighth of an acre of flowers. However, you were also balancing a full-time job as a teacher. I imagine that that was not easy to juggle both and to find time for both. Can you tell us, walk us through how you got your farm up and running and started while also juggling a full-time job? Yeah, I started off by, I think first of all was just
00:17:35
Speaker
picking the size that felt manageable. This eighth of an acre felt like a pretty manageable size. And then I really used the spring and summer to set up the infrastructure. So there I was with extra time off. And it was a really good time to just do the initial tillage and bring in the compost and get up the deer fence and figure out how we were going to irrigate.
00:18:04
Speaker
So that first summer, it was really a lot of using time to set things up without necessarily growing and selling the flowers. So that when the next spring came, it was ready to go. And that was a really important move. I also started to look at my school calendar and see, okay, how can I fit
00:18:30
Speaker
planting in with that. So we have always have a break around the first week of April and that's the perfect time here to grow, plant your hardy annuals. So that April break just has become dedicated to my field planting and getting things in the ground, putting on the, doing the frost cover dance for the last two months of the school year or six weeks, however long till the frost stops.
00:18:55
Speaker
I love that you said that your first year you focused on putting in the infrastructure and you didn't focus on trying to sell the flowers. I think a lot of people, and I'm guilty of this myself, I dream really big and I want this gorgeous field of tons of flowers, but you first need to know when they're going to bloom, how many stems you can anticipate. And if you've been growing those flowers for a while, you maybe already know that information.
00:19:25
Speaker
But if you're growing a flower you've never grown before, you can't go promising someone a hundred stems of lizianthus on a certain date if you don't know when they're going to bloom or how well you're going to be able to grow them. So I think that's such a smart thing you did to give yourself that first year. So tell us about your second year a little bit more. You had the infrastructure in place. What were the markets you decided to go into? Where were you going to sell your flowers?
00:19:56
Speaker
My main market has been a CSA. So I started out the first year where I was growing flowers with a spring tulip CSA, a summer CSA, and then a dahlia CSA. And honestly, I probably started a little bit bigger than I should have. I think I had about 20 shares, which
00:20:20
Speaker
people disagree on that, but some people say, you know, start a CSA share with 10, 15 people.
Challenges of CSA Bouquet Management
00:20:27
Speaker
I kind of pushed it a little bit. There were moments where that maybe felt a little stressful just again to what you're seeing of predicting how many stems are in the field and that sort of thing. And then I also sold flowers at two farmer's markets. So there's a really small farmer's market in my village and then the Ithaca farmer's market, which I attended
00:20:49
Speaker
I think that first year pretty sporadically, it wasn't an every weekend vendor, but I went in for a number of weeks with the case. And so that was in 2022? Yeah, that's a good question. I think that is 22, yes. Okay. And so I like what you said there, that you did 20 CSA subscriptions.
00:21:17
Speaker
I wish I could be fast at making bouquets. Maybe it's because I'm a perfectionist at heart. It takes me forever to make a CSA bouquet. You see those videos online and it's like the 62nd bouquet. I have never been one of those to do that. I cannot do that either. Try as I might. I'm not there.
00:21:38
Speaker
A 20-person CSA, and I do my bouquets by myself, takes me all day. Well, not all day, but it takes a good percentage of the day to strip and clean the flowers. If you include the harvesting, it's a day of stripping in them, harvesting them, conditioning them, arranging them, and then delivering them.
00:21:58
Speaker
it takes a lot of time away from the farm. So I love that you said that that's a big number getting started. Now I know some farms have help or they're way more efficient than me and they can juggle a hundred CSA subscriptions or whatever, but I like that what you said. Do you limit how many subscriptions you have now? Well, I've done a couple things with my CSAs. One is that I,
00:22:23
Speaker
have them on two different days a week. So that's been really helpful in just dividing the number of shares, kind of dividing that workload. It feels more manageable. I feel really happy while I'm making the bouquets now and not stressed or in exhaustion. And then the other thing is that I've really been trying to simplify down to not that every
00:22:46
Speaker
CSA offering is a straight bunch, but a lot of them are. So I've got my tulips, which are just tulips, and I've got my dahlias, just dahlias. And then I've got, I only have two CSAs now that will be mixed bouquets. So I run CSAs January through May, take a break. No, January through May is just all straight tulips. June is a mixed
00:23:13
Speaker
bouquet, take a break in July, August is a mixed one, and then September is our just dahlias. So I feel like it's gotten a lot more simple for me, that the most of what I'm making, it's just counting stems and putting them together. Okay, let's break that apart. You told us earlier that your last frost date is in May. How are you doing flowers in January?
Winter Tulip Forcing Techniques
00:23:42
Speaker
So I, um, the first flowers that I grew and sold were actually winter tulips. So part of that year where I did my market research, um, I was really looking at the, you know, asking that question of like, who's growing what, who's doing what with flowers around here. And when I looked, I felt like, okay, there are definitely flower farms around, but it doesn't feel like the market is totally saturated.
00:24:08
Speaker
That being said, when I started to look at what are they offering and what's available, and I looked at my own lifestyle, I thought, you know, the thing that came to me was like, wouldn't it be amazing if I could actually figure out how to sell flowers in the off seasons? And so I happened upon the Tulip workshop and the world of winter tulips.
00:24:34
Speaker
It's been really incredible. So this is, I'm finishing my third winter forcing tulips in my cellar. And, um, I've had, I've been harvesting every day since I think January 3rd this year. And today I just finished up my 12th week of CSA. So it's, it's April, the first week of April and I've been months into harvesting flowers this year. It's really exciting.
00:25:02
Speaker
You had 12 weeks of tulips in the winter. Yes, I've had 12 weeks. Yep. How many tulips did you grow inside? I did 14,000 this year. Um, I, and I, again, that's part of just my approach at being really strategic. The first year I did a thousand, then I did 10,000, then I did 14,000. Um, next year I'm going to be doing 20,000.
00:25:26
Speaker
So I'm trying to be really strategic with my growth. I don't want to have stems I can't sell, but I also want to kind of, you know, push, push my tulip program as much as I can. Can I ask how many of those 14,000 tulips were you able to sell? Oh, that's a great question. Um, I would say, so I factor in with my, with my winter tulips, I factor in a 30% loss.
00:25:52
Speaker
That makes me really comfortable. I don't factor that amount of loss with anything I plant in the field. But when you're forcing tulips, there's a lot of ins and outs and temperature regulation and things like that. So I would say I absolutely used that 30% loss. And then I comfortably sold all the rest of the tulips. My CSA shares have been sold out.
00:26:22
Speaker
I sell weekly at a bakery. I popped into the farmer's market a couple of times. I do some friends and family and people asking for random bouquets. So I've been moving a lot of tulips since January. Do you also sell them wholesale to florists? I don't. It's something that I would like to do. I've talked to a florist about that. And it just kind of comes down to the limitations of my space
00:26:52
Speaker
I think next year I'm going to realize the extent of my space where I can grow tulips in the winter. And it's just this evaluation between what I rather be selling them at retail pricing and getting love notes back from people saying how much the tulips are brightening their life in the doldrums of winter versus going at wholesale price and not really knowing
00:27:22
Speaker
who's on the receiving end of the tulips necessarily. Sure. Well, that is amazing that you grew 14,000 tulips. You must have a huge growing space inside your house. Well, it's a dirt floor. So our farmhouse is early 1800s. It's a dirt floor cellar and
00:27:44
Speaker
The first time I walked in there, it's a little scary, but I'm a couple years in there now. So it's probably one of my favorite spaces anywhere. And I just have it really set up with my folding tables and my lights. And it's pretty tight. So there's certain areas where I'm kind of shimmying sideways to get in. And I'm really trying to maximize the space.
00:28:10
Speaker
but I feel really fortunate that it's there and I don't have to supplement with any heating. So it just uses the ambient temperature of the farmhouse. What is that temperature? It typically stays around down there. Um, it stays pretty happily around 55 and it'll, it'll go up or down a little bit, but generally speaking, it's kind of like a nice cool spring day down there. And are you planting all 14,000
00:28:38
Speaker
tulips at once or are you staggering out the planting? A little bit of both. I've done partially hydroponic growing and those are planted staggered and then I've also been growing in soil and crates and those get pre-planted. Most of those get pre-planted in I want to say September and then I prep crates for a second
00:29:07
Speaker
planting that will happen in November. Once some of my, some of my bulbs, I get the pre-cooled bulbs. So once those have reached all their cooling time, then I usually I plant those up. So the tulips take a really, they take a lot of time. I'd say that's the definitely the central focus of my flower farm. And I'll start working on tulips. I've got my tulips ordered for next year, but I'll start working on prep for
00:29:35
Speaker
growing them probably in August, just cleaning and organizing crates and inventorying and getting everything ready at that point. How many crates do you use for 14,000? Oh, many, um, around 150. And then I, I think it's around 150. Um, I'm constantly on the hunt for more and that's, that's also potentially a limiting factor, but I think I have that sorted out actually.
00:30:05
Speaker
That's a lot of crates to be carrying down to your basement. It is, you know, it keeps me fit. That's one thing. Like I think I can just like, these things are 50 pounds. I can pick them up and carry them. And whenever I have people helping me, I notice that I'm the one who's clearly lifting them steadily. Um, I will say that I'm going to hire my teenage son next year. He's very excited.
00:30:29
Speaker
And he's going to help me. We move crates once a week. He does help me now, but I'm kind of formalizing it a little bit more next year to incentivize him to, you know, work on strengthening his body and then also taking a little bit of that load off of me.
00:30:46
Speaker
I don't want to lose our momentum on the tulips, but you mentioned being strong and having strength carrying those crates. I want to offer up a word of caution to people when they are trying to lift those 50 pound crates are incredibly heavy, especially if they're outside and it's been raining.
00:31:04
Speaker
I did a minor tear to my hamstring two years ago, improperly lifting my two up crates and it's just now healing two years later. If you can have someone help you carry those crates, I highly recommend it. Yes. My mom and aunt will help a lot and we'll be on either side of it.
00:31:24
Speaker
It's pretty lovely to carry them that way. It's so much easier with someone holding one side of those. It's, I joke that we don't need CrossFit or anything like that. It's, it's farmers fit. We need like a new hashtag that's like farmers fit because we're flower farmer fit or something. We're lifting so many.
00:31:42
Speaker
heavy things on a daily basis. So I have so many questions about your tulips in the basement. I hope it's okay to ask you a few more. So you said you grew hydroponically and in crates. Did you have to water both methods down in the basement? Yeah. Um, the, the hydroponic they'll root in water and then you'll refresh the water and then the soil crates also will, they'll get watered once a week.
00:32:10
Speaker
Um, at this point I've kind of got it figured out. I think my first year I had water felt like an issue, just the space being too wet. But at this point I can kind of look at a crate and know exactly how much, how long to pass over it with the wand and not have anything dripping. And so it stays pretty dry down there now. So you bring a hose into your basement and you hose everything down. I, we had a hose, I guess we just had a water supply down there.
00:32:38
Speaker
Um, so I was really lucky for that, but I did, I did pay someone this summer to install a sink and that has been ridiculously exciting to have a utility sink. I think you only realize how wonderful that is when you get one and haven't had been functioning with one for so long.
00:32:57
Speaker
That sounds amazing. I've actually looked online and thought about the idea of some of those utility sinks that you can hook up to your hose to bring outside because it is back breaking. If you're bending over to buckets and trying to rinse off tulips, I mean, I grow, well, I cut back this year. I have 4,000 tulips. So I have a fraction of what you have, but it breaks my back every day bending over. So that's awesome. And 4,000 field tulips is a whole different animal because
00:33:26
Speaker
they'll just come on in a flash. Whereas with mine, I pull them every week. It's such a, so much succession growing. It's not like in the field where you can't even turn your back before they're blowing open.
00:33:41
Speaker
Oh my goodness. It happens with the blink of an eye. I mean, you think you have everything harvested and you go back out that evening and you're not going, did I even harvest today? So during field tulip season, I eat my lunch while driving home from school. I eat in the car and then I race outside. Usually in the morning before school, I'll set up my crates and everything that I need for harvesting and I'll pull tulips and I'll rinse them off and I'll
00:34:08
Speaker
throw them in my shed.
Balancing Teaching and Tulip Season
00:34:09
Speaker
A lot of times if they're so wet and they're not ready to go in the cooler, then I'll just send my husband a text message like, can you put them in the cooler at a certain time? It's pretty burly. Those are the few weeks that the balancing both aspects of my life feels especially challenging.
00:34:28
Speaker
I can only imagine. So I've got one more question about the basement growing because I'm super intrigued. So you've done hydroponic and in the crates with soil. Do you have a favorite way of growing them? I do. Um, I'm actually going to phase out hydroponic growing. I went into this year thinking that I was going to go a hundred percent hydroponic, but when I really look at my records, I find that I do have more loss.
00:34:56
Speaker
with hydroponic growing there are just more issues with humidity and they just for me in my space it feels a little bit more temperamental. What I love about the soil I feel like the tulips are I feel like they're stronger they're healthier there's much less loss and I like the work ahead factor. I like that in the summertime we can fill crates and then when the bulbs come it's really easy to
00:35:23
Speaker
plant them and then they go into my walk-in cooler and they sit there. And then once a week I just pull them out. So if the whole thing feels really rhythmic, whereas with the hydroponic growing for me personally, I've found it to feel a lot more stressful. And, um, even a few years in, I, I just didn't master it. It takes a, it takes a lot. And I think that if you're going to do hydroponic, you should really just do that. I think trying to do both in a space is tricky.
00:35:52
Speaker
I think it's great that your records allow you to see both number wise, what worked and what didn't work. So I think you took a very calculated approach to that. And I think that's great advice for other people as well. Thank you for going so deep with me into growing in your basement. I'm sure that people will have questions based on what we've heard, but you said you did your learning for growing or I should say winter forcing through a workshop.
00:36:22
Speaker
It's called the Tulip Workshop. It's led by Emily and Linda and it's really a wonderful learning opportunity and it's a wonderful community of growers that we stay connected and are able to troubleshoot and celebrate wins and ask questions and
00:36:42
Speaker
help one another out. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. So you mentioned that next comes your field grown two ups. How many two ups do you have in the field? I have about, I think I have 4,500 this year. Um, so about what you're growing and I'm really, you know, I really try to spread them out with varieties, um, with different bloom times to try to extend that window and
00:37:09
Speaker
It feels every year kind of like, well, we'll just see how long does the field to the season last. Um, I feel like they're taller this year than they've ever been. So I've noticed that too. Yeah. I market my CSA as being the first three weeks of May and that's what it's been. But I'm really curious if we'll be starting to feel tulips in the end of April.
00:37:31
Speaker
We're about two weeks early, so you'll have to let me know if you end up being early as well because our tulips are blooming before we have any filler. It's crazy this year. So you mentioned because you do work full time. I have a feeling that quite a few of our listeners
00:37:49
Speaker
Have a job and they either have a backyard flower garden or they're aspiring to be a cut flower farmer And they haven't been able to make the transition yet to flower farming full-time How on earth are you juggling almost 20,000 tulips and being a teacher?
Transitioning to Full-Time Flower Farming
00:38:07
Speaker
Well, the very exciting thing is that I will not be juggling both of those next year I made the decision very recently that I'm
00:38:18
Speaker
And I put in my letter of resignation so that when we reach the end of the school year in June, I'm hitting pause on my teaching career and I'm ready to give full-time flower farming a try. That is phenomenal. Congratulations, Brooke. That is huge. I would love to talk to you about that. And I also would love to hear how you are going to juggle the rest of the school year because you have a lot on your plate until June. Is that correct?
00:38:48
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. I know people, my mom or someone will say, oh, it's just this much time. And I think it's between like spring is between me and the end of the year. So spring and a flower farm is a lot. It's an incredibly busy time because you also grow dahlias. Yes. So you are juggling tulips and dahlias, which are both very time consuming flowers. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:39:14
Speaker
And I know that by the time the podcast airs, your tuber sale is going to be over, but you're gearing up for a tuber sale right now also. Yes. I have my in-person tuber sale tomorrow at the market. Um, it's supposed to be about 39 degrees. I know. So well, no, I, there, there seems to be a lot of excitement about it. Um, but it's not quite springy weather that we're all hoping for right now. And next year when I have,
00:39:42
Speaker
more time than I'm going to start having an online tuber sale. So I've done the in-person sale for a few years. And it's again, one of those things where I have to weigh out what it is I can manage and getting an online sale as it was not in the cards this year.
00:40:00
Speaker
There's a lot of behind the scenes work that goes into an online tuber sale. I spend, well, being a small flower farm like most other growers, I don't have an IT team or a tech team or a marketing team. It's me trying to figure out the code or the layout and trying to make it look nice and make sure I've got all my T's crossed and my eyes dotted.
00:40:24
Speaker
it takes so much time to do an online sale. So I don't blame you for just doing the in-person this year. So
00:40:32
Speaker
What are some steps or suggestions you can offer to our listeners who are juggling a full-time job or even a part-time job and also trying to become a flower farmer or grow a cut flower garden? How do you juggle taking care of your flowers and also staying present with your job and your mom and a wife? Yeah. That's a great question. It's the question. I think the best way for anybody to do that is
00:41:02
Speaker
to get really focused on what you're doing. So for me, I decided that I wanted winter tulips to be kind of the central offering for my flower farm. And so when it feels like there's a lot on my plate, I've been able and I've had to let things go. I know what I can hold on to and what I can let go of. And that's been really useful for me. I think the other thing is that it's,
00:41:31
Speaker
I'm at this point where I'm able to leave teaching and do my flower farm because I'm not just growing flowers, but I've been selling flowers. And so I would say that's the other piece to it is making sure that you have the marketing pieces in place so that all of this effort in these really long days doesn't land you with buckets of blooms that you have nowhere for them to go, which is
00:41:58
Speaker
really discouraging and demoralizing and expensive, but instead that you're getting that kind of energy boost that comes from sending out the flowers and hearing back from people and how much they're delighting in them. That's really, for me, what makes it manageable for me is people love my flowers and they feel really happy and they tell me that and they take pictures and they share them with me. And so
00:42:25
Speaker
It feels like there's value in what I'm doing, so that's how I can stay motivated.
00:42:33
Speaker
That's really beautiful. I love that people give you feedback. One of my favorite things about doing a CSA is that you do get to hear that feedback from people and you know that those flowers are brightening their day versus like you said, when they go out to a wholesaler, you have no idea who's getting to enjoy them or if they were enjoyed. But when you deliver that CSA bouquet, you hand it off to your customer and you have that relationship. It's a really special connection that you're building.
00:43:02
Speaker
That's great. So you've wrapped up 12 weeks of tulips. You're gearing up for how many weeks is your outdoor tulip CSA? That's three weeks. Um, I still do have tulips growing in my, in my cellar right now. Yeah. I still have tulips. Um, so I, I think I've managed the last two years where I don't really have a gap. So that's really awesome. Um, but I do a three week.
00:43:31
Speaker
spring field tulips, CSA, that'll be my next one. And is that strictly tulips like the other one? Yeah, strictly tulips. So how does that look? How many tulips do you put in a CSA bouquet? I put 10 and some weeks it'll be just the same one and then some weeks it might be, you know, two colors put together.
00:43:53
Speaker
And do you deliver them, have a pickup location? People pick up at my flower farm. I have a flower shed that is set up for self-serve on CSA days. And then in Ithaca, I actually, I have a lovely relationship with a bakery there that invited me to start selling flowers out of their bakery. So that's my CSA spot. And I have a flower cooler there where
00:44:18
Speaker
I'll go in a couple of times a week and fill it with bouquets. And then on Tuesdays, I drop off my CSA shares there for Ithaca pickup. So you have placed your own cooler at this bakery. Yes. That's awesome. Yeah, it's really awesome. I didn't. They asked me to sell flowers there.
00:44:40
Speaker
year round and I was very excited about it, but I wasn't that excited about the cooler. I felt like maybe that was not going to be weird or where people were going to be disconnected, but they really wanted the cooler. So we took one of those just refrigerator, I don't know, drink coolers fridges and my husband wrapped it in old wood and made it look really beautiful. And yeah, he just, he's a woodworker. So he has a way away with wood.
00:45:10
Speaker
and it's working out really well because flowers stay really fresh and given my schedule of teaching sometimes usually when I'm in there it's late at night or early in the morning sometimes I go before school and drop off flowers so they're there for the day but it works out really well to have the cooler there. Are they pre-sold or they buy them through the bakery? They just buy them through the bakery, yep.
00:45:36
Speaker
And can I ask, do you consign them? I don't, I don't do any of that. So when they invited me, they explained that as a bakery, when they were getting their start, they were able to sell their bread in a few retail places, just like sell it without consigning or taking a cut or whatever. And so they offered me that as well, you know, just having known how helpful that was for their business. So,
00:46:04
Speaker
really just a wonderful setup for me. And it's lovely. It's a lovely bakery. They make absolutely the best bread around and just wonderful people coming in and out of there all day. I really love that. What a kind way that they are paying it forward and spreading kindness and beauty. I mean, so many people get to enjoy your flowers because of their kindness. Yeah. And I go in the night before they open and
00:46:31
Speaker
I usually bring in a bucket of tulips and then I go in and have a little quiet time and put together some vases and scatter them all around the bakery so that when they open in the morning, it's really beautiful. Oh, how wonderful. Okay, so now we have to know the name of this bakery. So anyone that's visiting your area can go support them. They're called Wide Awake Bakery. And they have a really close relationship with
00:47:00
Speaker
a farm called farmer ground flour. So there's the growing and the milling of the flour and then this, you know, artisan baking using the local flour and local ingredients. So it's just a really, and they're masterful. Every single thing they make is incredible. So it's a really lovely bakery.
00:47:22
Speaker
That sounds like an amazing setup you have going there. What a great partnership. I still feel I can't believe it. I'm like, they asked me to do this. I'm so lucky. I feel so, so grateful for it.
00:47:33
Speaker
That is amazing. Um, before we stop talking about tulips and it's kind of perfect because it's tulip season right now.
Favorite Tulip Varieties and Ordering Tips
00:47:43
Speaker
And there's a couple of things you said you already ordered your tulips for next year, which is so important because tulips, it's crazy. You order your tulips when you are harvesting your tulips for if you're growing large scale and ordering wholesale.
00:48:01
Speaker
I know that many farms offer tulips for sale in the fall, but if you're wanting to order 100 or 500 or 1000 of a variety, now is the time to do so. People are starting to make their lists of tulips. I'm gonna put you on the spot here. And I'm not gonna say you have to tell us three or five or 10. Just whatever comes to your mind, list off some of your favorite varieties of tulips that you would recommend to others to grow.
00:48:31
Speaker
Um, well, I'd say my top favorite, which is probably for so many people is Columbus. Just, it's a peony tulip and you just, it's stunning and it opens and opens and opens for days and days. Um, so that is definitely my favorite. I'm pretty sure that's a customer favorite as well. What color is it? It's a dark pink and with a little bit of white edging at the top of the petals. I've never grown that one.
00:48:59
Speaker
Oh, it's stunning. It's absolutely stunning. What else? One that I love that is very understated, it's sometimes called White Valley, sometimes exotic emperor.
00:49:12
Speaker
And it's that like buttercream ivory tulip, but there is something so graceful about it that and I love how it's extremely underwhelming when you first get it and then within a couple of days, it's pretty mind blowing when it opens what it looks like.
00:49:31
Speaker
So that's a tulip I always grow also in the field that is absolutely the first tulip to bloom. So that's something really special about it. And I think in gardening, it's an important variety to include just because it kind of gets the tulip party started.
00:49:47
Speaker
Mine, I'm almost done harvesting. I have 500. I don't want to interrupt your list, but the exotic emperor. I lived in Italy my senior year of college and I studied early Renaissance art.
00:50:04
Speaker
the exotic emperor make me think of early Renaissance art paintings where you see the tulips that are just fully blown open because they're so unique. I love how you use the word underwhelming. If I hold up my thumb, they are smaller than my thumb when I harvest them. And you can see that they're starting to crack open. The ones that I've had on my dining room table, I
00:50:28
Speaker
I guess it's been six days now. They're as big as my hands spread open because they just keep growing and growing and they keep spreading open more and more. I've done a couple of time lapses with them because they're just, they're so mesmerizing. They really are. It's such a beautiful tulip. Okay. So I think we've sold that one. What other ones do you like? I really liked, I grew Palmira this year and I really loved that one.
00:50:55
Speaker
Palmyra or Alison Bradley, they both are kind of that like eggplant burgundy. I don't tend towards that color so much, but I found I thought Palmyra was just a really gorgeous tulip. I really liked Alison Bradley as well, kind of similar, a similar color. So I put them both on my list again for next year. Do you have
00:51:23
Speaker
Any others that you like too? I'm going to squeeze out your list because I haven't heard of a couple of these. So many tulips. I love them. I love them all. Every single one that comes in is my favorite. What else do I really love? Oh, I grew Nagrita parrot. So that's also a dark purple. Maybe I'm in my dark purple face. That is a really beautiful parrot, similar to the exotic emperor of the parrots open
00:51:52
Speaker
in a really wild way and really just kind of hold that for days. So I think their parents are so fun because they do so much movement in the vase and they kind of put on a show.
00:52:05
Speaker
They really do. I always think of it as like a ballet, like the ballerinas moving. They're just so graceful. What about scents? I, until this year, I'm not sure how I've missed this or if I forgot. I've never really paid attention to the smell of tulips. And last night as I was harvesting, I had a couple foxy fox trots that had blown open that were beyond.
00:52:33
Speaker
I rarely have flowers in my house, but when they blow open or unusable or if I break a stem, those are the ones that go in my house. And so I had a handful of Foxy Fox shots that have blown open. I must not have ever smelled them before.
00:52:48
Speaker
They have this incredible lemon, like it's a lemon meringue fragrance is how my daughter and I described it. And I was thinking I'm not a big yellow person, but I'm going to have to grow this forever now because the smell was so great. Do you have any that you really enjoy the smell? I grew one this year called Largo. It's a red tulip.
00:53:08
Speaker
Um, and I grew up for Valentine's day and it had a lovely scent. So I was really, I feel the same way where you can, cause they don't all have a fragrance. Um, and then a few, you know, a few do or probably more than a few do. Um, and it's really just absolutely lovely when you have this beautiful tulip and it does have some fragrance.
00:53:29
Speaker
It's such a fun little surprise that my daughter and I, we both keep walking by the Foxy Foxtrot. So we're like, oh my goodness, this is so incredible. And they're not overpowering like sunflowers that overpower room. You literally have to go up and smell them, but I don't know how I've missed that all these years. Okay, I know we've talked a lot and there's so much we haven't touched on yet. I really want to talk to you about
00:53:57
Speaker
this big transition in your life, how did you know that it was time to make the jump from being a full-time teacher and a flower farmer on the side to becoming a full-time flower farmer?
Life Choices Influencing Flower Farming
00:54:11
Speaker
I think the biggest thing for me is realizing that I am the limiting factor in my flower farm. So I feel confident that I could be growing and selling more flowers than I am, but I'm
00:54:26
Speaker
100% limited by time, time being always the scarcest resource. And that was a really big piece of it. The ideas come up, opportunities, I have to let things go because I don't have time. I also lost a parent to cancer in December, a really fast and aggressive
00:54:50
Speaker
brain cancer. And so that, thank you. That was really difficult, remains difficult. You know, there's a lot of learning that comes with grief and loss. And I think the reality might
00:55:06
Speaker
son is a teenager and he's now taller than me. As of last week, he's officially taller than me overnight. And you know, just that reality that we just get one life. And I've been working really hard doing two things that I love, but it feels like the pace of life needs to include more downtime. So just kind of looking at quality of life. And then
00:55:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think those are the big things is realizing that I'm holding myself back at this point. And that feels really comfortable because that was not the case. I couldn't have said that a year or two ago. I wouldn't have felt that way, but I've been really strategic in building my customer base and making sure I have high quality products and
00:56:03
Speaker
building my soil and just doing all the things my infrastructure and really trying to look at this this my growth in a in a strategic way I've I set a lot of goals I'm really goal oriented so it's
00:56:18
Speaker
feels really exciting to be at this place because when I started, I thought, well, what if I just did this for, what if it took three years and I just put that out there?
Future Growth and Integration Plans
00:56:28
Speaker
And so I've really asked myself, well, if it takes three years, like what does that ramp look like? So I've done a lot of goal setting. I've been meeting my goals and it feels really exciting to be at this point where I'm now ready to start to create some stretch goals and kind of look ahead the next few years.
00:56:49
Speaker
Well, I am so proud of you. And in three years, that's a huge accomplishment to be able to go from an eighth of an acre to where you are now and continuing to grow. So what does the future hold for you now that you, you're limitless. Now you have a 40 acre property. You are going to be able to devote your time to growing flowers.
00:57:14
Speaker
Well, I will never, I mean, my field is fenced an acre. I'll never max that out. I'm convinced of that. I definitely will stay as a small scale farm. I really believe in that model for me. I think that it just looks like growing more, continuing to grow more of less. That's kind of been one of my themes and
00:57:38
Speaker
So I'm continuing to do that this next year with dahlias and with tulips. I have a peony field. I have 425 peonies that I have planted and they're in year two. So that's going to be really exciting.
00:57:54
Speaker
when when that field is mature. So that's kind of a whole going to be a whole new thing. But so yeah, I'm going to continue with my CSA is I'm going to continue with the bakery. But what I'm really wanting to do, because I know that I'm going to feel this gap from teaching. So I'm going to start to offer some just a couple of workshops next fall and winter just as a way to kind of have that teaching aspect in my life. So I've got a
00:58:24
Speaker
I have a Delia grow and design workshop that's scheduled and I'm collaborating with a local florist. So I'm kind of talking on the growing side and she's going to provide a floral design lesson. And I'm excited just to start to have people come to my flower farm. It's mostly private, but I'm looking at opportunities when people can come in. I'll be doing some wreath workshops.
00:58:50
Speaker
next fall and early winter. So that feels like an exciting place where kind of staying connected to teaching but bringing the teaching and the flowers together. I love that that you're able to combine your two passions together. How do your students feel about you leaving school?
00:59:11
Speaker
Well, my students don't know yet. Um, we've been on break and we'll be in a breakthrough Monday and my plan is to tell them next week when I go back to school. Um, I saw one working at a restaurant yesterday and I almost told her, and then I was like, just don't tell, tell them at school. So I think they'll have, they'll have mixed feelings and, um, there's some that I feel really connected to that will
00:59:39
Speaker
feel sad about it, I'm sure. Something that's really wonderful is that I work with the, my local town has a youth employment program. And so last summer was the first year where my flower farm was a job opportunity. So I had three students come and they worked 70 hours over the course of the summer, kind of in partnership. It's really great. So I'll be having that again this summer. So that's kind of another thing where I'm looking at, well,
01:00:06
Speaker
I like to have the teens working on the farm and I'm doing, I'm collaborating with some of the students who are putting on the prom and they're going to come out here and pick some spring flowers and then we're going to put together the prom flowers that'll go around the venue. So I'm just kind of looking at ways where I can still stay connected, even if I'm not there as a teacher.
01:00:30
Speaker
That's great. And by the time this episode airs, I want to clarify for anyone listening, your students will know. So we're not dropping a bomb on them on the podcast, giving you time to tell your students and their parents so they can absorb the news. But what a great example you are setting for them of showing them what's possible when you follow your dreams and you truly become limitless. So I love that.
01:01:00
Speaker
I feel like we could probably talk for another hour, but I know that our time is coming up here. Maybe this is a good way to ask you or invite you back for a future episode, and we can chat dahlias this summer, or you've shared with me that you are also really good at growing Lusianthus. Could I invite you back for a future conversation?
01:01:22
Speaker
Oh, yes, I'd love to. And I'm growing. I'll be growing Lizzianthus in my tunnel this year. I've only done it in the field. So I'm very we just planted it the other day. So I'm very excited.
01:01:32
Speaker
That's awesome. Well, we'll have to touch base as soon as, well, not as soon as, but once you've had a little bit of time to let the dust settle after you've retired from school teaching and you are up and running full time as a flower farmer, hopefully you'll have a little bit more time to sit back and relax and enjoy some of those beautiful flowers you're growing. So Brooke, for those that have been joining us today and want to know more about you or your farm, where can they find you?
01:02:03
Speaker
Um, they can find my website at Jenny Creek flowers.com. And, um, I have on there a growing guy. If anyone's getting started with growing Dahlias, I have a Delia growing guide there. Um, I'm on Instagram and Facebook. Um, and if they're local, then they can find me at wide awake bakery.
01:02:23
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for being here today. Before we go, I want to open up the floor to you and ask you if there's anything you would like to leave our listeners with today. I would just say if a listener is a flower farmer and they are in their early years that I feel like could not be said enough to
01:02:50
Speaker
build your email list. I think that's probably the most impactful single thing that somebody can do if you're building a flower farming business is make sure that you have a way to communicate, to build a relationship with people. I look at my Delia tuber sale. I'll use that as just a quick example that I've sent that out to hundreds
01:03:15
Speaker
of people through my email list and my Instagram post is a little bit of a dud. And so I look at the difference there of how important it is to be able to connect and let people know about your farm and what you're doing and who you are and what you're offering.
01:03:35
Speaker
That is great advice. And the beauty of an email list is that they own that list. So if social media was to ever go away, you own that list and no one can ever take that list of followers away from you. So that's so important as a flower farmer. Yeah, absolutely.
01:03:53
Speaker
Well, Brooke, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you. I hope your last two months of the school year go amazingly well and that you enjoy every moment with those students and all of your tulips. Best of luck with your harvest. Thank you so much. We'll chat soon. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
01:04:14
Speaker
Thank you Flower Friends for joining us on another episode of the Backyard Bouquet. I hope you've enjoyed the inspiring stories and valuable gardening insights we've shared today. Whether you're cultivating your own backyard blooms or supporting your local flower farmer, you're contributing to the local flower movement, and we're so happy to have you growing with us.
01:04:35
Speaker
If you'd like to stay connected and continue this blossoming journey with local flowers, don't forget to subscribe to the Backyard Bouquet podcast. I'd be so grateful if you would take a moment to leave us a review of this episode. And finally, please share this episode with your garden friends. Until next time, keep growing, keep blooming, and remember that every bouquet starts right here in the backyard.