Here comes the bounty…

Today, the sun shone clear and dazzlingly bright and, despite the lingering chill in the breeze, there was some slight strength of heat present which felt like a long distant memory. The world is noticeably greening, Nellie the dog keeps finding the first sleepy bumble bees and gazing at them in confusion as they drowsily make their way through the jungle of ground cover violets and Muscari in our back garden. The morning air thrums to the sound of birdsong and the change of the clocks leaves us all in mild disarray, but with sudden pleasure of snatching some last few moments in the garden and greenhouse before turning in for the night. Easter is on its way, and finally, finally, so are the flowers. I am hoping to find time to document my favourites here as the season progresses, and tell you a little more of the varieties we grow on the farm, but for now here is a small selection of pictures from the last few weeks - a little glimpse of this most exciting time of year, when the world is full of work but also full of such promise….

Waiting for Spring….

As I sit to write this, my very first post, my fingers are numb with cold and out the window to my left, our cat is crouched on the electricity meter whilst soft, white snowflakes settle on her glossy black fur. Snow in March: a sudden dip back into midwinter that has sent us scurrying and scuttling indoors like hunched beetles beneath our dark, hooded winter coats. I’ll pop the kettle on again and let her in, and then perhaps she might sit on my lap and warm me as I write.

This cold has felt like a strange reprieve. An extension of time desperately needed to get on top of the final Winter tasks whose completion is so necessary to ensure a smooth season ahead. One could easily imagine those who work with the soil, resting easy throughout the chill, dark months and yet the work continues, even when the flowers do not. Hours and hours of planning go into producing a steady and reliable season of flowers, and those crop plans may well extend up to a year and a half into the future. The ability to cross bridges before you come to them is a significant skill in a farmer, and the high intensity and sheer variety of crops grown by flower farmers makes this doubly necessary.

Besides the planning, the business admin, website management and accounting, there is still work to be done to the land. Planting shrubs, trees and bare-root roses must be done whilst they remain in dormancy, repairs to the infrastructure of your plot, tidying the last of the fallen leaves and storing away to make leaf mulch, creating and maintaining your composting areas, checking on stored dahlias and perhaps dividing any that have not yet been done, Ordering seed, ordering dahlias, ordering floristry stock, ordering, ordering, ordering and holding your breath as your bank balance drops further and further down. As the legendary American flower grower Lisa Mason Ziegler says, “We don’t gamble, we don’t need to - we just farm instead!’.

But before we know it, the flowers will be here again and the whole glorious, wild and colourful circus will come to life. As March rolls in, we are like sprinters; tense and poised in the start position, waiting for the moment the shot is fired and suddenly all hours are filled with the race to pick, arrange, deliver the bounty that we have planned so long for. We are waiting, waiting…..

For now however, I shall try and enjoy the last few cosy nights by the fire, and savour a final appreciation of that dark, slow season which will so soon be past.