Theme: flowers

“My mom and I speak to each other through the flowers we grow. The joys and triumphs of our flower fields and bouquets are etched into the smile lines around our eyes and each late frost that hit our spring flowers or gophers that found our tulips has added a wrinkle to our furrowed brows. We gawk over seed catalogs together, wondering whether new flower varieties would fare well in our growing zone. We harvest together early in the morning. We dream the same dreams of snapdragon fields, mixed bouquets and fragrant wreaths.”

-An excerpt from my new book Designing with Dried Flowers 

My childhood was spent in sync with seasonal flowers. I slept in harvest boxes as my mom picked calendula for orders, I rode alongside buckets of sweet peas in hand pulled carts headed back to the packing shed, and I created elaborate fairy mansions in the many roses, and irises under the shade of the fig tree in my mother’s garden. I grew up at Full Belly Farm, the youngest child of Dru Rivers and Paul Muller, and now a second generation farmer at Full Belly Farm. Sometimes it feels like I had no choice, not in moving back to the farm – that I did freely and without any pressure from family – but in choosing flowers as my life work and passion. It was ingrained in me, the flowers whispering to me through osmosis, calling my name “Hannah Rose” over and over again until I felt ready to listen in my early 20’s. I started designing flower arrangements for weddings and events ten years ago (using Full Belly Farm flowers, naturally) and worked alongside the Full Belly flower crew harvesting flowers, packing out orders and readying flowers for market and CSA. 

It’s the end of the 2022 Flower CSA season, which goes from April 1 to September 30. During those six months, the flower team picked and bunched about 7,400 bouquets for our CSA members, in addition to all the other flowers they pick. They’ll be transitioning into dried flowers and wreaths soon (more about that in a future Beet) but in the meantime, here’s a recap of the season in words and photos from Hannah: [Read more…]

As we tucked flowers and seeds into the ground in the fall of 2019, we had no inkling of what was in store for us in 2020. We had planned and planted, as many farmers do, with wishful thoughts of selling out at Farmers Markets, growing our flower CSA, and continuing our long relationships with stores and wholesalers in California. I had close to 20 weddings lined up for 2020 that I was preparing for as well, each requiring many consultations with couples, phone calls, vision boards, and countless emails. As all of our flowers began to bloom in March, the first lockdown began. Within a week, all but two of my weddings were canceled for the year. Farmers Markets shut down then reopened with strict protocols around social distancing and rules about customers not handling produce. Stores and restaurants closed and wholesalers were nervous buyers, especially in the case of flowers. As far as they could tell, flowers were an unessential item and the likelihood that customers would buy flowers in the midst of a pandemic seemed low. [Read more…]