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Year Three: EXPERIMENT

Nikki

It's hard to believe we are about to enter our third year growing flowers for our Central Texas community. Each winter I like to ask myself what's working in the field, in the business, and what I want to change.


Year one was all about POSSIBILITIES - What is possible on this little patch of earth we steward? What can we grow? What will the soil and our unique climate support? Will people buy what we have to offer? Will they like it? Will I like running a small business?


Year two my word was REFINE. I wanted to take all the growing and business data I had accumulated (Former scientist here! Hah!) and make our growing and business systems better. We had some actual numbers to work with from the previous year in order to make better informed decisions and that felt great.


Now here we are in Year three and I'm thinking this is the year of EXPERIMENT (oh goodness...more science words!). It goes without saying that small scale farming is hard and farming in an ethical, regenerative, beyond organic manner that allows this to be a sustainable tiny business is even harder.


This is where experiment comes in. What can I let go of this year to make all this sustainable for me and the future of the farm?


In the field, I want to continue to play with what works for our growing conditions and environment. Plants that are particularly needy, fussy or prone to insect pressure have to go. I want to continue to trial various native plants for many reasons but it helps that they are resilient and don't require much babying. For our cold hardy annuals, I want to allow them to toughen it out a bit more in the winter. It takes a long time and a lot of work to cover our annual field with frost cloth and in the past I have covered plants that honestly would be fine in much colder temperatures than we experience. I want to let go and let them do their thing!

Winter 2024 - ranunculus and anemone covered in the hoop house.
Winter 2024 - ranunculus and anemone covered in the hoop house.

In terms of business and quality of life, I want to experiment with releasing things that don't offer me or the farm much value. A big one I have been thinking (too much) about is social media. I started an instagram for the farm because it seemed like a thing a small business owner needed to do. Last year I committed to posting on the farm's instagram account (mostly in stories) 5-7 times a week during our market months. I'm happy that the trial is over and happier to say I don't think there's much value there. I personally don't enjoy it and most importantly it didn't translate into sales. It was mostly an unwise use of precious little time - a lot of input for little output.


I want to play with letting instagram go. I have a few pictures up as a landing page of sorts for folks to learn about the farm and how to connect in a way that feels more values aligned right now - in person at markets and on our little corner of the internet -that belongs to me and not Meta (to say nothing of all of Big Techs problems). I'll be focusing on our website, blog and newsletter (you can sign up for the newsletter on the bottom of our homepage) and of course, to growing the highest quality cut flowers!


It feels good to let social media go (maybe just for now, maybe forever) and see what happens!

Anemone - are you on the crop list chopping block?  Can be an aphid magnet!
Anemone - are you on the crop list chopping block? Can be an aphid magnet!





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2 Comments


Giselle
Jan 20

So excited for you and year #3. Growth comes from wisdom acquired. Looking forward to Market days and the beauty you offer. A bouquet of flowers speaks a thousand words brilliantly

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Nikki
Jan 22
Replying to

So true! Thank you for the kind words :)

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