2021: That’s a Wrap
Field & Flour Highlights
2021 was our biggest year yet. It was our third season of growing flowers and doing custom baked goods. We harvested more flowers than ever before and made more cookies than we’ve counted yet.
We continued wholesaling flowers to florists, began offering bouquets and baked goods through a subscription service (and some on-demand), and rounded out the year with a few farmers markets in the late fall.
We got some fun publicity this year. We were the backdrop for a local tourism video, and Daytime Tri-Cities did a story on us this summer. Then they had Sara back in December to decorate Christmas cookies!
In April, we got bees! Josh and Sara have only been stung three times total, I think. One of those times, Sara got stung the day before she did a statewide Instagram takeover, which made for some pretty hilarious-looking videos. You just have to roll with it sometimes!
We pulled a couple of frames from the hive in July and got about half a gallon of honey. Our girls are docile and industrious. Bees in general are incredibly fascinating, and we have gotten a kick out of getting to know them--though we still have a lot to learn.
Our flower fields were busy this year. We sold more flowers than ever before. Next year--our fourth year growing--we're going to focus on efficiency. We're saying goodbye to some flowers that are either hard for us to grow, hard for us to maintain or harvest, or that don't sell well. We're looking at you, sweet peas.
Sara and her mom catered two weddings this spring--on the same day! There were so many cakes, cookies, and cupcakes! We rented a nearby commercial kitchen and worked weeks in advance to be able to deliver desserts for almost 500 guests.
We battled Brood X cicadas this summer. They showed up on Mother's Day and kept at it until the end of July. We fretted over our baby apple trees, but were able to get them all covered with mesh laundry bags (48 of them) before they did too much damage. Still, though, the trees have large gashes in them from the females laying eggs in the small branches. We think we lost one tree out of 32 (and at least one lilac bush), so we think we did ok.
Kalina and Sara raised monarchs again this summer. We took in eggs from the milkweed, raised the caterpillars inside, and released 39 healthy monarch butterflies! We released eight last year, so this year was a big increase! If you're interested in doing this too, get in touch, and we'll tell you what you can do to help save the monarchs. Even just planting native milkweed will help!
Kalina was also a good delivery helper on flower delivery days. All of our clients love to see her! And she loves to see any shop cats or dogs we encounter.
Family Highlights
We enjoyed spring break in Hilton Head this year, and still talk about our favorite restaurant there--Hudson's Seafood. Josh ordered the Neptune Platter, which was legendary and amazingly delicious.
We also traveled to Charlottesville for a weekend with Sara's JMU friends and their families! We potlucked and picknicked at wineries and cideries all weekend and had the best time. It was so wonderful to see our kids play together. Charlottesville is such a fun place for a weekend getaway, and we are looking forward to another trip! We'd love to visit some more cideries--we were able to taste single-varietal ciders of many of the trees we have in our orchard, and it got us excited about trying to make our own cider in a few years.
In late November, Sara and Kalina took a long weekend trip to the Washington DC area for photography sessions. We got to see lots of friends too! We're excited to come back and see more museums soon.
