How Our Flower Farm's Failure Can Inspire You
Why losing can sometimes be the key to blooming again.
Quick Note:
Your support of our newsletter with a paid subscription means more to us than you know.
Your subscription helps fund our flower farm and the horses, which in turn helps our programs for at-risk youth and veterans. We hope our programs will someday include not only horses but also flowers.
We appreciate you.
If you know someone who would appreciate our services or our content, please let them know. Every share helps our small family business, and your word of mouth significantly influences our lives and the lives of those we help.
—Katie and Angela
On to our story.
“This will not be hard at all.”
Oh, we were so proud of ourselves when the first flowers started to sprout.
There were months of delays.
The dozer won’t start. Delay.
The person hired to build the fence to keep out the horses didn’t show up. Delay.
It rained and rained and rained. Delay.
It took days to plant one row of seeds. Delay.
And then it all turned around.
Well, the dozer never started. We had it hauled away and decided to buy a tiller. Wow, the tiller made cleaning up the space we would plant so much easier.
The person we hired to build the fence came to work, but it still took a long time to get it up. We went over budget on the fence, but it looks nice and keeps out the horses.
The rain eventually stopped, and the water dried up, allowing us to bring in the compost and plant rows.
Six months into our project, it was time to plant the seeds. How hard could that be?
We found it not hard, just time-consuming. We planned each row to space the plants so that the flowers would be the optimal size. The plan required measuring the spacing of each seed, which we did with markings from a rake. Then, we made a hole, placed the seeds, and lightly covered them with dirt. Just thinking about it hurts my back.
Dani Boss at Summer Skye Gardens came to our rescue. She told us about an inexpensive seeder, which we bought. (The community of flower farmers is so amazing.)
People, when I say that piece of equipment is life-changing, I am not exaggerating.
Planting the first four rows by hand took us many hours. While we were very proud of our progress, it seemed too labor-intensive. We brought in the seeder and did one row in five minutes—FIVE MINUTES. It’s incredible how happy farming equipment can make a farmer.
And then it happened. Failure.