Good morning friends,
I am never one for making New Year's resolutions as such but I make little lists of things that I would like to accomplish in the year. One of the items on my list is to send out monthly musings of the happenings on the farm. This is pushing me well outside my comfort zone, I looked on my website the other day and saw that the last blog post that I did was in 2019….the only consistency there is that I just did not write a blog post…the other thing that has pushed me to start this is my increasing frustration with social media….the singing dancing reels are just not me…I can put together video clips but they are time consuming and honestly I would much rather look at a beautiful still photograph, that a bunch of reels flashing in front of my eyes with some rubbish music hurting your ears, do you feel the same?
So what happened on the farm in January I hear you say (or maybe you didn’t but I am going to tell you any!)…..I returned from a much needed break in England & Spain over Christmas with my family. I always try to leave the farm at the end of December so that I can recharge, take a break and come back ready to go again. January is usually filled with slower jobs, usually in The Potting Shed - for those of you that don’t know, a few years ago we converted our Potting Shed into a studio/office and I still refer to it as The Potting Shed. What I like about this time of year is that you don’t feel that you have to do everything at breakneck speed.
This month I have met with several lovely brides to discuss their wedding florals. I am so grateful that all my brides want gorgeous, colorful bouquets using seasonal flowers from my field…..that was always my goal for the weddings that I worked on and it makes my heart so happy that it has turned out that way. Along with wedding quotes I have been working on the dreaded taxes….owning a small business you wear so many different hats, and this hat is the most uncomfortable for me to wear, so I usually toss it in the corner and ignore it for most of the year….and then regret it come January.
Last season I started drying flowers in large quantities for the first time. I used our old goat shed for that…..however, it is not insulated….I knew I was dicing with devil using this, the plan was to insulate it this month…however I discovered that some of my flowers are starting to mold….so we have come up with a plan…..it was going to cost too much to run the correct power out to the shed and insulated it. Plan B is to build a small room inside my husband’s workshop…I can not believe that writing this…my husband does have a big shop, bigger than our house…it is his pride and joy and I am so very grateful that he is giving up a corner of it for me… and building it out so I can have a warm dry room to dry my flowers…over the next few months I will update you with the progress.
The last exciting piece of news is that for my wedding anniversary this month my husband gave me a “new to us” Kubota Utility vehicle, who says romance is dead! This will help me so much, hauling stuff around, going to and from the field. I think he has scored big points this month!