The Cut Flower Garden Of My Dreams!

What a wild and crazy Summer it has been! Hot and humid as always in Oklahoma in midsummer, but cool enough this year that our first foray into commercial flower farming was made a great deal easier than it would have otherwise been. We had glorious flowers all summer long and were able to have enough to make a 90 mile run to the florists every other day and also had more than enough to take to Farmers Market on Saturdays- another 90 mile drive...needless to say we have put a lot of miles on our little car, and learned many remarkable ways to stuff every square inch of space in that car to the gills with gorgeous blooms. When the lilies, english sweet peas, and tuberose were in flower the fragrance in the car was so powerful that I would arrive at the florists half asphyxiated from the long drive. It has been a wonderful experience designing and arranging flowers and meeting so many incredible people, all with such unique stories and lives. I have found my niche, my passion, my lifelong dream and hope to have this love of flowers and enjoy the smiles that they bring for all the days of my life.

As to what my husband and I planted this year; I have to admit that my eyes were much to big for my trowel, and as a result was not quite ready to plant the thousands and thousands of flower seeds, flower plugs, and plants which I amassed over the Winter and Spring. Instead of dozens of varieties I ended up planting less than a dozen...but there were about 10,000 of those total. Despite this I had a lot of fun making arrangements with these varieties and enjoyed the sheer color impact that they had, with the vivid and bright hues with which to make bouquets which varied daily and were never the same.

What I planted:
Tulips: 1800 perfectly wonderful fragrant beauties, enough said. Plan on 3,000 next year.
Sunflowers: Had one great crop and harvested and sold all of them. Should have had 8 more crops but the voles and rabbits ate them all every time I planted. Ended up with three outside cats as an emergency measure to get rid of the vole invasion. I planted my last crop a month ago and it is now blooming in the greenhouse. Just beautiful.
Dahlias: More than 300 different varieties, one of my all time favorite flowers EVER! They are absolutely amazing! Even in the hot summer they just kept going, and now in the first part of Fall they are churning out dozens of flowers everyday.
Gladiolas: Love them.
Tuberose: Love them. One open bloom on soft evening can perfume the entire garden.
Lisianthus: Planted more than 3,500...the reason that I didn't get much else planted for the season! Love this flower. It takes 5-6 months to grow from seed and it one of the most beautiful of all flowers. Will do this one again and again, despite it's difficulty.
Liliies: Oriental fragrant beauties, always a classic and very fun to grow. My husband loved these.
Sweet Peas: English classic. My favorite flower. So fragrant and with so many frothy clouds of soft colors. It was paradise to walk into a warm sweetly scented greenhouse on a cold early spring day with rows of trellised sweet peas climbing their way to the ceiling, blooming their heads off!
Celosia: These ended up way taller than me! Loved the foliage for my bouquets as well as the brightly colored flowers.
Delphinium: Beautiful as always. An elegant classic.
Stock: They really should have named this gorgeous fragrant beauty a prettier name.
Scented Geraniums: Wonderful and fragrant foliage for bouquets.
Ageratum: Will grow again. Great foliage for bouquets and long lasting.
Zinnias: The powerhorse of all cut flowers. Beautiful vibrant colors that every one loves, particularly the florists. Loved this one and am already looking forward to next season.

Thoughts: I enjoyed this season so much that I am not willing to let it go...Jay and I are planning to heat and light the greenhouse all Winter so that we can grow most of these flowers all year. With the cool weather we believe that the flowers will be better than ever at this time of year. And with a Winter indoor farmers market to go to there will be a good venue to sell them as well. With this in mind, my entrepreneurial husband is designing a quite unique wood burning rocket stove to blow heat into the greenhouse. The goal is to keep the temp at nights at 40 degrees, hopefully 50...and light the GH for 4 extra hours each night.
Next year: We will be doubling the flowers, with dozens of varieties which we are planting now to winter over as cool annuals outside under row cover. And we will be taking on weddings next year. I have really enjoyed arranging flowers this year and will be training this Fall to specialize in wedding flowers next year. With 4 weddings already lined up we will be quite busy around here. I can't wait work with these lovely brides to assist in making wonderful memories which will last a lifetime.


Now for pictures:

More pictures coming...lots and lots to cut to the right size...and it's late. This is what happens when I procrastinate writing on the blog for several months...it's like homework, it just piles up. I will catch up, I promise.

Finally, it is Spring!!!

There goes my good intentions for updating the blog once a week! But hey, you can only do so much when you are digging in the dirt 24/7 taking care of a u-pick berry farm, a plant nursery, and now a cut-flower farm...add children to that mix along with a husband who slaves for me in what little time he has from his full-time job...and it gets a bit chaotic around here.

What's new in the field: Tulips! With their rich colors and fragrant gorgeousness it was a wonderful crop and the first wave of 1800 has found very happy new homes...now we are waiting on the next wave of 1400 tulips which should coincide with Mother's Day. Also new in the field, peonies are growing like mad in this crazy 80 degree one minute and 27 degrees the next weather we have been having, they have gotten a little bit wind burned from the constantly strong and -unusual even for us- winds that have we been having for the last two months...but they are hardy survivors and are putting out buds faster than I can nip them! Next up in the field are the berries; The blueberries that we planted last Spring are now fully established -despite the goats pruning them!- and have their first blossoms with lot's of new green growth. Jay and I have been busy laying plastic and planting strawberries...we intend to get 2000 strawberries into the ground over the next week. The blackberries and raspberries have also fully established themselves, and we are so excited to have some berries off of them this year! As for the flower field, we laid white plastic with our new mulch layer for the field, we are hoping to get the Lisianthus in the ground over the next two weeks, and with 5000 plants to settle in it will likely take the full two weeks because we will also be planting out sweet peas, dahlias, gladiolus, and tuberoses at the same time!

What's new in the greenhouse: With around 20,000 new plants -mostly all grown from seed over the Winter- the greenhouse is FULL! And we have ROSES! The first blooms started yesterday from Abbaye de Cluny a gorgeous apricot, huge bloom and fragrant hybrid tea rose...the fragrance is so intense that it hits you like a wave of deliciousness from the moment that you step into the greenhouse...it is moments like these in which I thank God that I am a flower farmer blessed with a love of the land and all things colorful and fragrant which feed my soul!

Happy Easter everyone! and come blessed Spring after the long cold Winter!

Still Here!

I realize that is has been almost 7 months since I last updated this blog, but we are still here- and that in Oklahoma is an accomplishment! We have been extremely busy building a new greenhouse -this one is made out of 2 inch steel- and filling it with thousands of plants, bulbs, and flat after flat of starts. My talented husband has also designed a novel aquaponics system which we are trying out with roses for the cut flower market...more on that later.

 November 9th

Last Fall we invested heavily into turning much of the property around our house into growing fields for cut flowers, into to these we planted 2,400 tulips and daffodils and 390 peonies. Here it is February 9th and they are just now poking their heads up through the snow. I can't wait for the carpet of beauty that I have been imagining all Winter! The Peonies of course will not have any marketable stems until next year but maybe a few blooms will open this year -just so that I can look at them and smell their heavenly fragrance...you are not supposed to cut them in their second season from planting, they need to be undisturbed until their third season if you want several years of good yields of gorgeous dinner plate sized peony flowers.

After several hours of backbreaking trenching with a shovel, we got smart and used the tractor.

Like eggs in an egg carton!

Alden the serious with an amazing work ethic!

 As far as potted peonies are concerned: I just received a shipment of large tubers from Holland last week, and they are now available for sale to be planted this Spring or to be held over (recommended) in the pot until a Fall planting in October or November. Tubers are $24.95 for red, pink, and white varieties. Yellow Bartzella with it's huge lemon scented fluffy yellow flowers is $38.95. It is a prolific and early maturing bloomer and in it's second year often will produce upwards of 70 blooms per plant! These can be sold at your local farmers market for about $4-5/stem.

It has been one of the coldest Winters ever here in Oklahoma and across more than 2/3 rds of the United States. We were not able to finish the heating system for the greenhouse and so transformed my husband's home office into a growing room with shelves of grow lights and heat mats in every available space. We have started more than 5,000 seeds this way, and intend to start still another 5,000 or so as we closely follow the growing calendar that I spent many months creating. We are growing Delphiniums, Stock, Dianthus, Lisianthus, Rudbekia, Sweet Peas, Calendula, Pansies, Begonias, Roses, Petunias, Foxglove, Butterfly Bush, Dusty Miller, Tomatoes, Peppers, Squash, Pumpkins, Snapdragons and Geraniums....and it is only February 9th! We still have thousands of more Snapdragons to plant, Sunflowers, various bulbs, Peonies, more vegetables, Campanula, Gladiolus, Zinnias, Dahlias...and many many more that I cannot remember right now. Also in March 2000 strawberry starts will need to be planted for our u-pick berry field in orderly rows of plastic covered raised beds. I adore strawberries and am very excited to grow them again, this will be our third year trying to grow strawberries...or any berry for that matter!

This is our first year growing Sweet Peas Flowers and we discovered just how fast they grow! We planted the seeds without soaking or scarifying into 288 cell flats, covered them with plastic domes, and put them on 70 degree heat mats. 7 days later they sprouted, within three days of sprouting they had to be transplanted because they were 4 inches tall! We transplanted them in to 5" deep pots on trays and placed 15 trays of them (18 pots/tray) onto the living room floor because it is still too cold in the greenhouse for them. Lol. We have watched them in awe as they have grown more than an inch per day until they were 10 inches tall and starting to flop over. So I pinched them (cut the stems to the first leaf node above the soil), this will encourage stronger and bushier stems and will likely produce a better plant for cut flowers. I plan to put these babies into the ground this week in the greenhouse if the weather warms up. I will be using lovely and inspirational fellow flower farmer Erin's method from www.floretflowers.com to grow. Her blog has been the best guide ever to growing the various varieties of flowers and I am indebted to her for life! Her blog is truly eye candy and very uplifting and inspiring when I am feeling a touch overwhelmed. Here is a link to her wonderful post on sweetpeas. http://www.floretflowers.com/2013/12/my-favorite-sweet-peas/ and of course a picture to lend a flame to your Spring fever! Lol.

Wiped out 3 times in 3 years!!! A bit much don't you think?

On the 10th of July, which happened to be my 31st birthday, we suffered a serious setback to our plans for the farm and nursery. Our beautiful greenhouse was flattened by a microburst/possible small tornado with winds which bent steel in half and tore the building to shreds, picked it up and slammed it into the ground again. It was devestating, but there was also a miracle among the ruins-as there so often is when Heaven is in charge- more than 2000 berry bushes which I had spent all of the Spring and early Summer transplanting, were fine after I re-potted half of them.

So, I have $10,000 worth of nursery plants and pots sitting pretty on my south lawn, and a poor broken child's toy of a 40 foot greenhouse which I must rebuild.

Good thing my husband is a brilliant inventor! He has designed Oklahoma's first UNDERGROUND greenhouse...yes, that's right -hobbit style!!! It will be easier to heat and easier to cool and we will keep the plants aerated with two giant fans on either side. The greenhouse will be 40ft X 40ft and it's walls will be made out of concrete with steel trusses to hold up the greenhouse plastic. Only the top half will be above ground, so baring a direct hit by an Ef3 tornado we will not suffer the same loss again.

Now, to start saving our pennies so we can begin building it.

Is it Naptime yet? Please!

 Our Springtime goals for the farm:
1) Plant 4 acres to blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, marionberries, blackberries, and boysenberries, for a pick -your own operation.
2) Design and build a 40 ft X 28 ft greenhouse & open a nursery for business by May 11th.
3) Transplant 1000 strawberries and 1600 blackberries, raspberries, marionberries, and blueberries into pots for sale in the greenhouse.
4) Keep 54 goats and sheep alive, and sell most of the goats before there is no orchard left for them to destroy!
5) Hmmm...let me think, nope! That's it. Not much to do this year, I think I am going to be bored!

Accomplished as of 07/05/2013

1) Planted 5 two hundred foot rows of Blueberries, Marionberries, and Blackberries, and five rows of Strawberries, laid about a mile of drip line. Am now attempting to plant 7 more rows of blackberries and raspberries in 100 degree heat. Needless to say, we get up before dawn around here!


2) Jay designed and with the help of a friend we built our greenhouse and framed it out with lumber and tree posts we cut from out own forest! It is gorgeous and so far has whithstood 90 mph winds easily! Missed the deadline of May 11th by a month and two weeks.

3) Transplanted 1000 strawberries and watched all but 25 die from a fungus which I could not control being an Organic growing farm. I am still transplanting the 1600 other berries which have been residing on my front porch while I waited for our greenhouse to be finished. They are doing great and are super healthy!
4) Sheep, goats (and my husband and me) surrvived the Spring wih our sanities intact. Happily have sold most of the goats and will be only keeping 7 which are black and white dapples. Love our new two Bucks, Neelix, and Eustace. Sheep are doing great and are due to lamb next month, as is the pig.
The Horse is also pregnant, and will foal next Spring!

Other news:
The Greenhouse is now open and we have thousands of potted berry bushes for sale. Come and see!

One of our friends asked Jay to fix his tractor and then once it was fixed offered to let us have it on loan for a full year, along with all the implements. It is making our lives sooooo much easier!!!

We are planning a new flower cutting operation! This Fall into next Spring we will plant 100 peonies, sunflowers, cosmos, zinnias, roses, celosia, dianthus, and many many other perrenials and annuals for people to come and pick for their special moments and occasions! We are so excited about this new phase of our farm and will be thrilled to be able to share it with you all come next Spring!

That is all for now!
-Jenny Bingham

Goats are the bane of my existence!

Goats really are the bane of my existence! I like sheep; they are so bidable, so gentle, so willing to please. There is a reason that in the Bible the Lord depicts the goats as being on the left hand of God, and sheep on the right.

The reason goats are the bane of my existence?

-They are brilliant, yet stupid...dumb is when you do something idiotic and don't know any better, stupid  is when you do know you're being an idiot but do it anyway...make sense? It will.

-They are NEVER content with what they have; they are always looking for -and finding ways to circumvent the fence and escape to greener pastures...like my orchard,...or garden...or the neighbors hay meadow.

-Out of sight, out of mind; In the warmer seasons when they give birth out in the field we are constantly having to hike across the 60 acres to find their babies because their Mamas wander off, forget to feed their hungry offspring, and eventually forget they ever had kids...until they get back to the barn and start lowing their heads off for their babies...who are 60 acres away, about to become coyote food unless I take a flashlight and start beating the brush for them, usually in a thunderstorm.

-Goats will always pick the most bitterly cold night of winter to have their babies, who of course become hypothermic -so we blow dry them out in the barn and rub them all over with hay for three hours, then have to sit on Mama so she will nurse them.  She, of course conveniently forgot she ever had them! While one of us sits on Mama (Jay) the other (me) teaches the babies how to walk so they can get some comforting -and essential- sips of milk from Mama. If she still rejects them, we take them into the house and they become bottle-babies. We feed them every four hours from their spot in front of the toasty fireplace for several weeks...it is exhausting, but worth it if they survive...there really is nothing sweeter than a kid goat who loves you and thinks you are Mama.

-Goats are not hardy! They are pansies who up and die on you if you breathe on them wrong...you can do everything right, and spend hours and days, and many a sleepless night fighting to save their lives, but 9/10 times there is nothing that can bring them back, and so you have to say goodbye...and it never get's easier to do because goats are very good at taking a large chunk of your heart and occupying it...much like a puppy who is exasperating but also so very lovable and fun.

- A goat's only redeeming quality is that most of the time they are affectionate...the way they show great affection is by jumping on your back if you have the misfortune to be crouching down...when small, this is cute, when it is a 250 lb doe...that's different, and you will be walking a bit crouched over for a few days.

Yesterday reminded me why I am trying to persuade FSA to lift the restriction on our operating loan which requires the same number of animals on hand for collateral as we originally started with. I would like to sell most of the goats and focus on raising only spotted colored Boers and St. Croix sheep. Not an option at the moment, and last night reminded why that is a problem. Yesterday it rained, and thundered, and blew...and in general was cold and miserable...goats being goats they chose the height of the tempest to escape the fence and head straight for my orchard. I was lazing on the couch in front of my toasty fire after cleaning the house all day, and was enjoying a book. Until I heard a baby crying outside the door...and there they were...all 30 of them, in my orchard...again. I ran out into the rain and with lightning arcing across the sky started herding those idiots out of my orchard...this took a while, until I picked up a long broken off length of hose and started swinging it. To my credit I didn't hit any of them, not even when they refused to go back through the gate into their pen.to a warm dry barn...idiots!....and instead led me on a merry chase back and forth across the four acres around the house. Round and round and round we went, I am sure that my guardian angels were highly entertained as they watched me stagger through the mud after those goats yipping like a dog to get them to move, and shouting Hiya every few seconds....it was sooooo much fun, let me tell you. After 20 minutes of this they eventually gave up on their game and filed neatly...with me swinging  a hose at their backsides...in the gate.

Another chapter in a daily saga.
Time to check on them again.
-Jenny

What a Year!

It has been almost a year since I last posted. What a year it has been!

       As you might remember Jay and I decided last Spring to not put all our eggs in one basket with our livestock endeavors...so we bought 4,800 berry bushes, cleared off 4 acres, and planted them by hand...it took thousands of hours, especially since we decided to put in a 214 fruit tree orchard at the same time. We expended blood, sweat, and tears to do it, but everything was planted and shipshape by May 2012. We forgot three things in our zeal to build a Berry and Fruit Orchard U-pick operation; We forgot that a field of Bermuda grass hastily tilled under and planted to strawberries, blueberries, raspberrries, and blackberries...will revert right back to bermuda...and no matter how you attack it with that hoe, you will be lucky if you can see your plants within two months. The second thing we forgot? We forgot just how brutal the weather can be in Oklahoma. Last year was our third consecutive year of drought, and it was the second consecutive hottest Summer on record with temperatures hitting a blistering 118 F on the farm, and the temp for more than three weeks was around or over 110 F! And then there was the weeks of strong, hot winds which roared and dried up every plant to a husk. We had drip line set up, but our two water wells were too shallow and could only provide 15 minutes of water each day. Needless to say, with temps so hot and the winds as well..it just evaporated before it could get to the plant. The third thing we didn't take into account when we planted? I was scheduled for a colon resection surgery in July, and expected to be all healed up and on my feet, ready to work within three weeks of the surgery....that did not happen. My auto-immune disease Behcet's Syndrome took great exception to the surgery and as a result I spent 9 days in intensive care, and another 16 days in a regular hospital ward. And this would become the pattern as I battled infection and infection. In total I spent more than 70 days in the hospital over the period of five months (7 hospital stays). When I came home from the hospital after the surgery I found that row after row of my beautiful plants and trees were dead, thousands of them...I laid on the ground and wept, mourning for a future and dreams which had turned to ash, for the thousands of hours of labor- the joy and satisfaction which comes from a job well done, from taking nothing and building it into something beautiful, and seeing it all wither and die...I felt like my heart had splintered along with it...but time passed and by the grace and tender mercies of God, we were able to salvage almost 500 plants which we dug up in the fall and re-potted to over-winter...

       And so here we are! February the 7th 2013. A New Year! And yes, we re-invested about half of what we did last year to try to replant our berry farm and orchard. And this time we will do it the right way! The ground has been tilled and the weed barrier fabric has been ordered. The plants will be arriving shortly and we are ready to begin again. As if we didn't have enough to do, we are also designing and building a greenhouse and starting a nursery. We saw the need for a nursery because there is not one for more than 40 miles on either side of our farm, and since we are located on a highway, it seemed a wonderful idea. We will be raising chemical-free berries, fruit trees, and vegetables, and selling them and our farm fresh eggs, holistically grown lamb meat...and perhaps my line of original botanical cosmetics, perfumes, and creams...should I ever have the time to make them again!...

      And our Sheep and Goats have been busy giving us babies... love lambing season around here! To date we have 17 new lambs from our beautiful St. Croix Ewes, and five kid goats from our Boer Does. We would have had 14 kids but 9 of them were bottle babies and died due to an overdose of Selenium...yes it was heartbreaking.

      The children are doing well in their new school and are loving their teachers. Jay is working from home for Dell fixing people's problems with servers over the phone, and is loving that he can go to work in his bathrobe! I just love the fact that he is home and no longer has an hour-and a half commute to work everyday. I am slowly getting my strength back, and as my husband puts it "over do it every chance you get!"...I can't help it, it's not in my programing to sit still when there is so much to be done every day!

      That about wraps it up! Signing off
     -Jenny