September, a new year update!
Ah well, I know, its not the new year but in many ways September feels more like a new start to the year than January. With the first frosty mornings, the leaves starting to fall and the boys going back to school I feel like its the perfect time to reflect on the season, gather in the harvest and make plans for the next one.
In terms of growing flowers 2024 has definitely been tricky – the weather has been cold and wet and the pests have loved it! In fact we have lost all but one sunflower (out of about 500), and a bed (thats 10m!) each of helicrysum, zinnia and cosmos to slugs. We have had a huge amount of huge slugs! (Well they have been exceptionally well fed…) We have tried so many things to get rid of them, some conventional and some less so, but we’ve still had a lot of damage. That said, we’ve had a continuous plentiful succession of flowers since March and will have lots of flowers well into October, including new crops yet to flower in our polytunnel. The roses this year have been exceptional and we’ve had wonderful crops of canterbury bells, delphinium, sweet williams and dahlia. I’ve bought in less than in previous years, a result of tweaking our planning to ensure we have what we need throughout the year and also trusting my own ability to work with what we’ve got too.
Business wise we had an ‘upset’ in spring and more recently we have had our facebook hacked and disabled. Today I received confirmation that I won’t be able to retrieve it*. Very frustrating! These things are unexpected, alarming and frazzling. And yet, we’ve really felt our community support us and felt our business thrive. Our wedding work goes from strength to strength with a very healthy number of bookings for next year already, being recommended by a growing number of venues and wedding suppliers, and we’ve had so many wonderful 5* reviews on google from this year’s couples too… thank you to everyone who has taken the time to do that. We’ve also been anonymously nominated for the In-Cumbria Business Awards in the ‘Best Green Business of the Year’ category and we’ve had some wonderful press coverage, including three brilliant articles in local publications, and most recently I have been quoted in The Guardian!
Like the article said, “Business is Blooming”.
It’s actually been the things going on outside of the business that have been the hardest to cope with this year; my dad’s health rapidly declined in the new year and he has been in hospital and a care home since February. I have not spoken publicly about this out of respect for him and his very private approach to life and feel deeply uncomfortable doing so now, however it has weighed so heavily on the year that it would be fiction to omit it. We had a ridiculously challenging and traumatic spring, truely awful, and he is now stable and receiving end of life care. My sister and I have supported my mum as best we can from a distance and visited Yorkshire weekly or every-other week to see them, sometimes more often when he’s been in hospital for extended periods, so it’s been pretty tough at times. It’s been heart breaking and exhausting, and yet despite everything he’s tough, resilient and feisty. A family trait. HA! Anyway, it is not work that has made me exhausted this year! It is for this reason we stopped offering Friday Flowers this summer, postponed our Wild Workshops, and I am having to take this into consideration as I plan my autumn and winter activities.
Whilst postponement and cancellations suggest failure or negative impact, we have happily made these decisions and seen them as positive actions to relieve stress and pressure, provide support to others, and help us focus on developing what we do. We’ve actually been able to move forward with some infrastructure to make workshops a more comfortable experience next year, and with Shona working on the field one day a week, we’re on top of practical work (mulching, weeding, deadheading, planting out) despite everything. Shona responded to my blog on the problems with volunteer labour in small horitcultural businesses where I mentioned I would have paid work available this year, and has been absolutely brilliant.
I started 2024 knowing that the year was going to be challenging, and it has been. But it has brought a huge number of surprise delights and good things too; people, press, nominations, kind words, sales and happy moments a plenty. I am so very grateful to everyone who has shown their love for our flowers this year - either with a purchase, a friendly message or a like on instagram. When its cold and wet and you find another slug the size of your finger where a flower should be….. for the hundredth time… well, frankly knowing our work is valued really makes all the difference. Thank you so very very much.xxx
* My Cumberland Flower Farm facebook page still exists, and I can crosspost to it from Instagram but I can’t read any messages or comment back! Please please like and follow me on instagram if you can, where I am still posting and relatively active (Although the facebook situation really has made me a lot less keen on social media altogether!)