I wish I could convey to you the intensity that is August on a flower farm, but perhaps the best way to show you is through a picture:
This is just a sliver of our flower farm at the moment (only showing you part of 3.5 rows out of the 11 on the rented land, and then we have everything in our own yard). To give you some context, if both Matt and I were both to harvest every waking hour throughout the month, we could *maybe* stay on top of harvesting everything when it was ready. However, we need to trade off childcare and can only harvest during certain hours of the day (since flowers don’t hold up well when harvested in the heat), so we’re trying to cram in 32 hours’ worth of work per day (between two of us) into about 7. Needless to say, there are a LOT of flowers going unharvested at the moment.
Down the road, we hope to hire an employee to help, but we need overall sales to be higher before we can take that kind of step. And so we plug on, harvesting the bare minimum that we need for all our sales outlets and commitments, and we just try and enjoy the rest as it sits on the plants (and try not to freak out that it’s just going to waste). I am trying to take really good notes though of the things we’re growing that are basically selling out (and so therefore all getting harvested and not going to waste), and which things we planted too much of.
But I don’t know why I’m covering August already when this post is supposed to be a recap of July goals first, so I guess I’d better try and rack my brains to see what the heck we did last month, ha ha.
Let’s see…
The two older kids took swimming lessons at the local pool for a couple weeks, which is always a lot of fun for them. (I would have had Hyrum take them too, but his section was all full by the time I signed up.) We attended my mom’s 4th of July brunch. The kids did “Grandma Camp” at my mom’s, where she took the three older kids for a couple days so Matt and I could really focus on urgent farm stuff and just have the baby at home to worry about. We went to a local fair (Lamb Days), where our whole family enjoyed the parade, had lunch at my step-grandma’s house, and then took advantage of some of the games/events going on at the local fairgrounds. My stepbrother got married at the end of the month, which was a nice little date for us (since our kids were at a friends’ house). We celebrated Pioneer Day (a Utah holiday) by going to another local parade and then doing a farmer’s market in the same town (something I had sworn off doing, but we had such an abundance that I decided to try it anyway).
July was intense heat mixed with the kids getting in swimsuits more days than not (either because of lessons, sprinklers, or getting our pool out). July was crazy pest pressure on the farm, and a giving-in to the weeds (for the most part) because it was just too hot and dry to worry about that on top of harvesting everything. July was worrying about the lower sales that seem to always accompany high summer, since so many people go out of town and people just don’t buy flowers for as many things.
July was also about big steps forward for the farm, like partnering with one of the biggest floral wholesalers in the state. It’s just a trial partnership right now, but it could someday turn into something a lot bigger potentially down the road. We also booked more weddings, which essentially made the first half of August truly insane.
Basically, life right now is just a million hours of flower farming stuff and then squeezing in everything else the best that we can around that.
Here’s how the goals went, though:
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July Goals
Plant last successions of everything- What a relief that I can cross this off! We missed a couple successions of things, but overall, we did an excellent job this year of planting enough of everything (and planting things out at generally the right time).
- Get electric fence set up
- Hmmm…kinda? It’s still not totally working, but we’re not super fussed about it at the moment.
- Do a crisis weed on everything
- Um, nope. We’ve taken down some of the biggest weeds in some locations, but we basically have thrown up our hands at this point and let everything coexist together.
- Totally cross one area off of Master Decluttering List
- Totally hilarious to me now that I naively thought I’d have more time in July to tackle house projects, ha ha ha ha ha ha
- Simplify master bedroom
- See above.
Put kitchen drawer back on- Matt got this done one day when I wasn’t paying attention. It actually took me a few days to notice he’d even done it. Clearly I’m only operating on about half a brain at this point.
- Write up next NICU post
- Sigh.
Finish 3 books(ideally two off of Summer Reading List)- Surprisingly, I actually did accomplish this, mostly just because reading is often my #1 activity of choice when I really need to take a step back from the farm (and don’t have the energy to catch up on housework). I finished Let It Go (on decluttering), Start With Why (a business read), and Funny Story (highly enjoyable read off my Summer Reading List) in July.
August is largely just about hanging on and riding the wave of flowers until the frost hits sometime late next month (or in October, if we’re lucky). I’m not bothering to set many goals other than what’s necessary, because it’s all I can do to keep up and stay semi sane.
We do have a bunch of car maintenance tasks that can’t be put off any more though, so that will largely be the focus of this month. Our two vehicles from before both desperately need oil changes, and then we ended up buying a little blue pickup truck from my mom and stepdad for use on the farm (which has been soooo nice to have already!). We still need to officially register that under our names and get insurance for it, so basically August has become Take Care of All the Cars month, and we’re calling that good enough.
August Goals
- Register truck
- Add truck to car insurance
- Get oil changed in van
- Get oil changed in Mazda
- Write up next NICU post
- Mostly just keeping it on here so I keep myself (eventually) accountable 🙂
- Finish 3 books (ideally two off of Summer Reading List)
Keepin’ the list short and do-able this month! How’s your August been going?
