Merry Christmas from our family to you!!
I feel like I’ve said this every single year for basically the last decade, but wow, this was another year for the books for our family! 2024 will basically always go down as the year that the flower farm went full-time, and it sure came with a pretty steep learning curve! I’ll be covering more flower farm stuff in my Year in Review post, but for now, I figured I’d do a quick update by each member of the family in a more traditional “Christmas card” style so you can see what we’ve all been up to this year.
Matt (38 years old):
As we stepped into flower farming full-time, we knew pretty early on that we would have to establish pretty defined “roles” for ourselves in the business, and so Matt now officially heads up all our irrigation, transplanting, plant maintenance, bed prep and turnover, soil amendments, and does the majority of the harvesting. Basically, if it’s part of the farm’s physical labor, chances are high he’s in charge, or at least heavily involved.
I also taught him how to make wrapped bouquets this year to take some of the pressure off of me, and I’ve gotta say, he’s got a great eye for it! The bouquets above are all ones he designed and made without any input at all from me.
Then, in December, since our farm is in its off season and we needed a more stable source of winter income, Matt’s taken on a temporary gig working for a friend a couple hours up north as a specialized running and agility coach. A pretty far cry from flower farming, but it’s actually exactly what Matt graduated in, and so far, he has LOVED it. It’s hard having him away from us during the week, but it’s giving him the chance to really focus on working out and do some passion projects of his, as well as spend some more time with his parents as he’s staying with them during the week. (I will say though, we’re all excited for when the contract will run out in a couple months! We definitely miss him a ton when we’re apart.)
The farm is definitely only possible because Matt has been putting in insane hours to make it so (40-50 hours a week, easy), along with helping me out with every single part of the homefront, including cooking, cleaning, and childcare. The man is amazing!
Torrie (Me, 38 years old):
My year closely mirrored Matt’s, but with the flip side of the responsibilities. When he was out doing farm stuff, I held down the fort at home. When I had to do the farm stuff, he was in charge at home. My main farm responsibilities are all the planning, marketing, selling, customer service, branding, content creation, seed starting, and custom flower arranging (like for special orders or for weddings). I also made all the official harvest lists and helped do a decent amount of the harvesting, probably around 40% over the course of the season. Basically anything that involved being the public face of the farm was me (as well as all the major design/aesthetic decisions), while Matt did the lion’s share of the actual physical labor (other than the specialized flower arranging).
My autoimmune disease remained in an intense flare-up this year, which necessitated that I take more drastic action if I didn’t want to start having to take medication again, so in addition to having been off gluten for well over a year, I also cut out sugar and dairy for a couple months in late summer. While it’s still not totally in remission, it’s much better than it was, and I’m hopeful that it will go into full remission by the end of the winter.
When my life wasn’t taken up by farm work and house/family responsibilities (a rare occurrence), I was working on developing friendships, fitting in blogging and reading wherever I could, and continuing to work whole-heartedly towards minimalism in our home.
Raven (4th Grade, 9 years old):
Raven is our Little Mama around here, and we rely on her helpfulness and trustworthiness a lot to help us keep things running smoothly. She took on regular farm responsibilities this year and helped us a ton with planting/transplanting, including sowing or transplanting whole rows by herself. She also started really learning how to create market-worthy bouquets, and while we’re not *quite* at the point where she’s helping us stock the farmstand, I think we’ll get there next year as she’s got quite a good eye for it.
She participated in softball this year for the third season, and her skills really took off (largely because we finally had a bit of time we could actually practice with her!). She also continues to devote large amounts of time to her art practices, and she was cruising along at piano when I was actually taking the time to teach her lessons every week. We’ve had to take a break for a little while because of my schedule, but I’m hoping to get back into it in the new year, especially as she has a good ear for music.
She continues to make and build friendships easily and well, and she’s definitely the most outgoing member of our family by far 🙂
Mathias (1st Grade, 6 years old):
Mathias started full-day school this fall and is OBSESSED. He asks us every day if it’s a school day, and he’s the only kid I know who moans when he hears about being on break. He’s picking up everything (including reading) at lightning speed, and we’ve seen his social life start to come to life quite a bit this year, too. He’s now starting to have play dates of his own (instead of just playing with Raven’s friends or with his siblings), and he’s now at the age where he’s starting to get invited to friends’ birthday parties too, which is fun for him.
He is obsessed with all things Nintendo and Pokemon, and his favorite thing is for us to print off pictures off the computer of all the villains or all the levels or whatever of the different worlds/games, and he’s created these intense playbooks for each. We don’t even let him spend all that much time actually playing the games, but it’s really just the research that he’s passionate about (a kid after my own heart!).
He’s the one always trying to make all of us laugh, and he’s always trying to ham things up a bit to get everyone to crack a smile.
Mathias and I also both started getting immunotherapy shots this fall for our seasonal allergies, and boy, has he been a CHAMP about it. It was so hard for him at first (he had to get SIX SHOTS a week!), but now he’s learned to handle it like it’s not too big of a deal at all, and I’m so excited to see the difference this will make for him in the summer months especially, which were always really hard on him before.
Hyrum (Pre-K, second year, 5 years old):
Hyrum is our shyest kid by nature, but he’s slowly starting to come out of his shell in some (select) situations outside of home. He loves preschool (and has definitely taken to it better than last year) and has been quick to pick up on his letters and numbers. He’s also started expressing himself a lot more this year, which has been really fun to see.
I think my favorite thing about Hyrum this year though has been watching his relationship develop with Naomi. Since the older two kids are gone all day at school, he’s really poured all his love and friendship into his relationship with Naomi, and he’s so good to involve her and pay attention to her and try to help her when she’s upset or sad. I think he’s going to be her fiercest protector as she gets older.
He is our puzzle master (the only one of our kids who has taken after me in this regard), and he has just got an eye for organization and putting things into place visually. I love seeing how intently he can work on something like Duplos or a magnet tile project for a really long period of time, and he also loves to color and paint. I love seeing our kids individual personalities come out more and more the older they get!
Naomi Jean (almost 20 months):
Naomi Jean had kind of a wild ride of a year! She has had more medical and therapy appointments than we often knew what to do with, but she’s been working hard and bringing us so much joy through the process. She’s learned how to crawl (and fast!) this year, and she is about *thisclose* to pulling herself up to stand alone. She has also started using some signs (waving, “all done,” and “more”), and she’s also approximating words with each one, as well (hi, ah duh, ma).
Our biggest rollercoaster has been what’s going to happen with closing the hole in her heart. We were originally told it wouldn’t be until she was probably 3-5 years old, but then all of a sudden, because she’s still so small and isn’t gaining weight as quickly as the doctor hoped, we were told she might be getting open heart surgery at the end of this year. Since then, she’s had a sedated echo that has shown she’s likely a good candidate for the catheter procedure method for closing the heart defect, and so the plan right now is that they’re going to attempt that procedure probably sometime in late spring, after she turns two. If that procedure doesn’t work, then they will need to do open heart surgery.
To try and get her to start gaining weight a little better, we finally started meeting with a feeding therapist and a dietician, and we’ve been loading her up with peanut butter and full fat yogurt mixed into everything where she’ll let us. We’re still just doing formula in bottles and very smooth purees at this point, but she did finally get some teeth this year, so we’re hoping other solids aren’t too far behind.
While I know some people might only focus on the fact that she needs a bit more hands on and medical attention than many kids, I cannot overemphasize what a JOY Naomi is for our family. She is by far the most easygoing of all our babies, and she absolutely LOVES our family and our dog and just being around people. You can tell she’s quite social by nature, and she loves to laugh and smile and make conversation with you. She is a delight to have around, and she completes our family in so many ways.
While in many ways, this year has been really intense, I am honestly more proud of us than I could ever say. To go for what might seem a little bit like a crazy dream with everything we had and to just keeping pushing and pushing for it, even when the going got tough, definitely helped refine our sense of grit this year. And thanks to a lot of answered prayers and community support and a heck of a lot of hard work, we’re actually making this flower farm dream WORK — and next year is already looking like it’s going to be even better.
More than anything, this year has taught us to rely on our Savior, and we have especially learned, like the Israelites of old, to rely on God’s willingness to give us daily manna. This year, more than any other year, we have seen many miracles large and small, that seemed to come *just* when we needed them, or maybe *just* in the amount that we needed to pay ourselves from the farm. There were so many days and weeks of intense anxiety, wondering how on earth we were going to make all the numbers work, but there were so. many. instances. of just that daily manna coming, bit by bit by bit.
I’m proud of the farm and business we’ve built up and all that we’ve learned through the process, and the ways in which it’s brought our family closer together. It’s been a wild ride of a year, but I’m so grateful for the way that everything has turned out, and I cannot WAIT to see what next season has in store — we already have some pretty amazing things lined up 🙂
I want to thank you all for sticking with our family and caring enough to follow along on our little journey. We love you, and we hope that you have a restful and peaceful Christmas season this year!
