Happy Mother's Day 2024

Happy Mother’s Day all you amazing humans who care for the young, the old, the ones who need help…well all of us! Anchored In Flowers is happy to be back in collaboration with our Knights of Columbus again this year to provide a little token of appreciation and joy for all those who attend mass this weekend.

This year we opted to order plugs from a regional nursery who specializes in plugs for nonprofits. With our growing resources, we decided it would allow for the healthiest plants and fit our ability to care for the plants with better outcomes. This means, the seeds are started in their nursery and grown in trays with small compartments until the are a tiny, but robust little seedling. This the most challenging part of the process and works best with specific types of greenhouses and tending of the plants. These were then shipped to us and we transplanted them into the pots you received.

Speaking of pots, we changed it up this year. We aim to reduce our plastic consumption as well as other areas of negative environment impact. We have tried different types of vessels including peat and coconut coir. Peat is a nonrenewable resource that we are working to eliminate on our farm. The coconut coir was challenging to work with and was quite messy. So…this year we landed on cow pots! Yep, pots made from cow manure. These pots are made in the United States and are 100% biodegradable. Just plop your little plant, pot and all, right in the ground! Check out more about these pots at www.cowpots.com

Marigolds serve a variety of purposes in our garden. You can use these plants in just about any grow setting from the field to your porch, and see the benefits. Marigolds have a strong scent that repels many pests such as aphids, tobacco worms, cabbage horn worms and certain nematodes. Their blooms attract pollinators and those beneficial insects such as lady bugs. If you want to bring these joyful little blossoms into your home, cut early in the morning and choose the ones that are just about half open. The more you cut, the more they will bloom, so don’t be afraid to carry some of these inside or share with friends. Marigold seeds are easy to harvest when the plant begins to fade. Simply gather them in a small baggie, let them dry out and pop them in the freezer to sow next year!

The drawing on the card is by one of our very own SMS students. Thanks you, Merry, for sharing your skills with us!

We pray you all have the most blessed of Mother’s Day.

Paperwhites

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! It’s Paperwhite Time! We love growing and tending these bulb gardens to share with our community during this joyous season.

Enjoy these until the blooms are spent, then toss the dirt, bulbs, and rocks in the compost pile and enjoy the container as a keepsake!

Paperwhites are a close relative of daffodils and are native to the Mediterranean. We force these bulbs to bloom and bring us a breath of life in the dark months and short days of winter. They are easy to care for!

Our bulb gardens are planted in soil with decorative rocks on the top. Water when the soil is dry to the touch. Avoid overwatering to keep the bulbs from softening too much. These flowers will bloom for several weeks. They prefer coolish conditions (65 degrees) and indirect light. These tall beauties may need to be tied together or staked as they grow to keep them from falling over. At the end of their growing season, you can toss these bulbs in the compost pile as they typically don’t survive the winters in our growing zone.

We created precious little garden art from cork, acorns and wood shavings. These are painted with earth based paint and are totally compostable…or you can save pop in another plant after your bulbs have finished their show!

Thank you for supporting our farm. From all of us to yours, may you have the merriest and brightest of holiday seasons!

Marigolds for Mother's Day!

Anchored In Flowers had the opportunity to collaborate with our local Knights of Columbus, Council #4264, to bring a little token of joy and appreciation to the mothers of the parish church. The team sowed the seeds in late winter and we nurtured them along until they landed in those deserving hands. If you received one, please see the following for a description of the plant and how to care for it.

African Crackerjack Blend Marigold

You received an African Crackerjack Blend Marigold. The seeds are from Botanical Interests and are open pollinated, untreated Heirloom variety. These flowers are described as “ large, majestic marigolds…a superior blend with mounding form and consistent height, and sturdy flower stalks. The 4” blooms in tangerine orange, rich gold, and lemony yellow….make radiant, and long-lasting cut flowers.” These blooms are fairly drought tolerant and are deer and rabbit resistant.

Your plant is potted in a biodegradable coconut coir container. You can place the container and plant all together in the ground or in a pot. If you choose to separate the two, you can shred the container and scatter it in your garden or toss the whole thing in the compost pile.

Marigolds serve a variety of purposes in our garden. You can use these plants in just about any grow setting from the field to your porch, and see the benefits. Marigolds have a strong scent that repels many pests such as aphids, tobacco worms, cabbage horn worms and certain nematodes. Their blooms attract pollinators and those beneficial insects such as lady bugs. If you want to bring these joyful little blossoms into your home, cut early in the morning and choose the ones that are just about half open. The more you cut, the more they will bloom, so don’t be afraid to carry some of these inside or share with friends. Marigold seeds are easy to harvest when the plant begins to fade. Simply gather them in a small baggie, let them dry out and pop them in the freezer to sow next year!

On behalf of the AIF team, we wish you a very blessed and happy Mother’s Day!

Finally! After Five Long Years...

Hello, friends! We are so excited to announce that after five long years of work and successes and challenges and, oh yeah, a pandemic, our first trip to DC is underway. Why do we care? Because the very purpose of AIF is to help fund that trip for our 8th grade team members. (Among other very important purposes, of course.) We thought it would fun to take a quick look back at our roots to help celebrate this big occasion.

You can hop through our site and see a bit about our origins. Long story short, we began as a ragtag band of 6th graders in 2017 with a dream to transform our messy garden of weeds into a place of bounty- both in beauty and profit. We spent a year just figuring out how to even begin farming and growing in a way that would meet our goals of worthwhile engagement and income. We met each week to learn about the basics of building a business, including logo and mission statements, web design, revenue streams and more. At the same time, we cleaned up the space and began exploring how to grow our products in an efficient, economical and, most importantly, ecologically sustainable fashion.

In fall of 2018, we tested the waters with our first CSA- community supported agriculture- bouquet subscription service. It was a huge success! We sold out of all our shares and routinely sold all the extra bouquets each week. We were blown away by the demand for flowers and the support of campus community. Emboldened by our success, we went straight into the holiday season with Paperwhite (narcissus) bulb vases and, again, sold out of all our product. 

In 2019, we added the Farmers’ Market to our revenue stream and enjoyed a wonderful season of experiencing all the ins and outs of selling to a broader audience. There were many challenges with this venue and we ultimately chose to not participate again, but we learned so many valuable lessons that we incorporate in our planning today.

Enter 2020. This was the year scheduled to be our first trip to Washington, D.C. funded by our business. Well, we all know how that worked out…

The beautiful thing about nature is that it will continue to grow and flourish regardless of the swirl of the manmade world around it (obviously not a carte blanche statement and not encompassing the major impact humanity has on the land…) and the flowers bloomed despite the sickness and the sadness. While we did not get to take our trip, 2020 brought us our magical hoop house! 

The hoop house (an unheated greenhouse) was built with donations and grant funds. We opted for raised beds and permanent floors. As soon as we had it filled with soil, we started planting. The hoop was such a space of respite and relief from the classroom. We could spread out, pull our masks down and reconnect, with the earth and each other. Our first year of growing in this space was incredible. We had bountiful harvests of veggies and flowers that carried our business and our souls through a tough year.

We returned to school and the farm in the fall of 2021 and picked right back up where we left off- with a sold out CSA bouquet service. We hosted the ASCFG (Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers) farm tour and loved sharing our special little farm with so many like minded flower farmers. We experimented with succulent pumpkins for harvest table decorations and had another sell out season of Paperwhite bulb gardens.

That brings us to today…we have plenty of pretties about to bloom in our hoop and fields. We are growing over 400 marigolds that were special ordered by our campus men’s civic group and… Our very first trip to DC is underway right now!

We have exciting things coming down the pike, but right now we are going to celebrate the culmination of five long years of work! Thank you for taking this trip down memory lane with us.

Farm Tour! First one in the books...

We did it! In a year where being together has been a challenge, to say the least, we were able to close out our year together with our first ever AIF Farm Tour!

Explaining all things magical hoop house.

As the world opened up just a bit more, we decided it was time to invite our community onto campus and share what we have been working on all year. The farm was a hot mess when we returned to campus in the fall, the result of minimal input for an entire season. The team has slowly plodded along with the reclaiming of our sweet little space and the result has made every achy muscle, muddy shoe, and dirty hand worth it. Grant funding has allowed us to build even more infrastructure into the farm, which allows us to be even more intentional and methodical about management. And the magical hoop house could not be kept a secret any longer!

Maps of our fields. We also shared a list of things in each bed…which changed by the next day because we are busy planting all the things!

Learning about our rain water catchment system as well as soil blocking.

The day of the event it poured the rain all…day…long….but, people still showed up and the skies cleared just in the nick of time. The AIF Team divided into small groups and our attendees rotated through each one of our four spaces- the hoop house, the water collection shed, the top field, and the lower field. The tour guides shared some of our history, processes and what we have in production right now. It was wonderful to see how the team, which has not had much time together this year outside of their cohorts, came together and were able to lead this event.

Overall, we had probably 50 or more people show up and that display of support was just what we needed to finish up our year together. In this year of different, it felt good to celebrate a success with our community!

We plan to have more of these events over the course of the season, so be on the lookout for more opportunities to come spend some time with us!

Spring has sprung, aka the start of Little Winters Season

Reflection from the hoop house door as the cold and storms rolled in.

Happy First Day Of Spring! We had such a great week of sun and green on the AIF farm with all the promise and hope that light and warmth brings. That lasted right up until Friday, our one designated day of the week to come together and work 🤦🏽‍♀️ Ah, you sneaky little thing, you-Spring. Friday’s blustery winds and random rains drove the team inside, where we spent some time learning more about the process and benefits of compost. We will share what we are learning in coming posts. (Could I possibly get one of my coworkers to pen a blog? We shall see..)

This very predictable but always shocking (am I alone in this?) change in weather gets me every year. I crave the consistent heat on my skin and the bright skies that greet me in the morning in an almost desperate kind of way. So when the temp drops (I see you lows for the night this weekend), I get discouraged. This year, I thought I would take the proverbial bull by the horns and see if a little good ole fashioned research could help me build a bit of resilience and patience within the season.

I recall my grandparents and great grandparents tsk tsking if they saw a neighbor trying to get a jump start on their season. The audacity of planting before blackberry winter or setting seeds when the song of the Whippoorwill arrived was akin to showing up at the potluck empty handed. What in the tar hill were they talking about? This is what I found about the phenomenon, both the natural and cultural one, of Little Winters in the hills of Tennessee.

Redbud Winter: The first of these sneaky little tricksters. Occurs Mid-March to early April when those gorgeous trees remind us that all things come back to life in nature and that we need to get back on our allergy meds.

Dogwood Winter: Mid to late April when, you guessed it, the dogwoods are in bloom. Apparently those white blooms bring a heavy and hard frost that can really nip you in the bud. (See what I did there?)

Blackberry Winter: Early to mid-May when these bushes are in full bloom. Hard to be angry at this one because fresh blackberries are soooo gooooooddddd.

Whippoorwill Winter: Mid to late-May when these little songbirds greet us at the two twilights with their chirping.

And, wait for it, my favorite simply because the name is epic:

Cotton Britches Winter or Linsey Woolsey Winter: Late May or early June when the farmers could shed those warmer layers and put on their lighter cotton pants for the season. In all truth, I had never heard of this one, but I am actually looking forward to it this year just to share my knowledge and say Cotton Britches as many times as possible.

*All of this is based on historical data and the dates have probably moved up by a few weeks due to climate change.

Ah, this was fun. I might make it all the way through this spring now without irritation…well, how about with less irritation. That’s a more reasonable goal.

You can learn more and even hear the song of the Whippoorwill via the Tennessee Historical Society.

What did you call these Little Winters growing up?

Thanks for stopping by and HAPPY SPRING!

Spring is springing!

The AIF team has enjoyed an unprecedented two weeks in a row of great weather for outdoor work. While we know the business end of the farm is important, we really live to be outside, working in our fields and hoop house. This relative warmth and break in the seemingly endless rain gave us the opportunity to get out there and, low and behold, actually finish a project!

Teamwork makes moving the compost piles easy-peasy…or at least faster and more fun!

Our team has been working to get beds ready for planting. Our top field is all raised beds, many of which were simply falling apart after serving us well for 6 or so years. A kind supporter of our little farm built us some new beds to replace our old ones and we have been hard at work to fill those up and get them ready for our little seedlings. We spent the last two Fridays adding delicious compost to those spaces. We had lined most of them with cardboard in the early winter. This helps to decrease the weed pressure from below and encourages all those good little worms and microbes in the soil to come on up and take a bite. Adding the layer of rich compost on top will encourage even more of that and give our little plants the best nutrition for growth.

We are so grateful to have a partnership with Hoffman Composting. If you aren’t familiar with this JC local company, please check them out. Joe is a wealth of knowledge and provides an incredible service to our area. In addition to the quality product he provides, we are fortunate to be a part of two parts of this cycle of composting- from the input to the output! Our school cafeteria collects food scraps (as well as now metal scraps) and Joe picks these up from us each week. He does the hard work of turning this “waste” into rich compost material that we then turn back into our land. We spread 8 scoops of this good stuff with out most recent efforts and have plenty to go!

A thank you to those who have reached out to help us get out fields ready for planting. We have a lot of work to be done and we are grateful for your willingness to help. More info coming soon about that so be sure to use the contact tab and shoot as an email with your contact info!

Thanks for following along, friends. We are getting so close to having flowers to share with you and simply can’t wait!

And finally, I swear I am going to work on being more diligent with updating the blog (made it two weeks in row, that means it is a habit, right) and the socials. Heavens, it isn’t like I am not on there anyway and should just post…shaking off the blah of a pandemic year/winter and getting back into the game!

Welcome Back!

Or should I say, it’s good to be back? Or Hi, we are back! Or, we actually haven’t ever left but took a hiatus from all the things due to the chaos of the past year.

Quick update and run down of what we have and have not done since we last posted:

We built an amazing hoop house! This allows us to grow pretty much year round. Our first winter of growing allowed us to be outside even on cold days. Our youngest colleagues, the PreK Farmers, grew kale, broccoli and lettuce, all of which was harvested and donated to our campus food bank.

We sold paper white bulb gardens at Christmas and sold out in just a few days. This was quite the feat as we weren’t even in school during this time! Our AIF team assembled the gardens before we dismissed and Coach Heather was able to tend and deliver all of those beauties for some holiday happiness.

We are working on updating our website and reviewing our business plan. While this isn’t the most “fun” part of running an agribusiness, it is so very important!

We have newly rebuilt beds for our original garden space. All of those beds are 7ish years old and falling apart. A generous and kind person rebuilt some of them for us and we are getting ready to fill them full of delicious compost just in time for our first round of planting this spring.

We have been invited to do an educational video for Five Mary’s Farms Ranch School. We are filming now and it is so fun to analyze and breakdown our process to share with the world. More info on this coming soon.

Most importantly, we have found a way to be together, create connection and community, and cultivate a safe space for us to digest, explore and design who we are and who we want to be during these unprecedented times.

We will be updating on a more regular basis and can’t wait to see you all, maybe lifting a shovel of compost or helping with some bed prep or when we have beautiful blooms to share with you all in just a few short months.

Thanks so much for coming along with us on this journey and remember…

Flowers really do make us happy!

Summer’s end…

The Saturday morning rhythm has started to feel more natural. Waking up early to load up the flowers. Driving the empty streets to market. Finding our spot to park. Unloading. Figuring out the order of set up. The neighbor vendors smiling their good mornings. A friendly face walking over to help pop up the tent. The quiet that is the time just before it opens, with only the sounds of everyone getting ready. It’s feels like an unspoken rule that all the vendors keep their voices low, storing up energy to engage the customers that will start strolling by in the next minutes. There’s a community in that quiet. A lovely shared common goal of cooperation and competition to sell and earn and share smiles.

The feeling of discomfort at this new endeavor has evolved into a little more ease with the whole thing. It’s nice to be recognized by vendors and customers. It’s nice to know how the vehicle needs to be loaded for the smoothest set up. It’s nice to feel relaxed enough to start noticing how others set up their spaces. Watching market goers stroll by and starting to get a feel for what pulls them in and what doesn’t is a fun and educational experience.

And the students return this week. This will be the first time we take this into additional classrooms and really start to formalize a curriculum and structure. It will be exciting to see how newer students and parents take hold of this program. There are moments when it feels completely overwhelming and impossible. But then there is such energy with the start of the new year and in all those eager minds and bodies that I feel confident in the path forward, if the details are still a bit fuzzy.

In all, this summer has been a beautiful series of lessons, successes, challenges, and, most importantly, shared moments with friends and young colleagues. I can’t wait to see what the next phase of this journey holds! See y’all at market this week, maybe with a few new faces, but most certainly with gorgeous bouquets!

July 14, 2019

My, how time flies! And what a difference a week makes! And when it rains it pours! And July storms make people spend more money…wait, no. That is definitely not the case 😉

A month has passed since the last blog post, but I have composed quite a few in my head. Last week, I even went so far as to put words to print, but couldn’t bring myself to post it. I am so glad I didn’t because it was #grumpy! I won’t bore you with the details (whining) but let’s just say a downpour in the middle of a market that didn’t sell out wasn’t a boon to my confidence or attitude.

This past week’s market was back to regularly scheduled awesomeness and success. We had perfect weather and people were happy and we had a few customers seek us out specifically for this or that reason. We updated our signage and added some “street” signs to draw in more customers. We had the start of the dahlias and more zinnias this week, alongside some gorgeous (if pollen laden 😬) sunflowers which combined with our brilliant white limelight hydrangeas to make really beautiful arrangements. Our name is starting to become more recognized and the billboards that went up this week were mentioned several times. To top it all off, we were approached by the market manager and asked if we wanted to move our location to a more prime spot starting next week! In all, the nap taken that afternoon was one filled with sweet dreams of smiling faces and our flowers brightening up so many spaces.

I could stop there and just celebrate the success and move on…but (this won’t surprise you if you know me at all) I can’t let these first highs and lows go by without deriving some lessons and gratitude from them. In brief here are my take aways from our first 6 weeks at market:

• Sunshine filled markets are way better than rain filled ones 😉

• Rain is essential for basically all the things we do (and in life), so being negative doesn’t do us any good. It also reduces that very cumbersome task of watering the fields, so…

• Running a business is an emotional endeavor on top of all the other pieces and parts and needs to be approached as such.

• Setting a goal for success is important. Only allowing that one measure to define success is a recipe for failure and heartache.

• Setting multiple small goals is critical. I know this and practice it in all the other areas of my life and clearly need to work on applying that principal here.

• Sunshine really helps people spend money.

• Shared time with friends and colleagues in the garden is precious and fills my cup to overflowing. (If you haven’t tried it yet, we have plenty of opportunities for you to do so.)

• Japanese beetles are high on my list of “do not like” and milkweed bugs are pretty terrifying to watch in action. Go ahead and google them, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

• Market signage is more important than you think. The investment is worth it.

• Young people standing behind your table really do attract families and engage people who might otherwise be intimidated. And the chance for those young people to experience selling and representing can’t be measured in dollar signs.

• There is comfort in doing all that you can and realizing that there are so many things out of your control. (Thank goodness!) Although, more volunteers pulling weeds sure does put a dent in some of those mitigable areas…🤔

In short, I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this discourse with nature and to learn how to be in it rather than in (the illusion of) control of it. The highs and lows and all the middle parts combine to make the most beautiful of tapestries (or bouquets, if we are sticking to theme here.)

Thank you for joining us on this journey! See y’all at market this week!

P.S. I tend to over think things and edit and rehash to the point that it drives me (and those around me crazy) so I have decided to just blog the same way I do everything else- from the heart and in the vernacular that comprises my daily speech. My love languages are truth and kindness with a heavy dose of snark and sarcasm. I also really like emojis 🤷🏽‍♀️ and hashtags #sorrynotsorry.

Farmers Market!- June 1, 2019

We did it! Our first AIF day in the market was a great success! We had no idea what to expect and the morning started with a few nerves, but once we got started, it was so much fun. It was a relief to be able to drive right up to our spot and operate from the back of the vehicle. The team set up the table, scoped out the market, and started inviting folks over to our stall.

One of the challenges we faced with this market was our lack of actual bouquets…which is a pretty big deal for a cut flower farm. But, we wanted to start getting our business out there and getting people familiar with our brand and our mission, so we had to get creative. Enter #followtheflowers! We are a group of young farmers, so what better way to get folks involved in the farm than asking our young market goers to help us start some plants. We chose sunflowers because they are a familiar plant, tolerate less “specific” planting, grow quickly, and are a market favorite.

Once we got our rhythm, we had tons of folks, young and younger, stopping by to drop a few seeds in the dirt and learn more about who we are. We even had a live interview on @downtownjctn! It was wonderful to see our young team members get more comfortable with engaging customers they didn't know and practicing their sales pitches. They did a great job of representing our farm business.

We are excited to share our flower farm with the local community via the market. We can’t wait for folks to watch their seeds go from heat mat to lights to field and back to the market in a gorgeous bouquet alongside a variety of our other locally grown, hand picked cut flowers.

A huge thank you to all who have supported us along the way. Keep checking back for more updates! Be sure to follow us on Instagram for updates from the farm and to #followtheflowers! See y’all at market!

-Team AIF