At the end of each gardening season, I like to reflect on what I learned in my flower farming business, what served me, what didn’t, and what I’d change the following year. 2024 was filled with ups and downs, and I’ll get into all of the details in this blog post!
I feel like I solidified what I was doing in year three, and year four was supposed to be the year of growth… Little did I realize there would be lots of growing pains in the process. And, funnily enough, I don’t remember this many growing pains in my music business! (If you didn’t know, I’m a classically trained singer and former voice teacher.)
2024 was a year of trying to do more with less. No babysitter. No husband. No flowers. But amidst these challenges, there were also lots of things to celebrate. Let’s get into it!
Curious how the first three years of my flower farming journey went? Check them out below:
- 5 Things I Wish I Knew as a Wannabe Flower Farmer
- How I Doubled My Sales in My Second Year of Flower Farming
- What I’ve Learned as a Third-Year Flower Farmer
9 Things I Learned as a Fourth-Year Flower Farmer
1. 2024 was the year of weddings
In 2023, I did six weddings. I was really glad because I love weddings and hoped to do more in the future… I almost quadrupled that number in 2024 with somewhere around 20 weddings! Sometimes, I was worried about managing it all, but we did it! Thankfully, systems we’d developed over the years with fewer weddings allowed us to get a larger number of orders completed. I figured out how much two people can easily take on, what our limit is before we have to hire a third person, and, on the other end of the spectrum, what amount of orders feels a little too light.
Peach still reigns supreme, and I can never grow enough of it. I was glad I got to recreate the yellow, blue, and white bouquet I liked (pictured below), and, even though I’m typically not a neutral girl, I was really pleased with how my last two weddings turned out: one for my cousin that was all white and one for a friend of a friend that was winter white and green. That said, please bring me all your super colourful, saturated weddings because I love them!
I understand that the wedding planning process can be overwhelming, and the advice to book your florist about four months in advance can add to the stress. However, if you have a specific vision in mind, I recommend booking me by the end of January so I can start growing the right kind of seeds. That said, if you have a smaller wedding order, I’ll do my best to squeeze you in! Learn more about my local wedding work at my sister site, Shifting Blooms.
Want a wedding themed around Pantone’s Colour of the Year for 2025? Check out my tips and my list of Mocha Mousse flowers here!
2. The first year of running a farm stand won’t be perfect
In 2024, we tried having a farm stand as a way to make sales when we’re not easily able to make deliveries and markets are becoming increasingly difficult with caring for small children. The farmstand wasn’t as successful as it could have been, probably largely in part because of not having decent signage for it, the way we had it positioned when you drove up to the acreage, and the fact that I ran out of flowers by the end of July so I didn’t really have much to sell!
For 2025, I’m envisioning an abundance of blooms. I’m even cutting my three rows of tomatoes from the crop plan so I can truly max out my flowers. Each year, my perennials become more established, so fingers crossed this is finally the year of the peony!
Learn more about my farm stand project here!
3. Feeling alone and having no babysitter is bad for business
It’s been a year of unexpected changes. I didn’t talk much about this, if at all, on social media and mentioned it in passing on YouTube in January, but last year, our trusted babysitter of 11 years was hospitalized, forcing her to close her business. Tragically, she passed away in July. This, coupled with the challenge of managing three different school schedules (and my trust issues), made it difficult to find a new babysitter.
Matters were further complicated when my husband took a leave of absence from his music job, which had previously allowed us more freedom and flexibility. He went back into construction and took a position up north, meaning I was alone for long stretches of time. We didn’t make the decision to go back to that kind of work schedule lightly, as we’d done it before, and it was extremely hard on our family and marriage. But, as you all know, groceries are expensive, inflation is a bugger, and we just needed to do what we needed to do.
I severely underestimated how those two things would impact me, and I think that’s a large part of why I felt I was coming up against every possible limit this year.
When you have four children, it’s a lot harder to find someone who wants to babysit and even though our son is old enough to babysit his younger siblings, I feel like three of them is a little much for him at this time. In 2025, we’ll only have two different school schedules, so it might make more sense to have Julia go to some sort of daycare, or we’ll get a part-time nanny or figure out something else that works for our family.
My mom regularly helps me out, but she ended up being gone quite a bit on vacations, and while I obviously don’t hold it against her for taking a vacation, I’d be remiss not to mention how much impact her help has on me. This really negatively affected me in markets. I’d booked several markets, imagining I’d have my husband and mom home and more childcare support in general. When it came to doing the markets, I ended up cancelling a lot of them. And I felt really, really bad about it.
4. I finally nailed cool flowers
Of all the crops we had, the cool flowers were by far the best.
I really perfected my timings and used the raised beds to their full advantage. I had all the supplies on hand and ready to go, so I wasn’t caught off guard by shifts in the weather or other things that may have thrown me off in the past. Ranunculus, anemones, and tulips were the best they’d ever been. Sweet peas and stock did really well, also. And the snapdragons in the cool flower raised bed were very good, even though the ones in my main garden were terrible!
The first round of seed starting starts February 15th for growing cool flowers in a cold climate. Get your copy of The Frost Proof Flower Garden before then if you want to be a frost-proof friend!
5. I can successfully make 100 bouquets in 100 days
My 100 Days, 100 Bouquets series was a new idea to try and increase my reach as well as hopefully help my YouTube channel. While I’m not sure it actually helped my YouTube channel all that much, it was a fun, creative challenge and it did get me in front of some new people! It seemed the people who liked it, really liked it. I’m excited to do it again and try some new things, and hopefully, I’ll have an abundance of flowers to do it with!
6. There are never enough flowers
Three out of four years in my flower farming journey I have not had enough flowers for the amount of sales I’m able to generate. In a sense, this is a good problem, but it is a bit frustrating. I dream of having a full field of flowers, minimal failure crops, and abundance (if you haven’t guessed by now, this is my word of the year!).
7. I’m not sure how I feel about running classes in the summer
I haven’t talked about this a lot because I was really limited in my ability to run classes with my lack of flowers in 2024, especially considering the number of flowers people typically grab in U-pick-style bouquet-making classes. It is also not cost-effective to get flowers from other farmers (though I don’t mind getting sunflowers and dahlias, especially if I don’t have a lot of them!).
I essentially didn’t offer as many classes as I had hoped because I was running out of capacity. I could feel myself getting really tired and desperately needing a break, so I didn’t want to stretch myself thinner than I had already stretched myself.
8. Both sides of my business matter equally
When I looked at my books, I realized how much I made one side of the business support the other side. In the past, if flowers were doing well, traffic wasn’t doing well, and vice versa. So, whenever I had a crop failure, it didn’t bother me, because the website side of the business would make it ok. I just thought “Oh well. At least I can write about it!”
This year, the flower sales were still ok, but the website wasn’t.
9. Fall and winter sales make up a large part of my business
I’ve always enjoyed the fall and winter sales the most out of all the different sales I do, but I think I finally realized this year how a good of a chunk of my sales they actually make up for! I think there is a decent appetite for workshops–making pumpkin arrangements in the fall and wreaths and planters in the winter–and this year I found a really good collaboration space in The Wildflower YXE. While I wish I had a good space of my own to do things here at the flower farm, I think that dream is still pretty far off. So, for now, I’m fine with coming to people!
Looking Ahead to Year 5!
My biggest goal? To not have crop failures. Not in the weather sense, but just being more on top of my seedlings and putting more stuff in place so I’m not burning out and unintentionally killing things.
Also, because I realized that more sales come to my business in fall and winter, this year I put together a list of all the flowers I need to dry, and all of the ribbons and bows and decorative things I need in place ahead of time so it doesn’t hit me by sururpise. In the same vein, I have been better about putting any money I can into a business savings account, so when I have to make a wholesale purchase, I’m not stealing from Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes.
If you want to get regular updates on the flower farm and know what is available when, subscribe to the Shifting Blooms newsletter here!
If you liked this blog post, find me on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram for more cold-climate vegetable gardening tips, delicious recipes, and cut flower goodness! I also make weekly videos over on my YouTube channel. I hope to see you there!
Learn Everything You Need to Run a Flower Farm in My Book: Business Basics for Flower Farmers!
Another thing I realized in 2024 is that I made this course that I very much stand behind but I couldn’t offer the personalization and in person help that I originally envisioned with it, so I basically had to shelve it. While it still exists in a self-study format, that’s why I transferred all the knowledge from the course into a book! Maybe in the future, I’ll bring back the full version of the course… but, for now, that’s the limit.
Get your copy of Business Basics today and start the flower farming business of your dreams!
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