The Calm of Winter before the Chaos of Spring

Winter on the farm is pleasing in its own soft quiet way. There is nothing and everything going on during the dormant winter months. There's no toiling in the field or rushing around to beat the weather coming our way. It's peaceful dreaming of the promise each new growing season holds, shortly followed by the panic of how are we going to accomplish all these dreams and who's doing the planning, purchasing and problem solving!

Me, that's who! That's my biggest winter chore: farm planning. And this year farm planning is an even more difficult task because I share my office desk (our kitchen table) with this cutie. Not only is she distractingly adorable, she's a little demanding when it comes to her lunch, nap and play breaks.

Although Adelaide has certainly impacted my productivity, my little ladybug is a welcome addition to our family and the flower farm. So far her favorite tasks are quality control (she shakes the seed packets after I unpack our seed shipments) seedling oversight ( she likes to look at all the seeds growing on the seed shelf) and facetime meeting coordinator (she chatters while Grandma Cathy and I discuss the farm plan). She's already taken quite an interest in the plants growing around the house and I hope this curiosity blooms into an all out obession.

As mom and I reflect on 2021, mostly laughing about what a mess we made of it, we are overjoyed to move into a new season wiser than we were a year ago. The Caro farm will be growing more dahlias than ever this year and we will be hosting our first on farm events beginning with a Mother's Day Brunch and Bloom bouquet making class. We will be holding a monthly Brunch and Bloom class throughout the season, offering guests a fun morning filled with flowers (you can find more info on the shop page). We also have several local weddings we are providing flowers for. If you're looking for a place to purchase our blooms, this season mom will be joining the Caseville Market on Main farmers market on Saturdays.

Up north we are trimming trees around the property to expand our growning area, adding 850 sq/ft of flowers, more than doubling the size of last years growing space! It's a smidge intimidating but I can't wait to have our house surrounded by flowers! We are also surrendering to the deer population up here and building a fence to keep the critters out. The deer were relentless last season, they ate 499 of the 500 of the sunflowers I planted, constantly munched on the buckwheat and clipped a few cosmos. We have never dealt with this kind of deer pressure before and after trying several deer deterents, all of them failing, we are doing as the locals do up here and just fencing the garden in. So many times last summer, Max and I would pass a house with a lovely little veggie garden surrounded by a sweet little fence and be so impressed with how much work people put into their gardens up here, now we know why! Our vegetable garden suffered deer distruction as well and will be enclosed this year too. Luckily the deer left us a few blooms to harvest...

We have a whole bunch of optimism going into this season, our 5th season (crazy to believe!) We have a few new flower varieties we can't wait to share with you along with our steadfast favorites. Thank you for your continued support and stay tuned to see how we grow in 2022!