First, let’s start with the good news! The COVID19 pandemic (…how’s that for a segue?) certainly did knock the wind out of our sails, but somehow, we’re still afloat and growing flowers for our beloved customers. Reporter Cara Parks spent some time with us this spring and wrote a lovely feature in Bloomberg Pursuits on the effects of the pandemic on our family farm along with some of our colleagues aboard the local flower movement. Ahoy there!
Tiny Hearts Farm featured in Bloomberg Pursuits this week:
Farmer complains about weather; media takes note
| Last week we spoke about the challenges we’ve been facing at the farm due to excessive rainfall. Well, it appears we’re not alone: this Albany Times Union’s article details what local area farmers have been dealing with as the precipitation has reached epic proportions over the past month. The tremendous rainfall accumulations mean we’ll be facing shortages not only due to crop failure but also an inability to work in the fields. My favorite part is towards the end of our call as I was laughing deliriously while saying, “maybe it’ll stop raining…” Yes, It’s true. I’ve truly lost my mind at this point. |
We’re taking a moment to recover and to let the fields drain. Flowers only available at the Tiny Hearts Flower Shop this week.
If you average it out, we’ve received about a half inch of rain a day for the past month. We’ve had standing water in the field for weeks now and the flooded areas are increasing their footprint with each deluge. More troubling is that the topography of our main fields seems different, I assume, due to erosion. Our main field, which was once flat, is newly intersected by a stream. So, that’s the bad news. We’re hoping things turn around this week, but we’ll need to navigate these choppy waters nevertheless, by hook or by crook.
As a result, we’re not able to offer flowers for pre-order at our flower shop this week (we won’t be able to forecast availability the way we usually do). Also, we aren’t accepting any wholesale orders this week. We’re very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.
CSA pickups to continue this week as planned!
Despite the inclement weather, we’ll still be able to pull some beautiful bunches out of the field, although not in the large quantities we’d normally expect at this point in the year. We’ll have flowers for all of our “Curated Flower CSA” members to pick up this Friday as usual. While flexible CSA members won’t be able to pre-order their flowers this week, we still encourage you to stop by the flower shop Thursday through Sunday to select something beautiful from the showroom floor. Thank you for understanding.
