luke

Dahlia Class and Arranging Workshop with Jenny Elliott

Saturday September 11, 2021; 10:30 – 12:00 for the class;
1:30 PM – 3:30 PM for the arranging workshop

When we first opened our flower shop in Hillsdale, the idea was to celebrate all the wonderful local flowers and botanical materials which thrive right here in our corner of the Hudson Valley.  With that in mind, we’d always envisioned the work-room at our flower shop as a place where we could share this enthusiasm with ‘budding’ floral designers; to share some of the tips and tricks we’ve picked up—the hard-earned ‘know-how’—which take away the frustrations of fixing a finicky arrangement, leaving only the joy of arranging with local flowers!

We’re so thrilled to announce the first workshop we’ve scheduled after a hiatus of almost two years!  Join us for a morning gardening talk or for our hands-on arranging workshop where you’ll get to work on creating your own dahlia-centric floral arrangement. We hope you’ll join us for a fun afternoon!

15 Classes in Crafting, Floristry, Writing, Dance, Cooking & MORE

---

Join us for the inaugural weekend of The Workshop Experience, centered in Hillsdale NY. This newly formed collaboration of creatives and producers presents an array of workshops and classes on the weekend of September 11 and 12. Ranging from crafting, writing, gardening, cooking, movement, to floristry and more, we are pleased to announce this new venture and invite you to partake in experiential learning led by brilliant experts.
 
Below are most of the workshops and classes. As you scroll down, be sure to click on the links to check out all the details and read about the instructors leading these events. And stay tuned… in a few weeks we will share sources for pre-ordering delicious boxed lunches from local purveyors so you can stay fueled up as you partake in our morning and afternoon workshops. There will be live music as well, so make a weekend of it!
 
The Workshop Experience is overseen by the Hillsdale Workshop Alliance (learn more). Join us for our first ever “Workshop Experience Weekend.” And bring a friend!

---

Box Lunches + Live Music

In a few weeks we’ll share a menu of boxed lunches you can pre-order for the big weekend. CrossRoads Food Shop, Copake General Store and Roe-Jan Brewing Co. will be creating these boxed lunches to streamline your “Workshop Experience Weekend”. 

HGS Home Chef and Tiny Hearts Farm will host an informal “Jazz Lunch” between workshops (Sept 11, 11:30 – 1:30) as Luke Franco of Tiny Hearts Farm leads a distinguished group of musicians to swing you into the afternoons’ various activities.  This free lawn-concert will happen on the HGS Home Chef front porch and lawn next to Tiny Hearts Farm.

We were so gratefully to hear from so many friends and customers last week offering their support as we deal with the crumby weather we’ve been having.  In a lot of ways, this is par for the course—farmers plant their fields with optimism and enthusiasm each year and diligently tend their crops as the early seasons’ potential slowly becomes reality—for better or worse.  While we’ve been getting walloped with heavy rains, farm friends a few hours north of us are looking at bumper crops, it all depends on the specific regions’ micro-climate.  It looks like we’ll end up having one of the wettest July’s on record here in Columbia County, NY, and we’ve been thinking a lot about how we can mitigate a future season like this one.

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.

We’re trying to buck up around here and see past these weeks of punishing rainstorms, and to look forward to epic plant growth and abundant blooms…but it’s not easy right now. For that to happen we first need to get plants in the ground and mount a heroic battle against the weeds (…turns out they like the rain). With acres of flowers in the ground we’re pretty reliant on using a tractor to get most of our work done – making beds, planting, and weeding – and flooded aisles and muddy bedtops make it impossible to get the tractor out in the field without doing damage.

---

While we’ve only been farming a relatively short time in this area (10 years), we’ve seen increasingly erratic weather including heavy rains, long droughts, damaging storms, and both early and late frosts.  These increasingly frequent weather events endanger small family farms and the livelihoods of the community of growers who manage them.

---

But what can we do except soldier on?! We’re grateful that our fields drain exceptionally well and we’re hoping that the weather mellows out over the next few weeks as there’s at least a few sunny days in the forecast! Also, we are tremendously grateful for YOU, our thoughtful and supportive community of florally-enthusiastic customers who have been there for us rain or shine.  So thank you! Here’s to sunny days!!!