Coming Soon. March 2021
The Adventure Continues
Coming in Feb.
The Journey
As a military widow with 2 young daughters, venturing into farming, while accepting help and honoring Bruce’s memory, can be daunting some days and very rewarding other days. I have been told that I give off a pretentious aire, and that I need to work on smiling more. Other days, when people pull into our farm and I am covered from head to toe in mud, they think that I am “Susana the gardener.” I like to think that perhaps I fall somewhere in the middle. I can usually be found in any type of overalls, from water wicking to linen, or a floppy hat, with a flowy dress and wicker basket from France, picking lavender as the sun sets. And in these moments, I try to remember that creating this farm is a path to realizing my dreams. Some days I’m living the dream with ease and appreciation. Other days I am stumbling in the dark, without my glasses, barely holding on – standing at the edge of a cliff, only to find my way back to feeling sunshine on my face; that is what I will share with you here.
I’ll begin with the humid July weekend we moved to this farm. We moved from a home with less than ½ an acre to one with 5 acres. The first time I drove in the driveway and saw the numerous lilacs planted in gardens and on the property lines, I knew this would-be home. Growing up in the Rochester, New York area, the love for lilacs was developed early in my life. The backyard was planted with alfalfa fields as far as my eyes could see. Right before alfalfa is picked it looks like tall grassy waves when the wind blows through it. For my aspiring dream of planting a lavender and flower farm, this was like a gift of a blank palette. We rented the farm while we waited for the land survey to be completed and finally closed on the farm in September. We could weed the established gardens, but not one plant could be planted into the soil. So, while we waited, I designed and redesigned the property, both in my mind and on paper. Finding this land was a gift.
The day after we closed on the farm, the alfalfa had been mowed down, and we tried to rototill the soil with the newly purchased tractor. The rototiller barely scratched the surface. Alfalfa roots grow at least 6 feet in the ground and when rototilled, they leave long, heavy clumps of alfalfa. We took a pick axe to the roots. We spent many hours heaving clumps of alfalfa into the tractor. As I think of that, I can’t help to think of how clueless we were! It makes me cringe and laugh at the same time. With help from family and friends we planted over 1,000 plants in that field. The rows were perfectly straight, the plants evenly spaced and looked perfect if you concentrated your eyes onto the 3-inch lavender plants and not the soil in between the rows.
There had to be a better way; we bought a disk and a used plow. As we purchased attachments for the tractor, farmers told us the history of our farm. They reminisce about how they spent many Friday evenings here playing cards and eating with other farmers. We learned that people knew our house as the “old Powers Farm.” We learned of the tragic death of Mr. Powers. Hearing these stories taught us that farming is more than just planting something in the ground, watching it grow and selling it. It is about community, lending a hand when needed and the relationships made for a lifetime. I am grateful for those lessons because they would carry us through the next year of planting and difficult lessons learned.
Within the next year, new areas were plowed, disked and then rototilled. (If you are not a farmer, that means preparing the field so that the soil is flat and can be planted.) We planted 3,000 more lavender plants;. 500 were planted in heavy duty landscape fabric. The weed pressure on our plants was overwhelming. We had scoped out other lavender farms in New York, Canada, and France, and I was determined to achieve the more aesthetically pleasing picturesque look of the fields in France, which meant foregoing the landscape fabric. Karl disagreed, and urged me to plant in landscape fabric. With a chip on my shoulder, I told him I had a degree in horticulture, and for the health of the roots, the landscape fabric didn’t seem like a good idea. We spent the entire summer and fall trying to weed 4,000 plants. Even with a weed whacker, it became a totally overgrown ragweed and goldenrod mess. We could maintain about 190 plants in this manner. My dream of a perfect French lavender field was one that you needed a tissue box to walk through, because everything that makes people sneeze in New York grew in it. Yet even in this jungle of weeds, the lavender plants survived.
This is when my stubborn streak was a benefit; I was determined to succeed. We replanted the lavender into rows of landscape fabric. I remember one conversation with my mom as she held the plastic up and I tried to burn holes into the landscape fabric to gently guide the plants into it. She asked when moving forward with planning the farm if I would take people’s advice and not try and do things my own way. It was a hot summer day, I was hot, and I said “Maybe.”
As time went on, I watched the plants in the landscape plastic flourish without the weed pressure. I spent hours lifting the plastic up to see what was occurring beneath the plastic, inspecting the plants, comparing them to other plants, and came to my own conclusion that I needed to take other people’s advice. I learned that if I was going to be a flower farmer, not everything learned came from a book; knowledge given freely is a precious gift, not to be taken for granted. I am glad to say that now, almost everything planted on our farm is planted into landscape fabric, and I am more open to advice.
This morning as I was walking our floppy eared dog, Colby, with a mug of coffee in hand, I looked at the lavender, peony, roses and a small assortment of perennial and herb plants that replaced the alfalfa and smiled. There is a large sign that helps to locate our farm, lavender and peony plants now line our roadside garden from one end of the property to the driveway. I can take a look back on the unleveled and much needed path that led me to the place I am today, and smile.