Well, it finally happened…our first killing frost of the season during the last week of October. It’s been a beautiful month and I’m not sad to have had a longer season. It kind of felt like the flowers would never stop!
They did, however, and today I took a hedge trimmer to as many beds of annuals as I could handle before my biceps gave out. (Our hedge trimmer is heavy!!) It was kind of therapeutic in a way. I’ll definitely miss the flowers, but out with the old and in with the new!
This season has brought about a lot of change to our business. The first one being the flower collective. The Missouri Flower Exchange has changed the way we do business in such an amazing way and I know it’s just the beginning. With just 3 farms part of the collective, we served over 20 local florists and floral designers. That’s pretty good for our first year! The connection that we’ve begun to build with our farms and floral businesses is the part that I’m most excited about! I look forward to what the future holds for our wholesale market and how much of an impact we can make on Mid-Missouri in the flower world!
Our farm stand was another big business shift. Instead of having bouquets out at local boutique shops (which was wonderful, but a lot of travel time), we decided to keep things closer to home and sell mixed-bouquets from our little honor system farm stand. It was a big gamble, but we knew we had the traffic going to Cooper’s Landing, so we gave it a shot. It was a success and it was our biggest sales outlet in the month of October, we sold out a couple weekends in a row! I’m excited to continue to dream about the farm stand and create an experience that is unique for our customers.
I sign off by thanking you for your support this season. Whether you just like following along, are a member of our market, popped into the farm stand a time or 2, or are one of our special wedding clients, we appreciate you so much! It was a wonderfully successful 2023 and I can’t wait to see what we come up with next year! 🙂
Joan