Blooming Profits: Conversations with Flower Farmers – Details, episodes & analysis

I sit down with fellow grower and Youtuber, Tara from Wild Bird Farm to talk about her small scale U Pick and how she's been moving stems over her 4 year flower farming journey. I think you'll find this discussion particularly inspiring as Tara grows in a relatively small space but yet is able to pump out so many blooms!

You can find Tara at @WildBirdFarm both over at Instagram & YouTube!

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Want to support me in making more videos like this? Join my Patreon! For less than a fancy cup of coffee a month ($5), you’ll also unlock access to gated articles for even more valuable content. www.patreon.com/bareflowerfarm

Preorder spring 2025 tulips! Here are our offerings: https://www.bareflowerfarm.com/shop/tulip-bulbs 

Looking for a reliable, rugged, and remarkable focal that you can succession plant throughout the season? Lilies are the perfect crop. I'm selling lily, roselily, & callas in 25 and 50x on www.bareflowerfarm.com/shop/lily-bulbs 

@jordonsflowerfarm and I have been texting all season long about successes & mistakes, and we want to share it all with you in a live and allow you to ask questions! More importantly though, Jordon has been hard at work building her "retail" following this winter & spring. Here is what makes Jordon's spring season so impressive:

1) Jordon relocated her farm to a completely different town in Oklahoma, about 1 hour away from her last farm. It's a completely different local market and Jordon had to put in farm infrastructure and plants AGAIN.

2) "Buttercup" the farmstand was put on site in late 2023 but Jordon really started rebuilding her local following this year. Jordon's Facebook page is now close to 4k followers and all of them are REAL potential customers (versus other flower farmers)

3) In less than 6 months, Buttercup has exceeded sales expectations and outperformed the farmers market as a sales outlet.

We are going to dedicate about 50% of our time talking high level about spring lessons learned including how Jordon accelerated Buttercup's success and then spend the other 50% talking about lessons learned with spring flowers. Come with coffee ☕️ and a notebook 📗. This one will be full of data & insights 🤓!

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Link to my free newsletter! Get timely and relevant business tips and insights every other Wednesday. https://bit.ly/3yitpiI

Want to support me in making more videos like this? Join my Patreon! For less than a fancy cup of coffee a month ($5), you’ll also unlock access to gated articles for even more valuable content. www.patreon.com/bareflowerfarm

Looking for a reliable, rugged, and remarkable focal that you can succession plant throughout the season? Lilies are the perfect crop. I'm selling lily, roselily, & callas in 25 and 50x on www.bareflowerfarm.com/shop/lily-bulbs

I catch up with Haley, a full year later after our first interview to talk about the following topics:

1) General expansion from year 1 to year 2, including how she more than doubled sales

2) Why she expanded into retail after launching with selling to wholesale only

3) Updates on her winter tulip forcing in year 2

This is less of an interview and more of two flower friends catching up. We hope you enjoy! You can find Haley at @Brynhillflowerfarm on Instagram!

Want to watch with visuals? Here's the link to the youtube video https://youtu.be/NkJ8VwEfK2k

In this live, we switch gears, talking about selling retail but specifically at farmer's markets.

Jessie spent her first season selling at a local farmer's market and appeared as a guest in the 2023 season. Prior to, she had sold at dozens of markets for her other side hustle soap business.

Jordon also spent her first season at a popular farmer's market in OK.

We'll talk about what we learned, tips, pricing, set up and so much more! Hopefully by the end of this live, you'll feel more informed as to whether selling at a farmer's market is right for you, or if you've already signed up, you'll feel more confident that you'll kill it this upcoming season!

This will be a ~1 hr live where we will have a structured discussion, a quick fire section, and then open it up to more Q&A! Watch on Youtube via https://youtube.com/live/F5aDOqETBII

This was such a fun interview with Serina from You Can't Eat the Grass! Serina and Ian have been a huge inspiration for me.

The algorithm fed me their content back in 2021 and I was hooked. This was when I didn't even realize flower farming was a "thing". Serina focuses many of her videos on the flowers and selling them, but we get into flower farming business and profitability topics like:

1) Her farmer's market vs farmstand revenue and future plans to increase sales

2) Building $20 bouquets and her process/evolution

3) Rethinking about profitable $20 bouquets by decreasing the number of stems, but still increasing the value of those stems left

4) Some ah-ha's in terms of specific varieties that she has come to realize are less profitable than one may assume

5) General plan for 2024 & beyond ($100k or bust) And much more!! A huge thank you to Serina for her generous time.

You can find them over at @YouCantEatTheGrass on Youtube.

Head on over to Youtube where we share this interview on the screen. Get an idea for Serina's farm scale, operations and some nifty drone shots at https://youtu.be/V31bdlBeRTU

In our 1st live, we spent all of our time primarily talking about the traditional route to selling to florists - delivering to them either through a bucket run or via an availability sheet. But ya'll were still interested in hearing more about my experiences selling to a cooperative (similar to a collective) and shipping to florists. So that's what we'll cover in this live.

This will be a ~1 hr live where we will have a structured discussion, a quick fire section, and then open it up to more Q&A! Want to see this on Youtube, including all of the visuals we show of Jessie's cooperative? Head on over to https://youtube.com/live/DHGjqIjl1CU

In our latest interview, I sat down with Lauren of Alchemy Farm House, located in the Hudson Valley NY.

Lauren is entering into year 4 of growing and has largely sold her flowers through a CSA subscription. She has now grown this subscription to 45 shares this winter! We take a deep dive and talk about all things related to CSA, including:

• Why a CSA?
• Biggest challenges with running a CSA
• Starting CSA size and scaling it up
• Structuring a CSA Approaching small businesses to partner with
• Pricing
• General thoughts about having a CSA as a main sales outlet

I hope you find this interview as helpful as I did. You can find Lauren at https://www.alchemyfarmhouse.com/ and @alchemyfarmhouseblooms on Instagram.

Want to watch the visuals that come along with this interview? Head on over to Youtube at https://youtu.be/-mpX6YH4R-g

 In our first of many joint weekend morning coffee chats (via Youtube Live), Jordon and I will go into deeeeeep details about selling to florists.

Why us? We are two "newer" flower farmers reflecting back on selling to florists for the first time (Jessie was in year 2, Jordon was in year 1).

Here is what's going to make this conversation interesting:

** We have two completely different sized farms. Jessie grows on 40x90 ft with a heavy focus on forcing programmable crops like tulips & Lilies in New Jersey. Jordon grows on much larger acreage, having invested huge to go "big" starting in year 1.

** Between the 3 of us, we sell through 3 outlets to florists 1) Direct to florist (delivering to them) 2) Direct to florist (online & shipping to them) 3) Via a cooperative

This will be a ~1 hr live where we will have a structured discussion, a quick fire section, and then open it up to more Q&A!

I sit down with Melinda from Springdale Flower Farm, located in Dover, MA about how she found success in her 1st year of flower farming on just 800 sq ft.

Melinda is a complete new grower who started from complete scratch this year. She not only had to learn flower varieties, but also how to grow and sell her product. Impressively, she achieved all this AND found a very profitable sales outlet, with some weeks selling $1k! 

Catch this interview over at Youtube at https://youtu.be/vZaXm5KyBdo

Both Jordon and Jessie recently invested in woodies & perennials. We share about the perennials we invested in and why. Jordon was even able to harvest some off of her first year baptisia starts!

Link to my free newsletter! Get timely and relevant business tips and insights every other Wednesday. https://bit.ly/3yitpiI

Want to support me in making more videos like this? Join my Patreon! For less than a fancy cup of coffee a month ($5), you’ll also unlock access to gated articles for even more valuable content. www.patreon.com/bareflowerfarm

Looking for a reliable, rugged, and remarkable focal that you can succession plant throughout the season? Lilies are the perfect crop. I'm selling lily, roselily, & callas in 25 and 50x on www.bareflowerfarm.com/shop/lily-bulbs