So this year has been absolutely insane at the farm. I Planted out 1500 spring blooming bulbs in the fall of 2020 while I was also 14 weeks pregnant.
Spring rolled around and I was big fat pregnant but that didn't mean the work stopped, and I was so excited to harvest the tulips and daffodils, that it didn't matter how uncomfortable I was, I was going to make sure that they were all properly picked and stored until they were used in bouquets.
Spring subscriptions went well and on April 22nd, 2021 we had our baby boy Easton Russell Jeffries. Two days later I was back at the farm putting bouquets together. I was making it work, with a lot of help from my family.
We had small issues like running out of room in fridges to store all of the flowers, my mom pulled a ton of flowers to early so they didn't bloom to full potential so they couldn't be used, and I wasn't always able to keep up with watering my seedlings so some of them fried in the greenhouse.
Overall though, the spring 2021 season went well.
then.......
When the summer season came around, things didn't roll as smoothly. I lost a lot of my seedlings because they weren't in the best soil and we didn't live at the farm at the time and with a toddler and a newborn, I wasn't able to get there every day to water them.
I got my seeds in too late and a lot of it didn't grow and most of what did, fried in the sun because the plants didn't get the spring rains that it needed to grow the root systems to handle the mid-summer dry period.
I worried a lot, I cried a lot... and I didn't think I was going to be able to make it work. I had subscriptions to fill and I had plans to do a lot of u-pick sessions as well as other events on the farm. On top of all of this I'm still a mom with two small kids and 16 other things going on and I felt like I wasn't doing a good job at any of it.
My mom and my husband talked me through it every time I came back to the house discouraged or crying, and so I started praying and the garden slowly became my prayer spot, it was beautiful, it was quiet, it was perfect. I prayed over my flowers at first, then it turned into my prayer spot for everything and everyone and it was also my spot to listen to the Carrie Underwood gospel album as well as the unashamed podcast by the Robertsons.
I went out to the field to cut the flowers, and on many occasions I would look around and think, there is no way I'm going to have enough.
As I'm standing there at the entrance to the field with tears in my eyes, God said "just try"... so I did. I started cutting and all of a sudden I had one bucket full, no two, no three, and so on. I couldn't explain it, I started thinking about it and it felt like the story of Jesus feeding the 5000.
I have never related with a Bible story like that until now, and now it will always hold a special place in my heart and I know exactly what will pop into my mind every time I hear it. I can't tell you how or where those flowers came from, but they were there... enough to fill subscriptions and sometimes more.
I cannot say thank you enough to every person who has supported me this year, I am in tears as I write this. When they say a small business owner does a happy dance with each purchase made, it is 100% true here, you can ask my husband haha.
every penny spent with me, every compliment, every good review, every smile, every comment and like on social media, every ounce of support, big or small, that you have given me has hit hard.
So thank you thank you thank you!
As a little girl I dreamed of being a chef or a singer or something that you hear every other kid say but I never imagined this and MAN am I grateful.