Automatically Transcribed With Podsqueeze

00:00:01 Okay, so everybody give yourself a hug. Are you there? I was funny, I know you posted something yesterday on social. It's like, hey, how did everybody make it through? You know, and someone's like, I over ate my weight in Chinese food. Yeah. That's me. I was like, I yeah, food. I didn't do real well with food at the time, but I actually texted Sean on Friday. I think it was I think it was Friday. I think I was saying was Friday, and I said, make sure I eat lunch today, like I just needed to. That was my accountability piece because I can get in the go mode and then my I don't stress eat when I'm stressed.

00:01:07 I don't eat like that's the that's the problem. and so I texted him, I was like, make sure I eat. And then Joanna texted me just about two hours later and said, eat something today or 20 minutes later, not two hours. And I said, I just I sent her the screenshot and I said, I just made sure I eat. I was eating today. So yeah, I had some poor planning on my part because we scheduled to be at the kindergarten of our local school district all day doing a presentation about flowers the day after Mother's Day, so I didn't really get that Monday recoup day. So we were like crazy dealing with the little kids all day yesterday. So today's kind of like my I'm gonna take a deep breath. I'm doing office work. I'm like, loving the bank account. Like I love those days where you like, oh, this is all looking good. So it's just nice to have those those days. But I didn't get mine until today when we're recording on Tuesday, so.

00:02:07 Yeah. So did you guys just do grocery? You did a market and the flower stand? Yeah, we did market. We did not do grocery. We did market. We did the flower stand and we did pre-orders. And that was it. And it was our it was our best Mother's Day. I know I talked last week at the uncut. I'm like, I don't know, like people were saying recession and all that. We people bought more flowers than ever this year, which is which is wonderful. yeah. We we prepared like a bunch of buckets. More buckets than I even thought we could sell at the flower stand. And I had a busy weekend. I had employees running all the Mother's Day stuff, because I ran A5K in the morning with my girls for girls on the run program. So that morning, before we were leaving for the five K, we were like stocking the sand. And we had already sold almost 30 buckets down there. And it was the stand had been open for 30 minutes.

00:02:59 That was awesome. I was like, so I had the guys making more bouquets from what they harvested that day. You know, it was just it was just crazy. And my Mother's Day is just for me. It's a gap I need to. It's a pinch point. Like I could sell a lot more than we do. I just really, for me, like the ranunculus that we have, is the limiting factor more than anything. Like, how can I make my ridiculous go further? That's always kind of the goal. So more ranunculus next year I just need to figure out space in the tunnels and all of that. But overall it's great. People are happy and we had a beautiful weekend. I mean, just that helps that like helps all the stars kind of align because it had been crappy weather and stuff too. I think if you did your ranunculus like you and I had talked, if you did fall planting, you would have them earlier. Okay. Yeah for sure. Because we're all like, I think you would have them two weeks earlier than you actually have them now.

00:03:48 If not, yeah. Yeah. If you did the fall planting directly in versus pre sprouting them and planting when you do because you're usually on everything. Like ten days to two weeks later than me. And we have had ranunculus since the beginning of April. So yeah, you would have them like mid April. You would have them way earlier if you did this other succession and then still kind of had this other one later for Mother's Day too. But yeah, I think you would definitely have a lot more of them. Yeah. So so overall good. How is the pop up on Saturday? How'd that go? It was awesome. Yeah. So we it was a very it was our best Mother's Day. It actually beat Covid year, which I always said Covid was kind of the standard. Yeah. It was like really crazy that year. but we it was it was great. We had frost though on. Oh Friday night. Yeah. So I had been watching it. So we planted out our warm season stuff because we sort of risked the biscuit and figured it out.

00:04:52 And, we planted the the first part of the uptick. We planted our production, the seeds, the stuff was ready. It needed to go in the grounds. We had planted it early, and I was kind of watching the low temps, and I saw that it was calling for like, 38, 39. And I'm like, yeah, that's fine. Yeah. And then I was looking at the clear sky, no wind, and the dew point was 31 or 32. and so when you have that combination and I knew it was, I knew it was going to get lower than that. And, yeah, we frosted, we got 32. So we drug all of the frost fabric out, covered the fields. It was hours. It was hours worth of additional work that I just didn't have it in. So I didn't have the manpower. We actually asked for a volunteer, and we got a girl from the college that came in and helped us just drag out fabric and cover and put hoops in.

00:05:52 And I mean, it was it was awful. Yeah, it was very it was, it was stress that, just it yeah, it was just a lot that week. it was just a lot to kind of add in on top of everything else. And then Friday at the flower stand was it was great weather all weekend. And so we sold, I think we sold almost 200 bouquets out of the flower stand on Friday. So I looked at the cooler for our pop up on Saturday morning, and I looked at Emily and said, I can't send you to market that. We did not have enough for our pop up. And you know, we had 500 people here, and I have I couldn't send Emily to market with a full market display and leave nothing for here. So yeah, it was a it was probably one of the most difficult calls I've had to make in a really long time to Not go to Farmer's market on Mother's Day to me was. Yeah. I still feel like the whole time, you know, everybody the whole time that we were setting up.

00:06:57 I'm setting up for this pop up. And I said to Emily, I'm like, we'd never done the pop up before. So I made a decision on just a total gut, like, I think this is going to work. I have no idea. People know I've been marketing for a month that I'm going to farmer's market, so it was really difficult to make the call. And even when we were setting up, I'm like, is this the right decision, man? That God, I don't know. We've got all these flowers. And I had like just hundreds and hundreds of flowers, buckets or, you know, out and bouquets and jars and Emily's like, I don't know, you know, even even before the pop up started, she's like, I still have time. I could take stuff we could run down. But she didn't want to make a call. It's not her business. She didn't want to make the wrong call. Yeah. So, it ultimately was the right call. We sold out the flower stand.

00:07:46 We had a handful of stuff left over for Sunday and we sold out. And, but I guess if you're listening to this, I just want you to know that, like, it was a really difficult decision. And I still, like, went back and was questioning that I made the right decision. You know, even after that many years of experience, I still but that is really what we're tending to. We are trying to move away from market and the I've kind of joked about it that we've had rain every single Saturday. We have rain in the forecast. And so the weather has sort of forced my hand and forced me more into the flower stand piece. And, and this has taken me, you know, this has taken eight years of people, well, five years of people buying directly from our farm since Covid to really feel like now that I could be in a place that we don't do market. yeah, we're not dropping it this year, but I'm just saying that it is sort of forced me into that and forced more people to come to the flower stand and get used to buying from here.

00:08:48 So all of that's been it's been good. But it was, it was a lot. And then we had a we had a workshop on Sunday. Would you do it again that way? I would, yeah. yeah, I think I would do that workshop. I actually had talked to her. It was a really it was a good group of people and it was fun. And, it the setup was a lot. I had a lot of help though. So we did a t workshop and, the T in blooms. And so now I have like 100 dishes in my house that I have regrets over. So they, they have to be hand washed because they're like vintage t cups, so I can't put them. I actually don't even have a dishwasher. So you don't have a dishwasher. No, I don't, I live in my house like my kitchen is so tiny. It was built like the house was built in like 1890 or something. And so I don't just There's no dishwasher. I'm the dishwasher.

00:09:44 Sean and I both. Oh. So. Yeah. So now I have to hand wash all these dishes. But. But, yeah, it was it was fun. And it was a good workshop. I don't, yeah, I just I'm, like, evaluating the pace of Mother's Day, and, we did not do pre-orders, and it was perfectly fine. I was very happy to do that. It didn't have to think about it or separate it out. so I really enjoyed that piece of it too. So yeah, all things aside, it was it went really well. So it's one of those things where it's you have to like make hay when it's. Yeah, that time. And that's kind of the nature of the business is like, yeah, it's I'm going to work. We're going to be working. That's going to be a crazy week. It's all but it's all because it is such a big flower holiday. So for me, I don't know. I don't know how to change the pace.

00:10:36 If I want to sell flowers and and capitalize off of that holiday. That's the hard thing that that's like. Yeah, real. It's like, how do you change it or make it easy? This has been the easiest. We've had it. You know that that it's gone. Things have gone well. It's still stressful in some ways, but I don't know I it's hard and I mean, part of it I think is labor. Yeah. I mean I think part of it's labor and we've have, you know, I'm working with new employees. So it's, you know, there's all every year is different. The weather is different. Some springs are harder than others. And I think that's the reality of farming is that some some springs are smooth and they go off without a hitch. And then some years there's just a bunch of hitches. So, but yeah, that's and I guess, you know, for me, I will say that, like, one way that I can reduce the pace is I'm not taking weddings, on Mother's Day, so.

00:11:27 Yeah, those. I guess those are the things I'm talking about. Two wedding, two weddings. Yeah, I had two weddings, a pop up. Yeah. You know, there was a there was a lot of management pieces. Yeah, a lot of stuff like that. That was that made it hard. So, we're not. Yeah. We're not going to do I'm not going to do that to myself again next year. because it really takes me out of the flow of things when I have the weddings. and because I'm really focused on those, and my job is to kind of keep things moving forward and keep people on pace. And, we did a really good job with the crew that we had. And, they worked. Everybody stepped up, people worked extra, you know, and then we're on Saturday morning on top of everything else trying to uncover for the frost that we had. yeah. And so it was just it was a lot, I mean, and I guess those are the things that get added into the you really can't really expect.

00:12:14 So yeah. So we got cold, but we didn't get a frost. Oh my gosh. Lynds. yeah. It was I got the pictures to prove it. I'm like I knew though I just and that's actually what my when this comes out. But the tip Tuesday for today is going to be about weather apps and just sort of like those out of like what you can, what you can how you can learn about the weather, and you know what the dew point means versus all of that for us. Yeah, you're cold enough that you probably it doesn't even really. Kind of affect you. Because if we didn't have the warm season stuff in, it wouldn't have mattered for us. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Because you guys aren't planting usually before Mother's Day with warm season stuff ever so. And we usually are just because we are in this weird, funky spot kind of in between you. So. But yeah, I mean, I guess if you guys are listening, we did get some feedback.

00:13:06 People asking, you know, like people because I posted when I said, like, how are you doing? And some people were like, great. And some people were like, I don't know, it sucked. Just know that that's that's just the nature of what we do. Some years, some years it's great and other years it's great. Some years it's not, you know, and the weather just happened to hit perfect. We had had crappy rainy weather and it was the one weekend that it didn't rain, which was like, honestly, it was a blessing. So we take it. Yeah. but yeah. Yeah. That's good. We had. You know how we start seeds at the other greenhouse? Yeah. And they water. So just if you haven't heard this before, we partner with another greenhouse. We go there, we start, start our seeds there, and they water them until they're ready for us to transplant them. We go pick them up or they deliver them. And that's kind of our agreement with them.

00:13:55 And, we are starting a ton more flats this year to include grocery. And we you see, they had some extra space in the back when he put them on the ground. Well, the the ground is cooler naturally than up on the tables. So when we were looking, we had moved flats around. The ones that were on the ground had like terrible germination. Well, it was heat obviously. Now this was two weeks in to to after we've seed started and other stuff is looking like great. And that stuff is not bad, just sportier than normal. Like normal. Like, normally we never have trouble with. And it was, like, mostly gone for an hour or, so we moved everything up. I, like, had a panic attack, pretty much. Because, like, I'm relying upon, I make commitments based upon these things being ready at a certain time. So everything else looked really good. But it's just one of those risks that you take, you know, and it's.

00:14:58 Did you start more seeds? Did you move them? We just moved them immediately. Now, thankfully, the gentleman who helps us at the greenhouse, you know, he had messaged us like, hey, like some of these are not. And I'm like, dude, that's in him. He's like, well, where were they? You know, I knew that they were moving stuff around to try to accommodate us, to make extra room. And he starts stuff on the ground all the time there. But I think it was just this hot, these heat loving things that were just not germinating, the way that they should. So we he's like, I'm going to move him to the tables and we troubleshoot it. And I'm I did not start any extra seeds. We're supposed to start seeds this week. but I'm just like, you know what? These things are going to be a little bit delayed, and I can think I can go without some arena and Azure Atom. I can make it up in other ways, and I'm just going to be flexible with it.

00:15:47 Like I can't change it. But that is part of the risk, you know, when you start or trust and trust somebody else to start your seeds. So I had that panic attack, but other than that everything else looks looks great. And we're this week we kind of have a rainy couple days here, but, we're going to be transplanting our summer stuff and our dahlias and stuff probably for the next 2 to 3 weeks. So it's good. It was just like a lesson learned. And for me, like over the last 2 to 3 years, I became really trusting, which is good. Yeah. But I was probably too trusting. Like, I wasn't going back a week later to make sure everything had germinated properly. And now that's something that I need to make sure that either myself or I'm sending somebody else to go there just to double check that everything is fine. Like we're going to be fine. And it wasn't as bad as I as many flats as I originally envisioned, but still was.

00:16:38 You know, it's probably 100 flats. and yeah it is. So I had that panic attack but otherwise I'm just gonna roll with it. I don't know what else to do. Yeah. There's nothing you can do. I mean I think that's in ours. Like where we're having them start hours, where we start the seeds and the greenhouse is growing ours. Our successions are overlapping now because they're growing. We hadn't grown where they're growing so quickly. Growing well. So now we're, like, holding them and trying to space out successions, because we just got these in the freaking ground. So yeah, it's just a it's a gamble, you know, like and just everything is just always new. There's always something that's always something that's new and interesting. So and I think all that to say like there's no perfect scenario, right. You know when you're starting all the seeds yourself in your own greenhouse, you have to make sure that somebody's there watering and you have the responsibility of doing that. Now I transfer the responsibility onto them, but there's an inherent risk there, too.

00:17:37 And I for me, like, I couldn't start 500 flats every three weeks in my own space at this point. So I kind of have to make that choice. But it's just it's just one of those things, you know, just snafus that happen and we're just going to deal with it. And I think sometimes that is just the answer is that you're just going to have to deal with the loss or what the way it changes things and try to pivot. That's the best thing you can do. So yeah.

00:18:03 Yeah, I don't know.

00:18:04 Mother's day 2025 is in in the books. Yep. Behind us. That's crazy. Yeah. Crazy time. yeah. We had we had a couple people on message on the, the Spill the Dirt on our Sunday chat box and ask about how to have enough flowers for Mother's Day. And you know, I was thinking about this too. And it's a it's a really hard one to dial in and kind of ask or to answer, I guess, for each individual area and where you are.

1 00:18:35 But I was thinking about it, you know, Dirt Con, the conference that we're doing in January, we have it's this is going to be one where you can walk away with a plan. And we're talking about seed starting schedules, where the whole point of that conference is for you to kind of walk away with a how do I how much do I how do I know how much to grow? Where's the plan to sell? And, you know, how do you actually execute that? And so, just know that we have like there are so much there we're going to have resources available for that. and we have some awesome speakers lined up for that too. Getting lots of commitments from people, which has been exciting. Do we want to tease any of them out? Who? Kalin Sheick is one who is like hype girl Starting starting the conference off for us, which was we're stoked about. So, Yeah. anybody else you want to tease out? Lenny? Yeah. Lenny is joining us. She's going to be talking profitability plans.

00:19:43 The important business side. We kind of have a conference. We're going to be breaking it down into, like, a, you know, business planning, execution, marketing. And, you know, the hardest thing about farming is that we is making the plan and then also sticking to it. So part of that is, and if we look at all the questions that we get, you know, a lot of them are just trying to figure out what to grow when and then how to sell it and how to grow it. I mean, those are like, how much? Yeah, how much do I need to sell this much? And it's it's sometimes, you know, when you hear people say, oh, you know, start with your numbers and work backwards. Yeah. But there's like a whole lot of questions within that scenario. yes. You start with you want to with what you want to make and then work backwards. But there's a lot that goes into that. So that's the goal.

00:20:33 That's the goal of the conference. And I think that's going to help answer these questions and walk you through step by step, so that you can gain a lot of clarity for 2026. That is our goal is that you invest in yourself in January to have a very clear and defined plan to that you can execute. That's in alignment with your personal goals, your farm goals, all of it. and I think that's where some of like the inspiration for the conference came from is a lot of people asking us questions and us wanting to dive in with such a large group of people. And I think that's what makes this question hard, is like, we want to look at you, Lindsay Biel, and give you the answer that you need. And that's hopefully what we can provide at the conference. So yeah yeah yeah we're excited about it. So all right. It might be the horticultural snob in me, but I don't think a flower farm is complete without roses. And at Heirloom roses, they get it.

00:22:29 we've been having lots of conversations in the on our Facebook group and the insiders, somebody asked, hey, like for my market display, is it important to have an abundance versus just making enough that you're going to sell? like, I know maybe I'm going to sell 40 to 50 bouquets a week, but I want people to feel abundance. and we've been having lots of good discussions there about market displays and everything. and that is a that is a really hard my my personal answer to that was, I feel like it needs to be somewhere in between. Like, I don't want anybody to ever feel like they're getting the last bouquet? You know, because that feels. It makes it feel like. Like I'm getting the one nobody else wanted. So for me, I'm happy if I walk away with, like, one bucket and then I.

00:23:29 Me in particular. Like, I don't put those buckets at my flower stand or anything. They're just done. So that's part of like figuring in that waste percentage and stuff. That's what that 80% or 20% waste percentage for me or 15 to 20%. That's part that is part of that. thinking of the customer experience and everything. So I don't know. What's your input on that? Yeah, I think I like you said there's a balance. I think there's always a little bit of waste. I think sometimes it comes up in like what people say about photos or you see in a field. And we've talked about it with our customers. Right. They, they see blown out flowers as waste or what? We're not cutting. but I do I think there's a balance. And you have to accept that there is waste. I think 20% is pretty standard for the floral industry. We actually just discussed it last week. We were throwing away some tulips and some stuff that was just they didn't look good.

00:24:21 And and they said, you know, Darcie said, oh, it always kills me to do this. And I always, you know, let them take them home. But knowing that that is really part of it because we want to send premium product out. But, you know, you have to kind of put those put those factors in. Now, if you have excessive waste, dialing that in is really important. Where I'm looking at, I think I've said on here before where we planted stuff and I'm like, oh, it seems like, well, I made decisions. It seems like this year because we had had some additional waste and I wanted to cut back. So of course it's going to feel a little bit lighter than what it has previously. So I just have to trust that I made those decisions and those cutbacks based on, decisions that were based off of numbers and waste from the previous season on certain crops. So, yeah. So I feel I feel really good about, you know, about those things, but just it's a constant it's a constant tweak of having enough.

00:25:17 And dahlias are one to that. I see we have and peonies are another one that I'm seeing a lot of people that are growing a ton of peonies. And then are you able to, like, have a plan to move that product? but with dahlias, you know, you there is a little bit higher waste, I think, with them. One, if you're selling tubers. Right. There's a tuber sale piece. You need to have enough. You grow certain varieties to be able to sell so you can have a good sale. So there's a lot of factors that go into that. And there could be you could just say, nope, I'm going to grow like I think Michelle Olsen grows 4 or 5 varieties only ball. She uses them mostly for mixed buckets. She uses a very small amount, very minimal effort into it. She doesn't sell them. And that to her is how she reduces the amount of waste that she has with dahlias. and that's one area that I think you can get can be very tricky if you think you want to get into the sales of them.

00:26:12 But if you really look at like, what are you making with the volume? You know, I think you have an opportunity to kind of cut that down and, and really maximize. So. But yeah, the last man, the I, I said this to you this morning, but I was like, I have to jump in the insiders because I have not been in there for the last few days because of recovering from Mother's Day. But there's been a lot of good conversation over there. People asking a lot of timely questions on as Mother's Day was rolling out, which was cool to see that people were helping each other and display questions and this and that. So that was really cool. So, yeah, you know, in our Marigold Minute where we share a win, April in the insiders group, she was sharing with everybody a post the other day, just saying how well Mother's Day went. And she's a chronic over stuffer, which kind of led to like, low profitability and previous Mother's Day.

00:27:02 And this year she stuck to the recipe, which is important. And she had her first profitable Bowl Mother's Day and made some money, which is so good. And I feel like when you get to see that difference, you're like, it just fuels you to keep looking at your business in a different way because over stuffing is easy. If I don't have a recipe, I overstuff every time. So, so good job April. That's awesome. Yeah. what else? We got Friday's episode. We got, time to quit your. Or taking the leap. Calculating the leap. Yes. Are you ready to quit your 9 to 5? Are you dreaming about quitting your 9 to 5 job? Is it a dream? Maybe you're not a dream that you think of. But we. It's a it's another question that we get often where, like, how do I know I'm ready to quit? What do I need to know? So we, on Friday are really going through and talking about how did we make that decision, what were the things that Shannon and I did personally.

00:28:08 our stories were similar, but different because I was single with no kids and, you know, you had a family, and it's still we still managed to sort of do it at the same time we talked to you about, you know, the urgency and the feel like you want to do it now, our financial situations, all those things. And so we talk about that all on Friday and then this week as an extra for the insiders, I'm doing a tour of the inside of my flower stand. So I'm talking about the process with my flower stand, how I run it. Just some some feedback on, how the flow is with my customers, how I run the consignment piece of it. So just giving you a little bit more behind the scenes. So that's what we've got on the on the agenda for post Mother's Day pick and peonies. Your peonies started yet. No not yet. We're probably still at least a week out at least. Yeah. That's okay. Yeah. I don't want him too early.

00:29:07 I'm still. We're still doing ranunculus, so I know we start our spring subscription this week, so I'm trying to think I'm done. Mine's over. Oh. Oh, yeah. That's another thing. Next year, no subscription. I'm actually cutting my six week down to four next year. So I have a really hard time hitting the timing where we have enough early that it doesn't run into Mother's Day. So we're cutting it from a six week subscription to a four. That's how I'm going to navigate that. I mean, it's financially going to be less, you know, income coming in. But I just can't really have like 150 extra bouquets going out the door on Mother's Day. Yeah. For the CSA subscription. So we're that was one that was talking about a pace thing that we were talking about earlier. That was another way that I'm going to make some changes and definitely make that happen next year. So I know spring subscription for me is always the most stressful one I am. I am happy when spring subscription is done because everybody loves it.

00:30:07 It's typically one of our highest bought ones because you kind of it's like full of premium flowers, which I understand, but I ours always starts the week after Mother's Day. So it's like two weeks of ranunculus and basically two weeks of peonies. Last year, like we had peonies in three weeks because they were so early. It was just always it's always putting the puzzle pieces together to get it all figured out. But yeah, it's a good one. Well, hey, congratulations for making it through Mother's Day. Onward to the to week into the end of May. Into planting season. Yeah. So we'll, appreciate you guys hanging with us, and we'll see you in a couple of days on Friday.