July is a month of vibrant colors and blooming flowers. It's the time when nature showcases its beauty, and people want to bring that beauty into their homes. So it's not the most ideal time for a flower farmer to go on vacation. Yet somehow my month was filled with both flowers and festivities. I'm one lucky lady.
The beginning of the month was dedicated to the robust summer weeds and planting new crops of zinnias, sunflowers, cosmos, and celosia. These will turn into our Fall flowers, so many deep reds, burgundys, oranges, and yellows.
In the middle of July, I hit the road with my highschool girlfriends and we retreated to the mountains of North Carolinas for a few days. We ate so m uch good food, played games, reminisced about our adventures as teens, and went tubing in the New River where I had the best PB&J of my life and also got a leech. Traumatic but I survived lol.
The end of July is always reserved for serving at my church's youth ministry conference. Three days of worship, incredible sermons, and building community with each other in the name of Jesus. This is the highlight of my summer and I would pause any flower activity to be a part of it. Cannot wait for next year!
Farmer's Market Madness
The farmer's market that we attend is located less than 2 miles from our farm so finding the freshest and most diverse selection of flowers in July is easy when you swing by The Market at Magnolia Green. The demand for flowers this month was high, so we encouraged our flower friends to hit the market early. And y'all, we sold out each time by 10am or 11am at both of our July markets. It was so wild to have a line at our booth!! Like I can't wrap my head around it. We're so thankful for the support form our super local customers. We'll be back every saturday starting August 19th through September 30th. 7 weeks of markets with the very best of what's blooming!
So what was blooming in July?
ALL. THE. ZINNIAS.
And also all the weeds.
The warm weather, longer days, and abundant sunshine create the perfect conditions for flowers to bloom and for weeds to explode. We have been working around the clock to suppress weeds and finding very quickly that this is an unending job. Maybe one day our farm will be weed free, maybe that's a fairytale. Either way, we're still plucking, and chopping, and mowing, and covering with cardboard, and mulching.
Because we've been battling heavy weeds, we've invested in blooms from our dear friends at Red Handle Farm. Bridget, who owns this multi generational farm, has been a real lifeline in this tough and slow growing season. She offers us the best, most beautiful, long lasting blooms. We're super thankful for her partnership as we supplement our bouquets with some of her stems.
Bonus Blooms - DIY Bouquet Bar
July flowers are a wonderful way to celebrate the beauty of nature and bring joy to someone's day. One of my favorite moments of July was partnering with my flower besties, Lauren of Patterson's Backyard Farm and Tracy of Yellow Finch Farm. We put together the cutest Bouquet Bar and had such a great turnout. People came from all over town to create their own bouquets with a huge selection of all of our flowers. Zinnias, sunflowers, lisianthus, celosia, leek blossoms, herbs, fluffy grasses. It was the most fun ever!! I think my favorite part was watching our guests get excited about creating. Everyone carefully picked out their blooms and arranged them in such a loving way. It was darling and made me want to host a million more bouquet bars.
Here comes August...
As I'm writing this July recap, it's already August 7th and this month has proven to be one for the books. Looking forward to reflecting at the end of the month and counting all our blessings. All the glory belongs to God.