I know, I know, its been cold. You can tell it is extra frigid when you wake up and George is still here for breakfast. He likes his own space, wherever that might be if he can help it. Good news though- the Kentucky Flower Market (KFM) is opening in less than a month and that warms our hearts more than you know. Hopefully you can feel a little bit of that toasty love for yourselves out there in your corner of the matrix! I promise, I am sending it to you.

In case you are not familiar, the Kentucky Flower Market is a collective of over twenty farms in Kentucky (or close) to it who sell flowers to florists and designers or through the retail space in Frankfort. Do not ask me how I found out about it. Probably through some Instagram scroll or something. What I do know is we were so excited when we were accepted to the team and now, here we are going into our second year. If you are ever in Frankfort on a day when the shop is open to the public, it is a MUST SEE! Each week is magical and different as the seasons within the season ebb and flow, and you get to see firsthand exactly what can be grown in our beautiful state throughout the year.

How it works, is that we, as farmers, upload whatever blooms we have for the week to sell with a description and photo example. Then, the online store opens and customers (designers and florists) buy what they need for delivery or pickup to make more beauty with! We take everything to the shop where it is divvied up and sent off to be transformed into their creations. If we want, we can bring other flowers to put in the retail space- either mixed bouquets or straight bunches (a bunch of one type of flower) for walk-in customers to purchase. If you are having an event and want to make your own arrangements, you can purchase your own flowers directly from the showroom floor.

The annual grower meeting happened to be this week in Frankfort, so we stopped at Locals for a pizza and some locally grown greens for us and a friend who lives pretty close to us. Someone recommended the Hot Brown pizza, which we would never have picked for ourselves. It was the best pizza we ever ate from there. We bought a bag of mixed greens and baby chard for ourselves. I hope we can get our chard to whatever level we got from Locals, because it took me back to childhood when my grandparents in Cleveland would grow and prepare it.

Anyhow, the meeting at the Kentucky Flower Market left us feeling so inspired. We got to hang out in a room of the greats! I felt extremely strawflower struck meeting so many growers in person for the first time, putting names to faces, having followed them online or from seeing their flowers at the shop over the last year. We met a few folks last year at the meeting and only really had a chance to meet one farm, a mom and daughter team who made us feel so welcome as the “new kids” (Hazelfield Farm!!). On top of it all, the importance of community kept coming up over and over through the evening. Our turn onto this road of our life journey could not have been timed better. We are so proud to be a part of this collective!

Our first low tunnel is up and warming a row of soil! As an experiment, we tucked a covered tray of sweetpeas and larkspur underneath for this latest cold snap and as of this week, the little pea sprouts still looked great. No larkspur yet, but the seed was pretty old so we will see if we get any germination.

Otherwise, the week has been full of soap-wrapping and creating some new products for our upcoming market in March that we are participating in at Blue Stallion Brewery. I cut up a fresh, old pair of jeans to fashion into some new catnip kickers. Of course, the kitties got to try a new design out and they seem to really enjoy it. Perriee and I plan to expand our catnip line this season, so keep an eye out. It seemed to really do well last year between our dried catnip flower and kicker collection.

Seed starting of the week: a variety of herb seeds were put into one 128 tray: chamomile, thyme, sage, bergamont, fennel, parsley, and some others…

A new tray of celosia and strawflower was sown. We used celosia seeds from two huge dried coxcomb flowers we saved and sowed the rest of a pack of strawflower seeds since it sounds like they are a collective hit!

Seedling watch of the week:

The first tray of celosia sprouted! Calendula is looking mighty fine!

Important Upcoming Dates:

February 28: This is a day to support all local businesses. Give the other big box stores a break. Need some milk? Go to Ronnie’s, ETC, or Locals. We will be at the Black Farmer Conference in Louisville! Anyone else?

March 3: Monthly subscriber giveaway! I can’t wait to see who is next.

March 8: Maplefest at Turtleback Ridge. Their first day back open for the season is upon us.

March 12: Volunteer day: move some compost, map out new garden beds, pollinator patch prep, cut honeysuckle, volleyball court prep?

March 15: Volunteer day: move some compost, map out new garden beds, pollinator patch prep, cut honeysuckle, volleyball court prep?

March 19: First open to public day at the Kentucky Flower Market for the season!

March 22: Find us at Blue Stallion Brewery 12-6 for Blue Stallion & Hollow Haven Bazaar Equinox & Ales! It is shaping up to be a really cool event!

April 19: 2^nd annual Earth Day at Loving Farm. We have a lineup of 3 bands: Violet and the Newsroom, Hogtown, and Highly Likely for a day of music, nature and friends. Save the date!

PS: We late addition, but we were invited on a hike yesterday (Sunday) and had the chance to check on the maple sap.