Farm Update: Sandy Shoes and Fall Days

Fall is always my favorite season. 

Well...okay, I lied… a touch. Really, as a kid growing up in San Jose, I wasn’t a fan and didn’t care about seasons changing;  other than when summer vacation was just around the corner. I didn’t get what the big deal was with seasons changing. I was still going to wear my flip flops, my toes would just be colder in fall and winter.  I would still wear my hoodie in the summer, I might just sweat a little more in July. As a kid, fall just meant messy trees and raking leaves. I was a lazy child and it took a lot of prodding to get me to go out to our tiny front yard and rake leaves. It was amazing when we finally moved to a new house that only had pine and redwood trees that didn’t leave any messy fall cleanup!

Yeah... no one saw my life career being something that required physical labor... not even myself! 

Now fall is my favorite season.  Fall started becoming a favorite as Graham and I had adventures while dating years ago. Our first fall dating: as the leaves fell so did we… for each other. Okay, I totally just put that in there to make Graham blush and to see if he ever actually reads my rantings!! 

Truly, fall is the season where the past meets the present and opens the potential for the future. This is why it’s the Farmer’s New Year. I say that’s pretty powerful and creates the set up of what we have been up to.

During the summer months, it’s a mad dash to harvest, assemble, deliver. At night: pull weeds, pick off shield bugs and repeat. It’s a lot of fast unhealthy food and long days. Summer days don’t even seem long enough as you could often see us at 11pm with headlamps!

With some exceptionally cold fall temperatures, we have finally been driven indoors. The chill even ten minutes after sunset makes it dangerous and miserable to work in: not worth it (which I learned the hard way dividing dahlias).  Those unusually frigid days were enough to wipe out our crop and have us nail biting a bit.  Is it going to be an early winter?  Is it going to be a rough one again?  Is it even worth fall planting ranunculus?  How are we going to possibly lift and store all these dahlia tubers?

Ugh… it is tiring having a glimpse into our heads and the thoughts that goes on.  The one thing that this journey in flower farming has taught us time and time again is to not slip down the slope of doubt.  The weather will be what it will be.  Winter is needed, whether it comes good or bad.  We will do everything we possibly can.  Flowers will grow.  We move forward, keep our heads down and work hard.  

Graham and I tackled getting as many dahlias as we could lifted and divided before taking some family time.  Ideally, we would have lifted all the dahlias before leaving on our journey but as always we work within the confines of what we are given.  Hopefully, the weather would hold out with only getting 85% of the tubers out of the ground, and about 25% of those actually divided.  The rest were tucked into totes with peat moss and placed into the garage.  The forecasted weather was good, the handful left in the gound should be fine- right?

We decided to go to Florence, Oregon.  To spend time with family and simply because if there was any other place in this world, other than our beautiful valley, we would live: Oregon would be it. We only had a few days there.  Somehow in getting everything ready in the field and the house to be able to even leave town, once on the road the days that seemed too many to this flower farmer quickly became too little.  We had plans, goals, ideas.  It was great leaving the flowers behind for a few days, kind of.  Orders still had to be made for next season and I was chatting to brides while on the road.  Still, it gave my finger a little time to heal after slicing it while tuber dividing; have I mentioned how Graham keeps threatening to take away my rights to using a razor knife? It’s alright, I quickly learned not to work once the sun sets behind Job’s Peak, once that sunshine leaves my skin my hands become to frigged to work my tools. Also, I am accident prone but we all know that!

We decided on four main adventures to conquer while in Oregon: find a whimsical pumpkin patch, go agate hunting, play on some sand dunes and drink as much coffee as possible from our favorite little coffee house.  

Agate hunting was first on the list.  We drove about forty minutes on a windy section of the 101 up the coast and found the cutest little beach town.  Now, it was sunny and warm in Florence.  Somehow, even though we know volatile weather (hello, we live in Nevada!) we were ill prepared. where it was perfect in Florence, It was rainy, cold and windy up the coast.  At the end, we ended up with rain drenched hair and soggy feet.  Nothing a warm bowl of clam chowder couldn’t fix, which was a delicious remedy.

Next on the list, the Sand Dunes.  I’m pretty sure my legs are still mad at me after that one, if you want a workout, go hike up some giant dunes!  To continue with our ill preparedness… perfect weather on the inland side of the dunes.  The ocean side… frigid!  The girls had a blast “skiing” down the dunes, rolling down them and sliding on their butts! Dunes for as far as the eye can see and watching the grains move with the wind was gorgeous.  Bonus!  This was one of Graham’s more favorite memories as a kid and he got to relive that with his girls.  It was all fun and games until that night when all that running up dunes caught up with them!  Anyone who knows Janey knows that girl can’t handle any kind of discomfort.  Cramping calves and sore thighs made for a miserable Janey and in need of some mommy snuggling time!

After the Dunes we went to the cutest part of the town down by the river to snag some hot beverages and take sunset photos of the bridge.  Well, good thing we had already hit up that coffee place more times than I am willing to admit but that time it was CLOSED!  Boo!  So we stayed cold.  While the girls huddled with their Grandma, Graham and I walked all down in the low tide muck under the bridge, setting up for sunset photos.  Folks, this is about as close to romantic we get!  Sinking mud, sunset and photography equipment as our kids whine about being cold and hungry in the background.  It was one of those moments where we just took it all in, muck and all, it was a special moment.

I am not quite sure but for some reason we thought Southern/Coastal Oregon would have a heck of a lot more pumpkin patches.  Well, they don’t.  The closest one we could find was about an hour and half away.  This was going to become an all day event and not a quick side adventure!  While being in Oregon the weekend before Halloween, there was no way we were going to have time to have this fall experience back in the valley.  We have already failed in making it to Apple Hill (mmhh…apple donuts).  All we have been doing during October is hustling and our girls wanted a fall day.  Heck, I wanted a fall day.  A pumpkin picking, apple cider drinking, wearing a cute scarf fall day. 

The drive was gorgeous!  As the pine trees and sand dunes opened to bridges and bays we went up a hill that wound back down into a hidden valley.  A giant calm river carved out by salt water, open pastures of cows hanging out on the river bank and specklings of gorgeous farms. we kept winding back into the hills, until we came to what felt like one of the best little corners on earth!

We drove off the main road, following a curving driveway that opened up to a valley of pumpkins, fields of corn stocks and barns. Almost like a Hallmark movie, complete with the river flowing gently in the background.  We had found our whimsical pumpkin patch!  Really, based off online reviews we thought it’d go a totally different way!  Corn cannons, hot apple cider, one of the best americanos of my life (for $2!) and they had fresh apple donuts!  Fall dreams really do come true.  We had a blast picking out way too many pumpkins (hello pumpkin soup… because Whole30), letting the girls lead us out of the corn maze and taking in the delightfulness, all the while making too many trips to the snack bar.  It was the family fun day we all needed.

And what was the name of this hidden treasure you may be wondering? Mahaffy Ranch and I highly recommend it!

Once back home, it was beyond cold! We came home in the cloak of night and lo and behold the nighttime temperatures of 4 degrees, fahrenheit! Madness! The good news is, the remaining dahlia tubers in the field are totally fine. Yay! They didn’t freeze! What a close call. That’s what we get for taking a little vacation.

Now, we are nearing the finish line with fall clean up and have even found time to start filming YouTube videos again (we are like crazy magicians or something…”or something” is more like it).  The tulips, fancy daffodils and other spring bulbs will be tucked into the ground this weekend.  We’ll be filming how we do that, yay videos! Ranunculus corms are pre-sprouting in the cooler (I still owe a blog and video on that one, coming soon- I promise, meanwhile you can watch us wake up those corms by plumping them up!). The sweet peas are germinating and for once we are kind of on time-ish!  Sure, most seeds we’re going to direct sow at this point but you know what?!  We’re going to have beds ready to even be able to do that!

The last few days I have been spending way too much time on the computer, placing seed orders, finalizing details of all our awesome holiday offerings and pulling wedding proposals together (summer 2020 is going to be gorgeous and busy!).  I am excited to be getting back to blogging and my goal is to get them out more consistently. Graham has given me homework to bust out one of these awesome updates once a week… we’ll see how much I have my life together to pull that one off haha!

Keep your eyes peeled, we’ve been working on creating a video all about how we lift, divide and store dahlia tubers.  It’s a big undertaking but with such an amazing, worthwhile crop we are excited to share how to do all that with you!  There can never be too many dahlias in this world!  Before that gem, we will be launching an update video to catch you up to speed on all the ups and downs of the 2019 season (if you read the blog I wrote about that one you are a trooper!).

Well, back to dahlia dividing!

We are looking forward to handing you blooms soon!

- Jessica