Time to catch up with the latter half of 2024, which let’s be honest, sort of feels like it bled over into 2025 a little bit, proving once and for all that time means nothing and you can turn the page any old day you want.

JULY

July seemed to be all sweet peas, all the time, with absolutely no complaint from me. The smell of the small patch of 1000 plants was incredible, and dusk became my favorite time on the farm as I trellised and tied and checked the blooms while the hummingbirds darted around protectively.

A couple of big infrastructure pieces were finished as well with the building of a walk in cooler shed and the construction of 5 new high tunnels secured through a grant from the National Resources Conservation Service (USDA) and the Farm Services Agency. After getting a few quotes from people to construct the shed, my sister and I just rolled our eyes and built it ourselves over the course of two days. It took a few more weeks to get all the insulation in and the roofing on, but it still came in well ahead of what someone else can do, and it’s not exactly rocket science so why not.

AUGUST

August brought us weddings, weddings, and more weddings! The dahlias came in, the sweet peas cranked out blooms, and I managed to find a couple of days to give the little barn a glow up in the direction of “design studio” and away from “place to store things that I don’t know what to do with.”

SEPTEMBER

September is the very best month on a flower farm. Hands down. Temperatures are perfect, the sunset does amazing things as we begin the dive to the winter solstice, all of the summer flowers are doing their level best and cranking out all of the little treasures you can’t get from an imports wholesaler. For us, it also meant the fledging and new independence of the great horned owl that was hatched and reared in a tree out back and the arrival of all of the Songbird Seed Co. packaging while the plants set seed and got serious about next season.

*One of dozens of elopement bouquets that went out this year. I love doing these and hope loads more people elope this year!*

Our friend would sit in the tree at the back of the neighbor’s property every night at dusk. I like to think it was just having its coffee and waking up before clocking in for the night shift as I was heading in to take my own rest.

OCTOBER

In addition to a whirlwind 2 day trip to New York City, October brought beautiful, antique palette weddings, and the completion of a whole bunch of projects on the farm in addition to the successful launch of our first Songbird Seed Co. sweet pea sale!

*Give me all the antique palettes please.*

*If you’re not going to take golden hour photos, do you even have a flower farm in the Skagit Valley?*

NOVEMBER

As the year began to wind itself down, there was time to focus on some of those projects that get pushed further down the list in the busier seasons. I could tell you of the kitchen backsplash, woodstove installation, and house garden, but they are only partially finished (with the exception of the woodstove and thank goodness, because it is a gamechanger), and everyone’s lives is made up of these graces. The repetitive tasks and projects that fill all of our lives are noteworthy not because of what they are, but because they are. And November brought a lot of them.

DECEMBER

My first wreath season kicked off after a last minute decision to invest in the right equipment and I’m both grateful to those of you who purchased them and looking forward to working out a way to make them more accessible to anyone who wants one next year. Because the orders that came in were from friends and customers who have become familiar to me, it was fun to design each one with its recipient in mind. No two were alike and each one was made with lots of good wishes for the person who ordered it. It felt so much more personal than the massive bulk ordering of the holiday commodity and I’d love to keep it that way as long as I can.

So that’s it. That’s the wrap up. I don’t know if there’s a tidy bow to put on this one. I always hope that when I write it all out, it will show a through line that I can follow and maybe an arc will appear with the lesson. I don’t know if this one had that.

I think Carl Jung said it best in a letter to a young woman in 1933 who asked his advice on how to live. Among other things, he said:

If you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other. If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and sure-footedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious. Then it is naturally no help at all to speculate about how you ought to live. And then you know, too, that you cannot know it, but quietly do the next and most necessary thing.

A Year in Re(ar)view - PART II