Happy Friday!
It's a rainy one today. Looks like we're in for a week or more of drippy droppy out here. We had a crazy busy week shipping out tons of orders. The first round of 200+ orders hellebore plants went out on Wednesday and most orders should be arriving today. We also got a very thoughtful IG nod from Floret about the poppy sale we had this week and it doubled our orders in an instant. We had to have 2 Fedex sprinter vans come out for the hellebores on Wednesday and another 2 vans to get all of the poppy orders on Thursday. It's a great problem to have to be stressed to keep up with orders. We really are in a fortunate position in so many ways. The first in the country to have flowers (due to our latitude), a very enthusiastic customer base, a great crew, and a great Fedex driver.
That last one might seem trivial, but we are incredibly dependent on Fedex being reliable and predictable in order to make sure our customers are happy. One bad driver could undermine all of that in no time. Fortunately we have the most considerate driver possible and he's part of the reason that our flowers get to your house only 16-18 hours after they leave our house. Cheers to our man Chad!
Speaking of which, USPS has become very unreliable for all of rural America this year, which is effecting how quickly our seed orders are shipping. We try to get your seed orders processed within a day or two, but find that they keep sitting in our mailbox uncollected by USPS lately. They skip our area on average of 2 days a week. Republicans and Democrats alike are incredibly frustrated with Louis Dejoy's dismantling of all rural u.s. postal routes, but no-one's been able to get rid of him. Layoff's are huge and rural workers that are actually being replaced are being replaced with contract drivers that don't know the routes and aren't accountable when they skip areas. Rural postal workers who have kept their jobs and do live by their routes that were traditionally run by rural post offices are now having to drive to major cities to get mail trucks, to drive back to rural areas to deliver, then drive back to cities to drop off trucks, then drive back to the same rural area to get home. In some areas that's upwards of 90 miles away and already at busy post offices, further impacting delays. We call this going around your ass to get to your elbow.
What's marketed as an efficiency effort by Dejoy has actually caused the worst delivery times in recent history and actually driven up costs of transport as well as eliminating countless jobs for rural communities. Doesn't matter which side of the aisle you are on. The last president put him in and the current one refused to remove him. We can all be pissed about this one. Kumbaya. Sign this petition if you feel inclined!
As you might've picked up by now, these newsletters are not super deliberate. Whatever falls out of my head ends up on this page, so sometimes it's about plant species, insects, market dynamics, or bocce ball. I never know in advance. This time it was frustration at the intentional erosion of basic services in a thinly veiled effort to justify it as dysfunctional, so that it can be dismantled and privatized in the coming years. Can't help it. Rural areas are getting stripped of more and more basic services and its bad for the country. Power imbalances and exploitation of resources, human or otherwise is always tugging at my heart and mind. It's not my role to talk about all of them, but this one directly affects the farm and our customers so I wanted to explain why seed orders are a bit slower and why it's being done for the wrong reasons.
Anywhooo, I guess the most positive way I can wrap up this unintended rant is to remind everyone, myself included, that if we find ourselves in a position of relative power (manager, employer, politician, hiring a service worker) to operate from a space of goodwill and compassion and to avoid the temptation to serve self at the expense of “other”.
Back to happy stuff! We are beyond ecstatic to have Wah Sha back working with us this Spring! Wah Sha is not only incredibly thoughtful, observant, and diligent, with a huge love for flowers, but she also has the most infectious and bubbly laugh imaginable and she's always laughing. It's the best. We missed her and are so happy she's home with us.
Re: farm announcements…..
- Last call for Hellebore Plant purchases! They go out next Wednesday, so you've got a few days left.
- Last call for March flower subscriptions! We've got a few left, but Monday's the deadline!
- Plant Sale is coming! Save the date 3/23/24 at 9am. You can check out the preview now and don't worry that it says sold out. Everything will say that until the sale goes live on the 23rd. Local pick up only on these items.
For you locals…the Farm Store isn't open yet, but we are supplying Comer Coffee Co with a bunch of open flowers this Saturday! We're giving them away as a big hug to everyone who comes to support our little town on Saturday morning. So go get a latte and a free bundle of happy flowers tomorrow morning!
This week's item to share is Good Taste Citrus Farm. It's next level citrus that we get shipped to the farm. There's nothing like it at the store. It's incredible. They just opened their Kumquat waitlist and we got 4 lbs for the crew for healthy delicious snacks. Check them out!
That's all from me. Maybe we'll see you at the coffee shop. Have a great weekend!
-Steve
