farming flowers

This evening I am supposed to write up a few paragraphs about the flowers I am growing here at Red Fire Farm. Each month an e-mail goes out to the CSA members, giving them updates on the crops and crew. These flower related paragraphs I intend to write are destined for tomorrow's e-mail. The intention, said one way, is to inspire people about the beauty and value of organic cut flowers. Said another way, the intention is to sell stuff.

I am not so into selling. The exchange of money is not so inspiring to me. In fact, there is something yucky feeling about it. But I AM terribly into flowers. bnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn (whitesockz, one of the most awesome cats in the world, just wrote that bit. i thought i'd give him an internet voice and leave it in).

I kind of wish that I didn't have a job. I kind of wish I lived on some beautiful land by a river and I grew all my own food and made art and sang out loud and had beautiful friends and love and animals and plants around me and I wish that traveling was free and inspiration and adventure plentiful and that my life did not in the least little bit require the exploitation of others.

Absent that reality, and lets be realistic, that reality is distinctly absent, I've got a pretty good gig going. I live on some land by a beautiful creek and I help grow and eat delicious vegetables and I make a little bit of art and I sing loud every day and I have beautiful friends and love and animals and plants around me and I get to travel some and I feel like I minimize the degree to which my life relies on the exploitation of others.

I make $ cuz I don't know how to exist without doing so. Maybe someday I'll figure out how to exist without it, but for now, I got to use money. Considering that reality, making a living by growing organic flowers is awesome to me. Awesome. It is holy and beautiful and lovely and fun and requires minimal exploitaiton of others and I like it.

Flowers are the sex organs of plants. Their purpose is to perpetuate life. Life. Growing. Flowers. Roots and leaves and FLOWERS. Soil and minerals and water and Sun. Dead plants and animals break down and become the rich and fertile food of the flowers that I grow for the purpose of selling them to make a living for myself. I like it.

Here are a few of the things I like most about growing flowers:

Zooming in on the dirt, a bug, a plant, a row, a bed, a field
And then zoooooming back Out to the bigger world
Being down in the dirt
Folk technology
Getting strong through my work
Listening to books and music while crouching in the dirt
Moving
Changing
SINGING OUTSIDE
The stages of life that you see in once season
Focusing on life
Growing growing growing
Mysteries of how got from point A to point B
Using water and life and soil and seeds to make things
Seeds!
Feels like a local answer to a global problem
because it is a material product that does not come directly out of an exploitive, toxic system
and because it is a material product that comes out of a more accountable system than most material products available
and because its’ manufacture was based in an intention to encourage life and diversity
diversity
germination
This is a weigh station on the way to a new world order

why do i always feel the need to justify my life to my life

Here are some of the names I brainstormed three springs ago when I was trying to name the flower business that I created in Chelan, WA:

Bee Candy Flowers

Dirt and Water’s Babies

Hua Flowers

Sophie Flowers

Lyla Flowers

White Sock Flowers

Pomo’s Flowers

Pomo’s Cut Flowers

White Socks’ Cut Flowers

Desert Blooms

High Desert Blooms

Purgatory

Plant Genitals

Plant Sex Organs

Plant Breeders

Sunshine Angiosperm

Hua Angio

Future Fruit

Sunshine Seed Factory

Shalom Cut Flowers

Shalom Blooms

Peace Blooms

White Socks’ Blooms

JLB flowers

Sandy soil blooms

Steep Slope Flowers

Lakeside Flowers

Snake Blooms

Sunshine Stems

Local Answer Flowers

Revolution Stems

Living Stems

Color Stems

Diversity Stems

Art Stems

Living Revolution

New World Order Flowers

Uprising Flowers

Rising Flowers

Chaiim Stems

Peace Stems

Nature Stems

Peaceful Revolution Stems

Harmony Stems

Amity Stems

One Love Stems

The way I have tended to see the fact that I make my living selling flowers is that the shopping population at large is looking to buy products. They will spend their disposable income on objects that make them happy or beautiful or wealthy or comfortable no matter what non-consumerist bandwagon I am on. And so, why not provide them with a product that is relatively healthy to produce? Conventionally grown cut flowers are bad to buy because they and the poorly paid labor that grows them are dowsed in dangerous chemicals. Clothes from target are bad to buy because they are made in sweat shops and create a lot of waste.

blah blah blah. actually i wrote all that last week and didn't post it. they didn't end up even asking me for soemthing about flowers to put in the e-mail.

i kind of want to have a farm called "sophie's farm" or "sophie siller farm"