For over a year, Jess and Brian have been planning the trip of a lifetime for the kids. They wanted to take them all to Disney. Over the past 18 months, they’ve been planning every aspect and saving all their change so that their family could experience the most magical place on earth. On Tuesday, with a packed car, I (Steph) arrived at the farm to wish them off and help push the van out of the snowy driveway. 

So, here I am, flowersitting. If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I’m the sales and marketing person that knows literally nothing about flower farming. I mean, I know *some stuff*, but when it comes to making executive decisions, I’m the last person that anyone asks. Thank goodness for the tribe because even though their Grower and Chief isn’t here, they all seem to know exactly what to do. 

But, you know me, I have to make my rounds and check on things… even if I don’t know exactly what the heck I’m checking for. Each day, I do what I call a “nature walk” just to make sure everything appears to be as it should… whatever that means. Here’s a little recap of my weekly check-ups.

I always start in the FedEx House because first, I need to make sure it’s actually warm, and second, that’s where all of the flowers are! Everything was going great until I ran into Emma spraying Neptune’s Harvest fish emulsion. This stuff is a great fertilizer, but it SMELLS TERRIBLE. I would never make it in the seafood trade. 

As I make my way to the hoop houses, I check on Mackenzie’s Jeep that got stuck in the snow (it’s free now, check out our Reel on Instagram!). I’ve learned a lot about getting vehicles “unstuck” this year. 

In the hoop houses, I lift the frost blankets and check the crops in the crates. I have no idea what’s in here, if it should be growing, or if it needs something. But, it wasn’t on fire, drowning, or covered in snakes, so I called it good and moved on. 

In the tunnels, I’m mostly just checking to make sure there isn’t snow and that the heaters are all off. So far, so good! I made sure that the anemone in Tunnel 5 was still doing ok by lifting the frost blanket. The plants were green, so I’m also marking this one down as “looking good”. 

Finally, I stopped by the porta potty. It was frozen. If you’ve ever tried to pee in a frozen porta potty, you know what kind of trauma this can create. I don’t really know that there’s much of a fix here, so I warn the crew and we all just kinda stared at each other for a minute with a look of terror and disappointment.

Back at the shop, I take another look at the giant cliff of snow and ice that dangle over the doorway and give another go at cleaning it. Basically, I beat it with a stick until it falls. It’s a process, but it’s nearly gone now so things are feeling a lot safer. 

When Jess is here, I spend more time at my home office than I do at the farm, and hanging in the shop with the crew this week has been a really nice change of pace. We’re growing so fast that we’re constantly changing processes. This leads to a lot of questions and the team feels bad for the constant “hey Steph”s in the air. But I don’t mind. Our team is full of really smart people, so when they ask me lots of questions, it makes me feel needed. 

Even though I already miss Jess (not even 48 hours in), I’m glad that she was able to get away. We work so hard that finding moments for “me time” (much less a whole week) sometimes feels impossible. Whenever we get into that headspace, all we have to do is look around at the people beside us. I have no idea what we did in a previous life to deserve them, but they make my weeklong adventure as a flowersitter so much more fun, and far less scary. 

xoxo, STEPH