Winter Farm Chores and Off-Season Tips for Flower Farmers
Spending the winter months wisely can help your flower farm run more efficently.
In some parts of the country, winter is a time for snow and icy temperatures.
Blankets of snow on farm fields and tunnels can be dazzling, but it also means days have shortened and flowers have disappeared until springtime for so many of us.
Winter brings a nice change of pace for flower farmers and for wedding designers alike. The mad rush of fall plantings and all the activity of the autumn wedding season has passed. For many people, it is a time to slow down.
However, spending the winter months wisely can help to make the busy seasons more efficient and run more smoothly.
As a flower farmer, there are a few simple things in the winter that you can do to make it easier once the busy season is off and running.
Creating planting schemes, organizing, simplifying repetitive processes, and updating your website are just a few tasks that will help make life easier and prepare you for your busiest months!
Work Out Your Flower Planting Schemes
Before the local flower season has you in overdrive, take time in the winter to draw up a planting scheme for the upcoming season.
Even a rough plan can be helpful and can save you the frustration of having empty beds or not having enough flowers when you need them.
To get started, it can help to look back at previous seasons and ask yourself a few questions when drawing up your plan:
What are my main goals for the year?
What flowers do I want to grow this year?
Are there any poor performers I want to take out of my growing plans?
How much of each flower will I need?
Do I want to sell throughout the entire season, or do I want to take part of the season off?
What do I want blooming in spring, summer, and fall?
For bouquets, what fillers and focal flowers do I need?
What mistakes did I make last year, and how can I improve on those plantings?
When do I need to seed or order plugs to ensure I have seedlings ready for planting?
If you have not drawn out a planting scheme in the past, winter is a great time to start. There are various ways you can schedule and map out your successions.
“Keep your plan in a folder or binder that is easy to access throughout the season.”
Some flower growers may prefer a rough plan, while others may want a more detailed one. The most important thing is to develop a useful plan that works for you and can serve as a reference throughout the year.
One way to start developing your plan is to draw a rough map of your farm and label your rows. Determine your first plantings, as well as the successions you would like to see throughout the season.
Use the map to label the successions you would like in each row. It's essential to ensure the dates align for each crop to ensure your successions work within a realistic time frame.
Develop a rough calendar of ideal seed-sowing and planting dates, so plants and seedlings are ready when you need them.
Lastly, keep your plan in a folder or binder that is easy to access throughout the season.
Always be flexible with your flower growing and harvesting plan.
Keep in mind that weather, insects, disease, even the market may require you to modify your plan.
So be flexible with your schedule during the growing season, always be willing to change things as needed, and use common sense.
Following the plan word for word is not essential—the main goal is to have a successful season.
So don't worry if you miss something or need to change something. The plan is prepared to assist you. Use it as a guide, amend it as needed, and learn from your mistakes.
Although you can't foresee all the challenges a season may bring, your crop plan can really help you stay on track. It can help avoid empty rows, prevent the costly inefficiencies that can come with poor planning, and assist in clarifying your goals.
Even if you need to change things as the season progresses, it offers a solid starting point and can serve as an essential reference throughout the year.
Organize Your Tools
Winter is a great time for organizing your workspace, studio, or farm. It’s an excellent time to take stock of important tools and make sure they’re close at hand when you need them.
Whether you’re reorganizing drawers and closets or changing the location of tool and supply sheds, this is the time to make sure the supplies you use most frequently are always on hand and that you can easily access everything you need.
Once again, it is helpful to think back over the previous season and ask yourself some questions about improving your flower growing organization.
Was there a tool or item that you were always searching for?
What tools or supplies do you use most often?
Where do you use those tools and supplies?
What items are used infrequently or only seasonally?
What supplies are used together frequently?
Do you have enough shelving, hooks, and drawers for an organized workspace?
Answering some of those questions can help to improve your organization habits.
Take a good look at your everyday work needs and how your supplies and tools relate to those needs to determine how to make improvements. Make sure the most frequently used items are close to the workspace where you commonly use them and are easy to access.
“Farmer-florists can really benefit by grouping the farm tools and floristry supplies separately when possible. ”
On a farm, a shed near the field or hoop house with frequently used tools and supplies can do wonders in saving time during the busy growing season. Meanwhile, infrequently used items and seasonally used supplies, like frost blankets, can be kept out of the way by storing them in a location away from your everyday work areas.
The placement of sheds and storage is essential on a farm, but their organization is equally important. Reorganizing your shed or studio to ensure the most necessary items are easy to access can be a real time saver.
Hooks, bins, and hangers of different types help organize a shed or workspace so items can be reached easily. Keep the most frequently used items within reach and store infrequently used items on higher shelves, on the far side of the shed, and out of the way.
You want to be able to pick up your shovel or snips without having to dig through a mess of other tools!
Getting organized can be fun! Go shopping for shelves, hooks, baskets, and more to make your space more functional.
Large tools often require different strategies than small tools and supplies to keep them organized.
Bulky tools can be hung up on the wall using large hooks and wall organizers for easy access.
It’s useful to have drawers or compartmentalized containers for small supplies that you store in bulk. You can also store small items on shelves using multiple bins or containers to organize them.
Often while organizing, it makes sense to group certain items together, while other times, it is beneficial to separate them.
For example, it is often helpful to group supplies frequently used together, near each other to save time.
Farmer-florists tend to have a huge range of supplies and tools. They can really benefit by grouping the farm tools and floristry supplies separately when possible.
On the other hand, sometimes on a flower farm, supplies like flower buckets or rubber bands are needed on different parts of the farm. It can save time to store those in multiple locations where they are used most frequently.
Although organizing your farm, shed or workspace may not be your favorite job, time spent searching for the things you need can add up over the season. Spending some time now on improving your organization will pay off once the season begins and help make the summer's fast pace run more smoothly.
Simplify Repetitive Processes
Farming, like most businesses, often involves many repetitive processes. Seeding, making bouquets, even sending emails are tasks that are done repeatedly throughout the season.
Spending time simplifying these tasks in the winter can allow you to perform them more quickly and frees up time to work on other things.
Bouquet-making and seeding are two repetitive tasks that can be simplified by creating good workstations. Redesigning your workspace for a more efficient workflow can cut significant time for daily operations.
Setting up a designated bouquet workstation with long tables, a cutter, waste bins, and paper rolls can allow you to make bouquets more quickly. Designing the workstation to have an organized workflow is vital.
Think about the way you typically put a bouquet together and set up your workstation accordingly. Whether you put all the bouquets together yourself or have a team that puts them together, simplifying the bouquet process can significantly reduce this work time.
Seeding is another common farm task that is performed all season long. Workstations with soil bins, trays, and cleaning supplies help save a lot of time when seeding thousands of seeds.
“When workstations are prepped and ready to go, it can save a lot of time when working through repetitive tasks. ”
Large containers or holding areas for different soil mixes near seeding tables are helpful to ensure you have those supplies when you need them.
And make sure your seeding station has access to water, either with a hose or an outdoor sink.
Again, organize trays and other supplies in an orderly workflow so everything is close at hand. When workstations are prepped and ready to go, it can save a lot of time when working through these tasks.
Not all repetitive tasks on a farm are outdoors. For some flower farmers during the busy season, emails can become overwhelming. Creating templated email responses for common client questions or inquiries can make it quick and easy to respond to emails during the summer when emails are the last thing you have time for. It can help to prevent you from getting bogged down in emails.
“Creating templated email responses for common client questions or inquiries can make it quick and easy to respond to emails.”
Think about the most common emails you receive during the year and create templated responses for those emails. If you design for weddings, there can be a lot of back-and-forth emailing. To minimize your time spent on emails, generate rough responses that can be modified to suit clients for more open inquiries.
Organize your templated responses by category and logically order them, so they are easy to find when you need them.
By reducing the time spent on some of your most common activities, you can help to increase efficiency and simplify repetitive parts of your business.
And by speeding up those processes, you can either choose to expand those parts of your business, devote more time to other aspects of your business or perhaps sit back and enjoy a little more free time.
using winter months to update information and check links is a good habit to implement.
Refresh Your Website
If you have a website, spend some time updating outdated information, adding new photos, and adding new content.
As your business grows and changes, it's important to keep your website updated with the latest information.
Your website is the only place prospective customers who don't follow you on social media can learn about you.
You want to make sure it represents you and your business. Your website is your digital storefront!
Start with the basics by checking to ensure your contact information and product and service information are correct.
Next, try to look it over with fresh eyes to see if there is anything important you are missing.
Are you changing something within your business or starting something new that should be added to your website?
Are all the products and services you offer communicated clearly?
Is the story of your business and how you can serve those visiting your website clearly communicated?
Do you have a floral portfolio, and if so, do you have plenty of photographs?
Do you have a store, and would it make sense to add one if you don't?
How can you work to keep customers returning to your website?
Answering some of these questions may help you discover where you can make improvements.
Also, have a few of your friends look your website over to see if they have any suggestions. Ask for honest, constructive feedback. A second set of eyes is always helpful in catching mistakes or offering a new perspective.
One of the simplest things you can do to start is to add new photos of your flowers from the past season and update your online portfolio if you have one. This will keep your online image looking fresh going into the new season. People love looking at flower photographs, so make sure to share plenty of yours!
Websites are great advertising, but they should also encourage customers to come back and visit them. Consider adding a blog or a "What's New" section to your website to keep customers engaged with your business online.
If you have a store, keep it fresh with new photos and new products. Give potential customers a reason to visit your website frequently.
After you have updated your site, make sure to check for broken links or any potential technical problems, both on a mobile phone and a desktop, to ensure it is running smoothly. This is critical! The last thing you want to do is begin the season with a beautiful, updated website that isn't working.
Lastly, mention on social media that your website has been updated to encourage your followers to browse the updates. If you have an online shop, try to coincide the updates with a new offering in your store.
As good as a website may be, there is always room for improvement. You don't want to give your website a full makeover each year because it's important to establish online continuity for your business.
However, spending some time in the winter updating and keeping your website fresh is a great way to keep your business looking current for the upcoming season.
Lastly, If you don't have a website, this is the perfect time to start one! Even a simple informative website is better than not having one at all. Designing websites can be a lot of fun, so enjoy the winter, grab some coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, and jump online.
The flowers may be few in the winter, but inspiration is always right around the corner.
Get Creative, Find Inspiration, and Relax
The slower pace of winter frees your mind up to really get creative.
Spend time seeking out sources of inspiration. It's a great time to exercise your creative mind and your creative spirit!
Read trade publications
Take a hike and enjoy nature
Spend some down time with other farmers or florists
Visit an art museum, conservatory, garden, or farm
Attend floral events and trade shows
Take a class related to your field
Travel
Experiment with new design work
Start a Design Journal
Letting your mind explore during this downtime can lead to new ideas, new perspectives, and collaborations. This is a great time to flex your creative muscles, so seek out whatever may inspire you and have fun with it!
Last but certainly not least, find time to relax. Much of the year can be so fast-paced, whether you are a flower farmer, wedding florist, or both. Burnout can be a real problem in either field.
Everyone needs a break, so take time to relax and take it easy. Read a book, take yoga classes, go to the spa, hang out with your family and friends, lay on a beach, spend time doing whatever relaxes you. Take plenty of time to unwind, decompress, and slow down.
Enjoy the leisurely pace of winter because before you know it, the spring flowers will be popping, and the perpetual flurry of blooms and weddings will start up once again. With a little winter preparation and some well-deserved relaxation, you will be refreshed and be ready to go wherever the next season takes you!
Photography Credit: LC Pierpont and Morgan Haley
