02/22/2025
3 days until our rebrand is launched and 2 days to enter the draw to win a custom dried flower bouquet! ๐ป
The rebranding process feels like a great time to reflect on the how and why we ended up where we are! Many of you may also be new here, so it's a nice opportunity to do a little introduction.
Hi! I'm Josephine, artistic generalist and full time farmer. My partner, Collin, and mom, Susan, are also on the farm and a big part of making this whole thing work, but you'll mostly hear from me as I do a large share of the growing and arranging work.
I started out farming in 2020 through the Apprenticeship Program with my farm mentors at near Grande Prairie, Alberta. They have a big market garden and a whole array of livestock. It was such a great opportunity to learn about all kinds of farming work and get experience with producing at scale, fixing all kinds of farm problems, and sticking it out through any conditions
I enjoyed it so much that in 2021 Collin and I sold the house in Edmonton and moved into a skidshack at the Homestead for a second year of growing that we called "Apprenticeship 2.0". Collin worked off farm, while I worked at the Homestead, but with some extra time and space in their garden to grow crops of my own. That turned out to be flowers! Since we were so busy doing other farm work during the growing season I decided to dry them and the rest is history! Here we are heading into season 5 and we are growing more dried flowers than ever ๐ต๏ธ๐ธ๐ฎ
They may have started out as a convenient, high value, storable crop, but I soon realized that dried flowers allowed me to have a creative outlet too! Coming from a background studying music at University and exploring a wide variety of pursuits such as writing, drawing, and fibre arts it was something I was missing while focusing on producing food alone. I would always make pretty bunches of kale and chard when prepping for the farmers market, so it was a small jump to arranging flowers.
Come back tomorrow for part 2 of the farming journey: moving home to Edmonton and finding a place of our own!