very lasts

Dear Readers,

This is my very last post on this blog. The next post will be on our new website, which Jascha will launch in early November, once we get over our perfectionism.

courtesy of XKCD http://xkcd.com/386/

Those of you who subscribe to this blog will be automatically added to our mailing list, which will send you an email when there’s a blog post on the new website. If you would like to be on the mailing list, which basically means getting pretty flower pictures in your inbox sometimes, email me at butterbeefarm@gmail.com!

This is also our last week of sales! It’s slim pickings (literally) at the farm. Next year, we’ll extend the season into November by planting more late season flowers, such as mums and dahlias. But from now until December, we’re in clean-up mode– pulling out spent plants, spreading compost and rye seed as a winter cover crop, cleaning out the shed, and taking inventory.

We’re also planning away for next year! We have two very exciting CSA offerings for next year: the Butterbee CSA, which is our bulk flower delivery for those who love to arrange their own flowers, and the Summer’s Story CSA:

I’m so excited about both CSA programs– the more people I get to meet/talk to/get flowers to, the better! You can get on an advance sign-up list for either CSA by emailing me at butterbeefarm@gmail.com. You can sign up online starting in November, and please remember that giving a CSA as a Christmas present is the best thing EVER! We even have little gift cards to give your gift recipient.

So, you’ll get the next blog update from the new website soon, stay tuned! I wish you all a very merry rainy cozy yellow orange day.

Laura Beth

Weddings!

Dear Readers,

Our flowers were in a lot of weddings this year! Check out just a few below…

design by locoflo

Design by the Modest Florist

Design by Mobtown Florals, Photography by AE Landes Photography

Design by Locoflo, Rachel Smith Photography

Design by Locoflo, Gillette Photography

Jean was awesome- she came to the farm to check out the flowers and loved all of them! Lisa Robin Photography

Guy and Meredith, two very good friends, and their dog Buddy at their wedding this weekend! Pangtography

Our good friends Christy and Connor got married, and put our celosia all over the reception tables!

Design by Locoflo, Brea Photography

 

Party Town

Dear Readers,

Apparently, flower farmers get the inside scoop on parties and celebrations in Baltimore. I’ve never had so much random knowledge about what celebration is happening where! For example, this weekend, we are providing some of the flowers for Little Gunpowder Farm’s owners, Christy and Connor, who are getting married on Saturday. And on Sunday, we’re donating flowers for the Maryland Farmers Market Association fundraising event.

We also brought flowers to some Baltimoreans who were hosting Rosh Hashanah dinners. Check out this beautiful arrangement of our flowers, by Ellen Spokes, who had a tablecloth that matched perfectly:

Last week, we provided bulk flowers to a couple for their wedding ceremony. They day before the wedding, we got a call from Artifact Coffee for some extra flowers. Turns out, Artifact needed the flowers for that same couple’s rehearsal dinner! Typical “Smalltimore.”

There are many things to love about growing flowers, but one of the most delightful of those things is bringing flowers to people who are celebrating. Sometimes, I get so caught up in the work of the business that I forget to partake in that joyfulness. Then I remember designer/florist Ellen Frost, who cries at pretty much every wedding flower set-up she’s at- and that’s a lot of weddings.

Anyway, here’s to participating in the celebrations of others, and passing it forward! I wish you all a lavender-mint-honey tea.

Laura Beth

September

Dear Readers,

One by one, we’re putting beds to sleep for the winter. September means a whole lot of pulling out plants, mowing what’s left, tilling that in, putting compost on top of it, and finally, spreading cover crop seed. Not my favorite job on the farm, but it’s made easier with company (thanks, Jascha!).

We’re still cranking out flowers, though. Yesterday was our last CSA delivery. I’m sad that it’s over… but you can get a sneak peak of our 2015 CSA here!

It’s wedding season, and my, are the florists busy! Crimson and Clover has been ordering cosmos flowers from us most weeks; Mobtown Florals is into our broom corn; the Modest Florist came out to the farm for a last minute mountain mint and basil pick-up yesterday; and Local Color Flowers was in a pinch last week, so I got to jump in and help make some bridal bouquets, which featured some of our flowers!

On the farm, the dahlias are starting to bloom, the mums are budding up, and the ruby silk grass is going crazy:

And the praying mantises are really, really big. Did you know that they can kill small birds!? (Watch out, Irene Donnelly)…

I wish you all a trip to the Waverly farmers market, where you will find a bounty of autumn flowers and food!

Laura Beth

mountain mint chocolate chip cookies, and some other treats

Dear Readers,

A lot of our stuff is edible, though sometimes I have no idea how to cook it. Carling, head designer at Locoflo, made some dianthus cookies with our flowers:

And Artifact Coffee has been using our herbs in lots of things, including dill flowers in drinks:

photo courtesy of Artifact Coffee

And I’ve seen our gomphrena adorn wedding cakes. Marigold, amaranth, dianthus, sage, basil, and yarrow are just a few of the other things we bring to those who like experimental cooking. My favorite tea is mountain mint, yarrow, and ginger, and a little bit of honey.

Carling was kind enough to share a few of her recipes! Thanks Carling!!

photo courtesy of Locoflo

Lavender Simple Syrup & Lemonade

20 stems fresh lavender, flowers or leaves (washed)

1 cup white sugar

1 cup water

While stirring, bring water and sugar up to high temperature, just until sugar melts. Once sugar is dissolved, place lavender in sugar water and let sit at least 1 hour. Lavender is a very potent herb, so don’t let it sit too long, otherwise you will have a very strong syrup. After sitting, strain lavender out of water. Store simple syrup in a jar in the fridge. Mix with water and fresh lemon juice for lavender lemonade. Or a splash of gin for a cocktail.

Fresh Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup fresh mint leaves (washed and dried)

1 cup butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup white sugar

2 tsp vanilla

12 ounce package (2 cups) semisweet or dark chocolate chips or chunks

In a food processor (or by hand), finely chop the fresh mint leaves until very small pieces. Set aside. In a large mixer bowl beat butter. Add brown sugar and white sugar. Beat until fluffily. Add eggs, vanilla, and fresh mint; beat well. Add pre sifted dried ingredients to the mixture, beating until well combined. Stir in chocolate by hand.

Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 325 F for 12-15 minutes. Let cool on drying rack. Then enjoy!

I hope you all have a delicious apple-mint-honey-lavender-marigold week!

Laura Beth

digger wasps to the rescue

Dear Readers,

We have wasps soaring all over the ground, hanging out in the dill, and wreaking general havoc. The good news: they are the best wasps ever! They’re called blue-winged wasps, commonly known as one of the many kinds of digger wasps. The female wasps dig deep into the ground, locate Japanese beetles (very very very bad beetles that considered our flowers to be very tasty this summer), and I’ll let Wikipedia take it from here: “The wasp stings the grub and frequently burrows farther down to construct a cell and lay an egg on the host. The larva pupates and overwinters inside the body of the host.”

Blue-winged wasps to the rescue! Also, check out this celosia gorgeousness:

I wish you all the first apple of the season!

Laura Beth

 

August Happenings

Dear Readers,

August at the farm!

There are two new ways you can get our flowers!

1) In celebration of the Jewish New Year, Butterbee Farm is offering a Rosh Hashanah special to those who are hosting dinners. We will bring enough loose flowers for three bouquets (about 40 stems). We will deliver your flowers directly to your door on the day before Rosh Hashanah, the 23rrd, or the morning of Rosh Hashanah, September 24th. Flowers, including delivery, are $35. Space is limited, so be sure to reserve your flowers soon by emailing us at butterbeefarm@gmail.com. Please pass the info along to any friends who are celebrating!

2) You can have a photoshoot (family, engagement, etc.) with our resident photographer, Stacy Bauer, at the farm! Email us (butterbeefarm@gmail.com) for more info.

photo courtesy of Stacy Bauer

Anyway, about the farm… we are scrambling to keep up with the weeds, especially morning glory. We’re also tilling in the spring beds, adding compost, and planting fall flowers like Benary’s Giant Lime zinnias and Versailles Cosmos, which are both pictured below:

And here’s the compost we’re using (from Chesapeake Compost Works), with the lovely Naomi standing triumphantly on top:

I recently discovered that saving calendula seed is very easy. We accidentally left a small patch of calendula until it withered and turned entirely brown. I’m glad we did, because check out all of the seeds you can get from just one dried head of calendula (the fresh version of calendula, before it has gone to seed, is pictured next to the seeds)…

We get unreasonably excited when we see frogs in the field, which happens every single day! The one we found in the zinnia patch is a southern leopard frog:

We’re harvesting pretty much all the time now… one of our most popular flowers at the moment is daucus, or wild carrot, pictured below. It’s in the parsley family (Umbelliferae) along with parsnips, Queen Anne’s lace, and carrots. It has the same phytophotodermatitis effect as the parsnips, as I experienced last season, so I am careful to wear long sleeves when harvesting it!

Fitting the flowers into the Toyota Avalon is always a challenge…

So these days, we use the pickup truck to do our deliveries.

I wish you all bombastic bouquet of brilliant Benary’s Giant Zinnias!

Laura Beth

Five Ways to Not Feel like a Farm Implement

Check it out, Butterbee Farm featured in the Field to Vase blog! http://fieldtovase.com/butterbee-farms-five-ways-feel-like-farm-implement/

 

burning coal conduit

Dear Readers,

Today, I harvested celosia the color of burning coals, and was so surprised by its glowing, chemical redness that my hands lost their rhythm. My mind, flung far out of the task, landed on a thought: why are these flowers going? Not where (a restaurant, a florist, a dining room table), but why?

I imagined the restaurant manager escaping from the usual routine to arrange the celosia into vases by the windows. I remembered a picture that a CSA member sent me of the flowers from her share, arranged in different carefully chosen vases. I thought of the couple, college-age maybe, who passed by my house the other day, right as I was about to get rid of some extra flowers. They bent over the buckets of ammi, basil, and amaranth, smelling the pollen-laden blooms, delighted to take some home.

When I dropped flowers at the florist’s today, she was asking her designer to make a “birthday arrangement.” I wonder whose birthday it was? Someone turning a momentous 90 years old? Or someone turning 1? Then I remembered that last week, my flowers went to someone less than a month old. There in the celosia, it struck me that each person is having such a complicated, emotional life; flowers are like a conduit for whatever those emotions are.

And even as I’m writing this, I feel glad that I’m a flower farmer, if it means participating in the feeling, breathing lives of everyone around me.

I wish you all a very red flower.

Laura Beth

 

restaurant hop for butterbee basil

Dear Readers,

We have a lot of basil.

And by that I mean a lot of basil– more than we can sell to our florists by a long shot. So, for the last few weeks I’ve been doing some fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants marketing:

Step 1: Google “local food restaurant Baltimore”

Step 2: Call all of them

Surprisingly, this method occasionally works. We’re now delivering basil to all of the Woodberry Kitchen enterprises (Shoefly, Parts and Labor, Artifact, and Woodberry Kitchen), and to Carma’s Cafe, our neighborhood favorite! More restaurants may be hopping on the Butterbee basil train soon. I’m pretty excited about it– basil is fun to harvest, as it smells DELICIOUS.

Unrelated: The headwreath-making class at the farm next Saturday will be awesome, sign up NOW!

I wish you all a pesto pasta, pizza, or panini.

Laura Beth

*special thanks to Ellen Frost, who quickly resolved our lemon basil crisis– just FYI, growers, lemon basil needs up to 24 hours to hydrate!