Alamance County farmer Tracy Hall is watching her ambitions bloom as she launches Blooms on the Ridge, a cut-flower farm.
The flower farm is nearly ready for its first season offering a members-only market and a bouquet delivery subscription service.
Hall retired from working for the state about three years ago and found herself with more time to devote to her gardening hobby, which she said she picked up from her father and her grandmothers. After putting a lot of time and money into her gardening, Hall thought it might be time to turn her garden into a business.
“I was just scrolling through the internet one day and I happened on some information about flower farming,” she explained. “I live out in the Union Ridge part of Alamance County towards Caswell (County) and so we have land and all out here and I’ve always been up for a challenge and especially for doing stuff outside.”
In late summer 2020, Hall set her mind on launching the business. She started teaching her husband and father-in-law how to prepare flower beds, learned how to drive the tractors and more. Months later, in January, Hall enrolled in an online flower farming course taught by an urban flower farmer in Newport News, Virginia. Up until this point, all of her flowering farming knowledge was self-taught.
“Before I’d even done the school I had to learn how to seed state and the first attempt was like a colossal failure” Hall said. “After that school, I realized everything I was doing was like totally wrong and that’s how come it was a big flop.”
Now armed with the knowledge she needed, Hall started growing a second round of seedlings, this time with much more success.
“What makes it so interesting now is how you can start something like that and you don’t have to have a greenhouse and you don’t have to have what they call a hoop house,” Hall said. “Everything is started here in my house.”
Hall starts each of her flowers in a 9-foot by 6-foot room in her home that she has dubbed her grow room. Currently, there are about 2,100 seedlings growing in the room with the help of heat mats and grow lights. The seedlings will stay inside for a few weeks before Hall takes them outside to be planted on the farm where they will bloom.
“Using this method allows me to start many more seeds than I could using any other method. One tray holds 80 seedlings,” she explained.
All of the flowers are grown using chemical-free or organic products.
Hall is growing a wide variety of flowers including sunflowers, tulips, zinnias, bachelor buttons, larkspur, bells of Ireland, celosia, ageratum, stock, sweet William, nigella, snapdragons and more.
“A lot of those flowers are like what’s considered the old-timey flowers that our grandmothers grew way back when. … Everybody has kind of gotten away from it,” Hall said.
Hall said she believes she is getting into the flower business at a good time as the COVID pandemic has impacted flower imports.
“About 80 percent I think of the flowers that we have in the United States are imported from like South America and other countries. With the pandemic, it’s been really hard. They say this year is really going to be the worst with trying to get the flowers imported,” she explained. “They’re going to be relying on more local flower farmers and all to do that.”
Once the flowers bloom, likely between May and October, Blooms on the Ridge will offer a few ways to purchase them, including a members-only market, a bouquet subscription and, while supplies last, a flower stand at the end of Hall’s driveway.
To access the members-only market, individuals can purchase a share worth $100. Hall will use this money to continue growing flowers and, in exchange, members will be able to come out to Hall’s home on Friday afternoons and purchase pre-cut flowers.
“They’ll just walk through and the flowers will be out for them and they can decide which ones or how many they want. Then whenever they go to checkout, we would just count the number of stems and we would deduct that from the amount they paid for their share,” Hall said.
Once members have exhausted their share, they can purchase another, but only a limited number of memberships will be offered each year.
Individuals can also sign up for a monthly bouquet delivery subscription service in which Hall will deliver a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers to your home once a month. Subscription plans vary between five and 20 deliveries throughout the growing season.
Five deliveries will cost $80, 10 deliveries are $155 and 20 deliveries costs $275. Subscriptions must be paid in advance.
If there are extra flowers left over after the member-only markets and bouquet deliveries, Hall plans to set up a flower stand at the end of her driveway in an old, rustic pickup truck bed. Hall said she can’t guarantee how often flowers will be available at that stand, but the truck bed will be a fixed feature that passersby can check out to see if any flowers are for sale.
“I think my whole family thinks I’m crazy about doing all this,” Hall joked.
Blooms on the Ridge won’t be open to the general public this year, but Hall said she is keeping it in mind for future growing seasons.
To stay in the loop on what's happening at Blooms on the Ridge, check out the farm's Facebook page.
Elizabeth Pattman is the trending topics reporter for the Times-News in Burlington, covering business, COVID-19 and all things trending. Contact Elizabeth (she/her) at epattman@gannett.com. I'm also available on social media @EPattmanTN on Twitter or @burlingtontimesnews on Instagram.
The Link LonkApril 08, 2021 at 06:05PM
https://www.thetimesnews.com/story/news/local/2021/04/08/blooms-ridge-brings-flower-farm-dream-life-alamance-county-farmer-tracy-hall-spring-beds-subscribe/7121157002/
Flower farm dreams bloom for Alamance County entrepreneur Tracy Hall - Burlington Times News
https://news.google.com/search?q=Flower&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
No comments:
Post a Comment