For the Love of…
Spring Ranunculus Bouquet
I suppose every profession has it rugged somehow. The statistics have always been against us farming. As fledgling farmers, we labored easily 60 hours a week to finally cross the five-year death mark – the mark that less than 5% of farms make, I’m told. But reaching that mark did not help us loosen up any. We buckled down for years. Somewhere along the 12-year stretch, we found our rhythm and started believing this was indeed our career.
Those early years were unmerciful. We stooped to pick up pennies. My mind easily wanders to some precious saints who came to Market, saw our pitiful plight, and believed in us. One in particular, with a bird on her shoulder and a fatal cancer diagnosis, blessed us several times. We often give thanks for her years later. And there were others. Those precious gifts were never wasted or misused.
As time continued, the heavy balance against us began to shift. We had dabbled in nearly all types of vegetables and had a beautiful three-year stint in cut flowers. We found ourselves from a six-man payroll back to just us and thus had to retire from the highly coveted summer bouquets. The work was too intensive to retain. Yet, the customers’ cries were constant. “When will you have flowers again?”
I found myself contemplating keeping both a small spring and a tinier summer flower garden. But no matter how I did the math, the hours were not sufficient to fit it in. Finally, I decided to just choose one: ranunculus.
Many find ranunculus a persnickety flower to grow and perhaps this is true. However, its beauty trumps its difficulties. It blooms early in the spring when the human heart craves something beyond January’s drab, cold days.
Ranunculus – at least my way of growing it – is a labor of love. It grows from a corm, not a seed. Along with the stunning flowers, the plant creates more corms during the growing season. When the flowers are spent, and the plant begins to die back, we dig up the corms. It is like Christmas day – from one comes three, or four, or five. The corms are laid out to dry completely and then stored, in our case, on top of our bedroom armoire. (That is how farmers live, by the way!)
When October rolls around, we soak the corms to wake them up. Then they are put in soil on trays and kept in our walk-in cooler for 10 days. As they come out to face the harsh world, the war begins. At this point, the corms are extremely susceptible to rot from imperfect moisture content. Only about 60% survive the transition. Those that make the cut are tucked into the prepared raised beds. They have three months to endure soil bugs, deer munching, and downy mildew.
Ranunculus remain dormant on top most of their lives. They begin popping only right before their show begins. Every year, my faith wavers, struggling to believe the work will come to fruition. But then it happens. The bouquets arrive at Market and never even make it to the table. Customers joyously snatch them.
Have I ever sat down to calculate how much those blooms are actually worth? No. In doing this, I believe I would disrespect them though I guarantee the number would shock me. We no longer farm just to pay the bills. I see those beautiful bouquets as my gifts to my community, my tribute to those highly honorable souls who stopped to encourage two struggling farmers in our early days. I believe we will always have a few ranunculus bouquets.