NISLAND—Greeted by rows of brightly colored flowers on a warm Sunday afternoon, Joyful Bloom Flower Farm invited the public to enjoy their place and flowers on August 24.
This day was special because it was a day for the owners of the Flower Farm to let the public know how much they appreciated the support they have received throughout the summer.
This year the Farm was met with unexpected bad luck. “This season got wiped out from hail,” said Sarah Schwede, owner. “June 28 a hail storm came through here and just wiped us out. We drove around and you could see the path it took—even right down the road they didn’t get hit—it was just this stretch and we were in its path.”
In only their second year of business, the storm was devastating to the hard work Sarah and her husband, Clint, had been doing. “Most everything I had been growing since January and February, I started from seed inside and kept them alive for all these months. I planted them outside after hardening them off and they were just blooming—and then it happened,” explained Sarah. “So it was pretty hard, I’ll never get that time back.”
For the first time since the Schwedes opened the Flower Farm they have decided to swing the gates wide open to let the community know just how very thankful they are for all of the help and support they received while they got back on their feet by offering a free will donation flower pick.
The community has stepped up to help the couple out in many ways. “We’ve had a GoFundMe, and money donations, but we also had people come out and help clean and we’ve received seeds and cards and letters and words of encouragement to not give up,” shared Sarah. “You know we didn’t realize how important it was to people that were offering our farm to them—and so it just felt right to give back.”
After the storm, Clint and Sarah rolled up their sleeves and got to work trying to salvage what was left of the growing season. “We were early enough in the season that I could replant, but I replanted with sunflowers because it’s the quickest thing to bloom,” explained Sarah. “Most flowers take many months to grow and to bloom, so we flipped all the beds that got destroyed from the storm, to sunflowers.”
Lucky enough a few other flower beds were protected from the hail by weeds and bushes so they survived. “They were just germinating underneath the weeds and I didn’t weed yet—so there are still some other flowers. Our perennials are all really short this year. They should all be like, at least twice the size,” Sarah explained. “My dahlias are all short so we’re still not where it should be, but we really wanted to keep the flowers going.”
If you would like to stop out and see the Joyful Bloom Flower Farm and pick your own flowers and create your own arrangements, the perfect opportunity to do just that happens on September 6 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. when they host a Sunflower Festival. For a $5 entry fee, you get to pick any sunflower you want, they provide the snips! “We will have at least seven or eight vendors out here, and then we’ll have kid activities, baby goats and things here,” said Sarah. “And then you fill a jar for $20.00 or $30.00 for a bucket that we supply. You pick your own flowers and fill as many stems you can fit into a jar!”
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