Flower Bunches

John and I pour over seed catalogs beginning in September, to identify the absolutely most wonderful plants to grow for the next year's flower bunches. After his hanging baskets, flower bunches are John's most exiting product. He loves to make them colorful and unique, and he almost always adds herbs to the bunches so that they smell as well as look wonderful.

This year John hired a wonderful young woman (Stephanie) to help with the greenhouses and garden. Steph was a real weeder, and took excellent care of our cutting garden until she had to leave for college. Here are some pics:

In addition to the cutting garden, we grow glads, dahlias and sunflowers in a field setting near the pond and brook on the property. Each year it seems that one variety does much better than the others and one variety does much worse. This year, the sunflowers were strong, but the dahlias bloomed late due to a cool and wet June/July. The glads were a huge disappointment. Many turned brown before opening and it seemed only the orange and red were able to overcome the weather conditions. Of the more than 1200 bulbs John planted, only 10% were salable.

As long as the frost holds off, we will have beautiful flower bunches for sale. We have done table centerpieces for weddings and anniversary parties, and provided gorgeous, colorful arrangements for birthdays and anniversaries, to brighten a hospital or nursing home room, as well as for sellers holding open houses. Our bunches have also given to clients by our real estate agent and friend, Amy, and placed at the cemetary in honor of loved ones. We sell them in our store daily and at the farmers markets we attend in Springfield.

The Gift Shop

For the last couple of years, we have had people stop at the farm and come in to the store and say, "I have been driving by here for years and I never knew you had such great stuff in addition to the beautiful plants in the yard". Part of the problem, we know, is the sign. It is pretty, but we had it made years ago when we were just about to open the store, and had a bit of a different vision of what we would be. Last year, we had our friend, Ed Radding, of Radding Associates(http://www.raddingassociates.com)/ design a new sign for us. Ed makes great signs, for any situation. Check him out. We love the sign that Ed designed for us, but we wanted to get the landscaping finished and the new retail greenhouse built before we put up the new sign. We are putting off the retail greenhouse for another year but hope to have our new sign up in 2008. This is a mock-up of what the sign will look like. And, we will have the option to let folks know what we are selling.

Many of the people who read this blog are not able to visit Northampton very often. I have been asked many times to post photos of the interior of the store. Our inventory and the look of the store changes with the seasons. We always have local milk, eggs, cheese, honey, maple syrup, dressings, tea blends, coffee, salsa and nuts. Our gift items are carefully selected and we make every effort to have something wonderful for anyone on your list. If you want to see what is in the store this month, click on this link

http://www.photoworks.com/photo-sharing/shareSignin.jsp?shareCode=A4BAAA2C6B2&cp=ems_shr_alb_pml&cb=PW

I am inserting a 'teaser' photo here, in case you don't have time to look at all.

This is a view of the store from back to front. We love having an open, airy feel - almost like a gallery, as opposed to the cluttered, too-much-to-look-at feel of many gift shops.