Van H Acres

The flowers that speak (& how did I get here?) // Now that I’ve climbed out of the seed catalogues, let’s get back to chatting about the main pieces of our farm! I’ve just finished covering our pastured eggs, so check back on those posts if that interests you! This is a great time to talk about flowers because we’re in between the seasons. All that is happening at the moment is seed starting, crop planning, and imagining up spring designs. Our bulbs are tantalizingly breaking... the surface of the soil with their green shoots and I’m loving this lull to creatively recharge! I grew up in the commercial flower business, something I’m highly grateful for. Somewhere along the way, I discovered and began to cultivate a deep interest in design. I’m thankful for the work experiences that I’ve had over the years from horticulture to wholesale bouquets to retail florist positions locally and in Holland. Six years ago, Steve and I bought this little farm and began exploring farming options here. It wasn’t until 2 years ago that I opened up our roadside flower stand and it was then that I discovered a whole new world of flowers. It’s been an enriching experience to grow my own flowers for design. Although not without challenges - in fact, it is a lot of work! - this approach to flowers has caused my aesthetic to grow in leaps and bounds, augmented by the fact that I forage our property for treasures to include in my work. A lifelong practice of gathering precious bits of nature has come to fruition here! I must see what is present. I must work with what is available to me. My garden speaks to me about what it has for me to use each morning. I’m limited by what I can gather together, I’m limited by season, I’m limited by the weather, and within these limitations I have discovered textures I never saw, colours I never appreciated, and boundless opportunities! My creative process is entirely expanded and energized and I’m so thankful to be here. I’m looking forward to our upcoming growing season and my thanks to each of you who has shopped our flowers! : Gypsophila, Covent Garden - light airy texture, easy to grow, and a pain in the butt to work with

There has to be a word for the state of mind one ends up in when looking at seed catalogues. These catalogues arrive in the mail all bright and innocent, whispering of springtime and fields of flowers waving in the soft breeze; but then, oopsie, you open the catalogue and the world disappears for days! My seed catalogue coma lasted about three days this year. I dive in with excitement and come out days later with a crop planning hangover, all frizzy, blurry eyed, not sure wh...at day it is, and having spent a little too much on some fancy variety that I couldn’t resist. I think I like seed shopping; but after a couple days of it I start to think it’s a more complicated relationship than that! Just me? Please tell me I’m not the only one! : last year’s sunflower seeds - one of the only seed types I have the patience to harvest. P.S. We made it to the weekend!

The Egg-Mobile // As I thought about what I wanted to write about the egg-mobile, I realized that I should start with the issues we were setting out to solve by converting from our stationary setup to this moveable system. The major drawbacks we found with a stationary chicken coop were: Pasture: over time, chickens work pasture until there is no vegetation left and they tend to travel a limited distance from their coop. This brings challenges for both carbon sequestration a...nd beneficial nutrients in the eggs (which I expanded on a couple of posts ago). Our goal is to be providing our flock with pasture. With a moveable system we can rotate them and prevent overgrazing. Moisture: in a wet coastal climate like ours, we battle moisture through fall, winter, and spring. Hens coming back in from outdoors track moisture and mud into the coop. Water from watering stations is dropped into the bedding. These things create issues with ammonia and cleanliness. Pests: we could never keep rats, opossums, or raccoons out of our barn and we are much more interested in feeding our precious organic feed to our chickens than to the wildlife. The egg-mobile was designed to be pest free and its floor is well above the ground so as not to create a welcoming habitat for wildlife. Bedding: as small business owners looking to cut costs, bedding killed us! Not only were we paying for shavings and sand to put in the chicken coop, we were paying in time and elbow grease to dig OUT the chicken coop! With a mesh floor, the egg-mobile is low maintenance and manure falls directly on the pasture. Egg Cleanliness: this one goes hand in hand with moisture management. They could almost be under the same heading; but since we ARE producing eggs after all and every egg counts towards whether or not we turn a profit it merits it’s own section. Our coop is designed to eliminate moisture and our layout is set up to further tackle dirty feet. These two things have reduced our shrink on eggs considerably. That about covers it! Hope this was interesting, helpful, or both! Can you guess which of these 5 problems solved is the one I love the most?

Sick of seeing Top 9s? I’m not! Our top nine posts for 2020 surprised me a little, only in that most of them are recent! I see a heavy trend towards adorable baby goats and natural beauty and design - and it makes sense. If there ever was a time or a year where we needed to enjoy, dwell on, and cultivate beauty, sweetness and playfulness, it was this year! Thank you all so much for your part in making our year what it was. As I focus on the good that 2020 brought, a major par...t of that was the enjoyment we had in sharing our lives with you both online and in person. We hope you have felt encouraged, cared for, cheered up, perhaps even awe-struck by the beauty around us. Happy New Year! A year that will be marked by grief, but also hope! A year where we’ll be looking back, but also anticipating the future. A year to live in the present and in gratitude I compiled each of our top 9 into this post. You might notice that one is missing - that is because it deserves to reposted all on its own to help us say farewell to this year. I’ll add that post shortly - enjoy!

This wasn’t planned // We had a beautiful sunny day on the farm; but not all went right! A hawk dropped in and killed one of our hens (a rare occurrence, but such is the reality of pastured flocks). The other 59 hens took flight over the electric fence for cover. Steve and I spent a couple of unplanned hours digging hens out of the brambles. Meanwhile, things have not been going well with our US neighbours. What a truly sad day! In the end, I’ve been avoiding the news and fin...ding my place of peace with a bit of gardening and a bit of mucking out the barn. Flowers are very much on the mind right now as we enter into the months of starting seeds and this is my happy place. I’ve received a few reminders today that I want to pass on: drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw, and release your tongue from the roof of your mouth. Pass that or this photo on to someone . Today’s planned post was about our egg-mobile; but I had no time to write it. Coming soon!

Hop on over to our Instagram (IGTV channel) for a video on Flower Foraging Best Practices that I finally managed to put together! Just a gathering of some of my thoughts on the matter; informed by my experience in retail design and my undergrad education in Environmental Sciences. http://Instagram.com/vanhacres/

Yes! Our property really needs a chance to shed some of this water!

Always stop for the puddles. Much of my foraging for florals occurs in those woods and it separates our lower and upper pastures so we walk here daily.

What Are They? // Some of you received bits of cheer in your Christmas flower arrangements - hints of spring, treasures fully charged with life! Some of you messaged me about these little gifts after you discovered them, wondering what they are. If your arrangement contained a bulb, it is Wildhof, a white tulip. My suggestion would be to plant them out in some soil in a protected garden space sometime soon and wait for them to greet you in a few months time. Planting depth: 6.

What do you have planned for Boxing Day? Our plan is to do absolutely nothing! And by nothing, I mean: stay home, do puzzles, plan our flower gardens, and call a few more family members (which, by the way, is EVERYTHING right now). I’m still enjoying the feeling of busy from the days leading up to Christmas. On top of the seasonal rush for florals, we were completely caught by surprise by the snow that was nowhere in any forecasts I’d seen. Did you know it was going to snow? ... The heavy wet coastal snow meant that we were babysitting our greenhouses late into the night to prevent damage. That day and the days following are all a bit of a blur. I do recall zipping kids into and out of snowsuits at least a million times. We had a busy retail situation with our egg and floral sales as well. If we didn’t get a chance to greet you properly we are sorry - it was unexpected chaos! Somehow, I took a few minutes to wander the farm and capture some of the intricate winter beauty on our farm that is now raining away. Thank you all so much for your support this year - we have had a tremendous year!