Harvesting Peonies
Flower farming in Alaska, like anywhere, comes with it’s set of challenges. Our long winter nights and long summer days mean that when the sun’s rays finally do warm the soil, plants grow quickly.
In mid-summer, we have sunlight for twenty four hours a day. The sun makes our colors vivid and the growth rates change dramatically. It is really true that daily changes in growth can be observed.
One of the challenges comes when we are harvesting the buds. In the interior of Alaska, our days can be warm, in the 70’s to 80’s. When this happens along with our extended sunlight, we have to harvest for long periods of time. Sometimes we are cutting three or four times a day just to keep up.
After we harvest our beauties, we haul them in a small trailer pulled by a four wheeler. The trailer holds nine five gallon buckets. We can get, at most, one hundred stems in a harvest bucket. We take the buckets back to our chiller and shed to be processed. Here, our main goal is to strip off the bottom leaves and cool down the flower as quickly as possible. Fortunately, the water coming out of the ground is thirty-eight degrees so the field heat can dissipate quickly. A quick rinse to get off the extra sugary sap that could still be in crevices on the bud and stripping of the lower foliage makes the flowers nice and clean before going into our chiller.
The chiller is at 34 degrees. I know that sounds cold but this is what peonies need to have to be able to have a longer vase life. Ideally, the flowers need to stay at this cold temperature for a good three days so that we provide the longest lasting flowers for our customers.
It is a lot of labor to harvest these beautiful flowers. Yes, we do get tired. Yes, we ask ourselves if it is worth it, but looking back over photos and realizing that we did it makes this flower farming thing worth it. We now know a little more about what we are getting into.
Each new season brings the hope of more streamlined processes, even better flowers and even more ways to show them off. Our hope is to provide flowers, bouquets and host weddings on our farm. We do all of this because we love nature, watching things grow and hard work. We hope to see you on the farm this summer. We will be picking in five short months!
Our CSA will be expanding this year again. Please watch for the sign up! We are working on being able to pay online. We look forward to seeing all our previous customers soon. We have lots of new flowers planned for our bouquets. More on that later.
