The Great Pivot Of 2020
As I walked through the spring flower tunnels this morning, I could have sworn it was April. The ranunculus are blooming their heads off in billowy heads of pale salmon, happy yellow (so happy, in fact, that they calmed my annual start-of-the-season nerves), bold pink, and the softest blush you ever did see. Tulips, a new crop for us, have just begun their show. A few of the early varieties are at their peak, but the late French and Parrot varieties are soon to begin forming buds. It’s all happening.
Whether I'm ready for it or not, the flowers wait for no one. And what a crazy year in flowers it's been! Last year this time, the spring flowers in the same hoop houses were a few weeks away from blooming, yet the threat of the pandemic was looming large. I was gearing up for what I thought would be another typical season for B-Side: weddings to design for most weekends, sales to florists the rest of the time, and sending the extras to the farmstand. When everything closed down on March 13th I was in the middle of a greenhouse lab with my horticulture students at Santa Rosa Junior College, and we wrapped up class with the sinking feeling that we wouldn't be convening for any more in-person classes after spring break. Then Tom Hanks got sick, basketball was cancelled, and you know the rest. I started hearing from my wedding couples, one after the other, needing to postpone. Florists shut down and, for a time, no longer needed weekly buckets of flowers delivered to their doors.
What followed for me and my small business can be called a pivot, a scramble, or an all-out HUSTLE, as we had about five minutes to make a game plan for the year. We rallied and started delivering bouquets to SF and the East Bay once a week, which turned out to be such a fulfilling way to connect with friends and customers down there. It also really kept us afloat! And the farmstand, which began as a tiny part of my business, grew and grew in terms of popularity and importance to my revenue picture. Throughout the season, it became my main creative outlet, the source of so much joy, and, (along with deliveries) the destination for many of my most primo flowers.
Looking back, I now see that I had reinvented my business model without setting out to do so. It transformed into something that makes a whole lot more sense for one person (with only part-time seasonal help), farming without equipment on two 1/4 acre plots of land. I love selling to florists, and many of them have become my greatest friends and champions. But as a small farm, up against farms double and triple and quadruple my size (and that's putting it mildly, as a farm 10 x my size is still considered a "small farm"), I'll never be able to compete on price or efficiency. The fact is, I'm just too dang small to sell wholesale. Farming is an uphill battle no matter how you structure it, but I was treading water at best trying to compete on price with farms whose footprint make mine look like a grain of sand on the map in comparison.
My farm is tiny, boutique, specialty, bouquet-oriented. And my customer is, well YOU! Flower lovers, Bay Area-dwelling, nature craving, botanically-inspired people who need a little color at home. I know I do. So thank you all for helping me make this pivot towards retail flower sales and getting my florist-quality farm-ground flowers into your hands. It's a perfect fit, seven years in the making. We've finally got it!