Lessons from the Garden 2024

My annual reflection of all the lessons the garden gave me this year. Although these observations are my own, I challenge you to consider how they might apply to your own life & circumstances.

Weed it.

Gone are the days where I need to be everything to everyone. Or be where everyone else is, much less do what everyone else is doing. This year I did a big round of weeding, you could say, in multiple areas of life and business.

I didn’t make it to every farmer’s market, or take up every invitation to this-or-that. The garden shrunk again and became more efficient and much more productive. In turn, this made daily tasks so much more streamlined. Overall, there was more space in each day to take my time on tasks instead of rushing through to get to the next, etc., and plenty of time to be spontaneous.

I also weeded the feed. That was the biggest edit of the year. I now see a broader mix of interesting things beyond flowers and what everyone else is doing. This means I “follow” more feathered friends than I do farmers, like my favorite dinosaur bird, the Shoebill stork. And let me just tell you, that alone has quieted the internal chatter and criticism in such a profound way.

The best results are found in discomfort.

This has been somewhat of my mantra in 2024. It’s my updated version of “No Pain, No Gain”.

Pain is a young persons game, let’s be real. To be a sustainable business in the long term doesn’t mean shying away from the hard stuff. Rather just being more strategic. This past year, I whittled down and narrowed my farm offerings, and that came with a fair bit of internal discomfort regarding economics. It’s the small business owner-operator version of the stock market. Some years you put more in — be it sweat or cash — and others you hold the line despite down turns knowing that the value will rebound. Long game strategy, if you will.

Being willing to sit in this discomfort has been as much of an educator this year as its been a respite. Accepting the hard parts of being a business, like letting longtime customers go or seeing a crop totally flop, is so much less frustrating when you give up being upset by it. When you recognize that these are normal, it’s freeing. But acceptance is an ongoing process, not doubt. I’ve learned I can work through discomfort so long as I’m not living in pain. If that makes any sense.

Go deeper, not wider.

This lesson dovetails with weeding. I came to a major realization this year during a retirement planning session with Mike and our money guy - while I’m great at the 1-2 year vision now is time to focus more strategically on the 5 year plan. Mike plans to retire when he’s eligible and that is in 7 years. Although we don’t know exactly what that’ll look like, I know we’ll be wanting to travel more. Will he want to be more involved in the day-to-day of the farm? I’m not sure. I guess the lesson here was one of profound realization. Retirement has always felt very far away and now — it’s much more visible on the horizon. Now is the time to think deeper and for whatever reason or lesson I’m still yet to learn, that just feels like focusing so much narrower. And surprisingly, that narrowing feeling actually feels more expansive.

Something new I’d like to share in this recap is a highlight from the camera roll. If you don’t already spend a few hours at the end of the year going through your camera roll — here’s your sign! Scroll through the camera roll and really remember your year!

Here are a few highlights for me.

January

The best time for us to leave the farm is in deep winter.

We visited Mike’s parents at their Senior Winter Camp (snowbird special) and stopped at the Reid Park Zoo to do a behind the scenes encounter with capybara. It was amazing.

January also meant lots of laps around the farm to burn off energy and enjoy the little daylight available.

Here’s Dally Sue on a pasture patrol looking all cute.

FEBRUARY

I hauled lots of loads of alpaca poo to the garden.

This stuff is amazing.

This is like year 2 for me doing all the tillage on the tractor myself.

And I’m totally fucking killing it - look at this row!

MARCH

The first bouquet of the year!

Daffodils with hellebores.

The first round of seedlings in the greenhouse.

Started sometime in Feb.

APRIL

My godbaby Johanna came up from California.

We did lots of farm things including cutting some of the first daffodils.

Most of my daffodil varieties returned.

This went to a local restaurant but I enjoyed it before delivering.

MAY

Flowers begin to bloom.

Including some long awaited (3 years!) peonies!

Farmers Market started in May - and I had lots of ranunculus plus garden roses!

JUNE - peak season!

JULY - in the thick of it

AUGUST - market season

Mike came down to the market a lot to spring me for potty breaks.

And of course to give Dally Sue a chance to hop in the flower cart and make some sales.

SEPTEMBER - I only made it to half of the farmer’s markets but really enjoyed the season!

Epic September sunsets were a theme in my cameral roll.

October — we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary with a trip to Boston with a stop at Rhinebeck for the NY Sheep & Wool Festival. All of September and October I worked on the festival’s sweater and got to meet the designer. We got to visit Tanglewood where Mike was a fellow in 1999, plus oodles of great old cemeteries. This trip definitely holds the top spot for Best Memories of the Year.

OCTOBER 6th was Dally Sue’s 7th Birthday and we got fancy dog bakery treats and had a stroll at Whitman Mission with all her frens.

NOVEMBER was chill

The mild temps meant there was still beauty to be found in the garden.

Like this Distant Drums rose

DECEMBER was foggy, cloudy, and kinda gloomy. But two awesome things happened.

First my OG business, Old Homestead Alpacas, of which Gholson Gardens is an off-shoot, was awarded Agribusiness of the Year!

I’ve got lots of thoughts about that award. And if you’re curious, you can CLICK HERE to read more.

The second big thing was I found the perfect new-to-me car online and it showed up on Christmas Eve. It’s taken me 5 years to save for this and I’m so stoked to have an all wheel drive reliable rig. My old jenky white van will still be my market & delivery work horse, but man — it feels so incredible & unreal to know that I grew, marketed, and sold products from the dirt in order to buy this.

It’s a 2019 Buick Encore and it’s so zippy.

I’m officially entering and embracing my granny car era and I love it so much.

Thank you so much for being a part of this farming journey.

I hope your year was filled with all the lessons you needed, the gifts you desired, and the motivation to spring you forward into 2025.