Meet your farmers
Hello! My name is Josephine and I am the artistic generalist behind Strawflower Farm. You will mostly here from me since I do most of the growing and arranging, but my partner, Collin, and mom, Susan live on the farm too and are a big part of making things work behind the scenes! We grow over 100 different varieties of flowers our 6 acre farm in Beaver County, Alberta an hour east of Edmonton. Our focus is on everything dried - providing our community with vibrant, local florals the whole year through.
How we started
I started farming in 2020 through the Young Agrarians Apprenticeship Program with my farm mentors Lisa and Donovan at the Homestead near Grande Prairie, Alberta. They have a big market garden and a whole array of livestock. It was a great opportunity to learn about many aspects of farm work: producing at scale, fixing many farm problems, and sticking it out through any conditions.
I enjoyed it so much that in 2021 Collin and I sold the house in Edmonton and moved into a skidshack at the Homestead for a second year of growing that we called "Apprenticeship 2.0". Collin worked off farm, while I worked at the Homestead, but with some extra time and space in their garden to grow crops of my own. That turned out to be flowers! Since we were so busy doing other farm work during the growing season I decided to dry them and the rest is history.
They may have started out as a convenient, high value, storable crop, but I soon realized that dried flowers allowed me to have a creative outlet too! Coming from a background studying music at University and exploring a wide variety of pursuits such as writing, drawing, and fibre arts it was something I was missing while focusing on producing food alone. I would always make pretty bunches of kale and chard when prepping for the farmers market, so it was a small jump to arranging flowers.
Moving back south
Collin and I are both from Edmonton and while we loved northern Alberta and the beautiful boreal forest we both missed our families and community and decided we wanted to settle down close to home. We were trying to figure out next steps when Collin had the idea to call up Maryann at Good Note Community Farm, who I had met a few years before. In our first ever conversation, she invited me to come live on their farm. Turns out she really meant it and they were just completing finishing touches on a garage loft suite, so we moved in and got to work in 2022!
Maryann and Kevin were so generous with their space and resources. They let us work up a new market garden in their pasture, use their tractor, and hang flowers to dry in their beautiful barn loft. I learned a lot about what it takes to build community from them.
While we could have stayed at Good Note forever, we came across the farm we now call home the next spring in 2023. It had everything we'd been looking for and we couldn't pass it up. It is 6 acres right on the boundary of Blackfoot Recreation area, south of Elk Island National Park. The soil is dark, and sandy and there was already a small, but significant garden and greenhouse to work with.
We’ve spent the last couple of years setting down roots here. We have started new gardens, planted perennials and trees, and
How we grow
Every stem used in our designs are grown from seed in our garden or gathered from the surrounding fields and forests. Since we live in such a cold climate that means starting almost everything weeks ahead indoors under grow-lights. This starts as early as February, when it is still dark and cold, and continues right up until we plant out at the end of May and early June
Once the weather starts to warm up in April, hundreds of trays are brought out from our basement to our small greenhouse. When that gets too full of plants they are hardened off - a process of gradually acclimatizing plants grown indoors to the harsh reality of their new life outside. When they are ready, seedlings are planted out into nearly 1/2 an acre of garden with compost and straw mulch from our neighbours sheep farm.
Then it is time to water and weed! We use a drip irrigation system and rainwater saved from our roof. With a series of tanks and pumps we are able to save enough to water this big garden for almost the whole season. There is no pond on the farm and our soil is so sandy that it may not be possible, so we have found innovative ways of making what we have work. The most exciting new development is an automated watering system that allows us to get really granular about water allotment.
How we dry
All of our flowers are simply hung to dry!
They are picked in their prime, bunched in the field, and hung upside down in the dark with good ventilation to retain the most vivid colours. We use a dehumidifier and a fan, but nothing more fancy than that.
We celebrate the natural beauty of the garden by avoiding dyes and bleach to alter the flowers. There are so many everlasting varieties that already have papery petals when they bloom and retain their colour so well that it really isn’t necessary
It is so fun hunting for new varieties that dry well. We add new varieties to the garden every year and are always trying out new things to grow and dry. Currently we have over 100 varieties in the garden not even considering different colours. What a wonderful palette to work with!
Contact us
Interested in working together? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. We can’t wait to hear from you!