
12/25/2021
Happy Christmas to you and yours!
Bee’s Wing Farm is a small flower farm in Bluemont, VA. With our harvest, we create seasonally unique
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Bee’s Wing Farm is a small flower farm nestled at the foot of Buck Mountain in Bluemont, Virginia. We grow over 40 varieties of flowers, berries and herbs and with those blossoms, berries, and foliage create seasonally unique floral designs for weddings, special events and our own flower CSA. Our flowers are gently grown and in effort to care and respect the land we do not use any synthetic pestic
ides or herbicides. We know that the soil is the soul of our farm and care for it through cover cropping, compost and integrating our livestock and cropping systems.
Happy Christmas to you and yours!
This boy’s bright eyes are helping keep my spirit’s up on this darkest day of the year.
This weekend Chris and I made the call to not travel with our little unvaccinated sweetheart to be with family this Christmas. For other families wrestling with difficult decisions around holiday gatherings our hearts are with you!
For now finding gratitude through the disappointment for our little farm, our little house and our little boy.
Shipment delays, a busy fall wedding schedule, and Farmer’s market kept our planting hands busy this fall. We finally got our remaining Ranunculus in the ground in our tunnels yesterday. It’s the latest we’ve ever planted them.
Working in a dynamic system like farming means you have to be adaptable and a perpetual optimist. Perhaps this late planting might be something we replicate in future because it was a great success or maybe not…Only time will tell… In the interim we will carefully care for these hardy beauties. Opening and closing tunnels, putting remay on and off, irrigating, feeding and w**ding.
Many thanks to , and for getting our bulb and corm stock to us. It was a challenging season and we so appreciate all that you do!
The wee babes featured in these photos include butterfly ranunculus, Italian ranunculus, anemones, Icelandic poppies and Canterbury bells.
Deck those halls y’all! Come grab a wreath or a centerpiece (or both!) from 8-noon today!
We also have darling amaryllis and paper white planters!
It’s our last market of the season! We’ll be back in April with lots of pretty Spring blooms. Today we also brought the last of our dried flower stash. If you need some everlasting color in your house for winter come grab a bundle.
Yesterday we completed our 23rd and final wedding of the season. I was too busy to snap a pic of Maggie’s epically pretty bouquet so this one from October will have to be a substitute. It also helps me cope with my dahlia withdrawal and remind me we still have to dig dahlia tubers. 😬.
Thank you to every couple that entrusted us with making their beauty-filled day just a bit more colorful with flowers. We wish you every happiness. 🧡🧡🧡
Chris will be tomorrow 8-noon. We are thinking this will be our last market for the season…
We have wreaths, bundles of holly, magnolia and winterberry to deck those halls.
We also have paperwhite bulbs. Easy to grow and bring some much need color and fresh flowers for dark days of winter.
We did it! We just finished planting close to 10,000 tulips. Per farming with a toddler it took a couple days with many breaks for snacks, delighting in wooly bear 🐛, petting the pups and naps. This season we tried a new method of tulip planting.
Typically we dig a long shallow tench 6-8 inches deep by 4 feet wide and 100 feet long.We place
All the bulbs in the trench and then cover them back up with soil. Come harvest time our heavy clay soil makes it a challenge to harvest the tulip bulb and all. It also super muddy and then we have to spend hours cleaning them before we sell them. We’ve been on the edge of breaking up with tulips because they are so labor intensive and costly to produce. But we love designing with them and want to see if we could figure out a way to make them work and not break our bodies or the bank producing them. So we’re trying something different…
This year we made a temporary raised bed using some slab wood we had laying around from milling the lumber for our house. Once the tulips were placed we filled the bed with a layer of compost about 3 inches deep and another 6 inches of some very, very, very broken down saw dust (again left over from milling). We could have used all compost but that would have been more $$$. The hope is that that the tulips will be much cleaner at harvest time with the fluffy compost/sawdust covering.
Looking forward to April and harvesting these beauties hopefully with easy and more cleanliness!
🌷
We’ll be coming to tomorrow 8-noon.
We have all the pretty to get your door holiday ready.
This week’s wreaths are composed of Frazier fir, eucalyptus and dried florals. If you can’t make it to market this week go to our website and place an order for next week.
(Link in the bio)
Pumpkins full of gratitude for the bounty of 2021!
Many thanks to each of you that have bought and/or admired our flowers, and extended your care and kindness to our family. We are so thankful.
We hope that today brings you time to gather around a table or a zoom screen and enjoy friends and family.
We’re bringing the color for you thanksgiving tables. Heirloom chrysanthemums in heirloom pumpkins.
Gifts for the host and hostess. Wreaths, fresh mum bouquets and dried everlasting bouquets.
will be Saturday 8-noon.
We’ve snuck away from the farm for a few days. We will not be today. We will return next week and have all your Thanksgiving tablescape needs!
to live in this world
you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
let it go.
Mary Oliver
This time of year makes me giggle and cringe at the poor boys in my teens and 20’s that I would have to string along all summer with the promise of more time for them come frost. The promise of me not showing up late to every date with dark tomato stained fingers and smelling like fish emulsion(if ya know ya know). Obviously the farm was my main squeeze until came along and wanted to be late with me and smell like fish emulsion too.
A winter lies ahead to sit and rest weary bodies in front of the wood stove and dreams some dreams but first to put the fields to bed and split some firewood.
Hers and Hers.
Happy wedding day Julie and Haley!! Love and thanks for letting us flower your day! 🧡
Dahlia’s swan song…
This Saturday 8-noon will be our last market with dahlias.
Next week we will begin digging tubers. 💪🏼💪🏼💪🏼
Two days, two color palettes, two sweet couples. We had a blast flowering and making these wedding visions with awesome vendor teams.
Thanks to C+K and M+A for letting us grow and style flowers for you to have and to hold!!
Come enjoy another June-tober Saturday with us at the . 8-noon
We have some beautiful Japanese Anemones with us this week and of course dahlias.
Today was a happy enchilada and you think you’re gonna drown kinda day. 🎶
“That's the way that the world goes 'round
You're up one day, the next you're down
It's half an inch of water and you think you're gonna drown
That's the way that the world goes 'round”
Chris and Ana are holding down the fort while Wendell and I finish up some wedding design. Go visit them and get your flower on at the bouquet bar. They’ll be there till noon. Wendell and I will return to market next week. We miss seeing y’all.
Our grains game will be strong at tomorrow. We have some ever so dreamy amaranths and purple majesty millet to bring the autumn spirit into your home. Dahlias of course will be there too.
See tomorrow 8-noon!
We harvested and sold over 700 stems of dahlias this weekend. Thank you to all our kind and supportive patrons. You guys are simply the best. We have loved getting to know each of you and filling your homes with color this season.
Lots of folks have been asking when our last market will be. We intend to be there through the second Saturday in December! We’ll have wreaths, centerpieces and all your holiday decor needs covered to deck those halls.
We’ll be back with a sea of dahlias. Come see and tomorrow 8-noon. We’ll be there with all the
✈️
Final dahlia days of summer. The equinox is upon us! 🍂
This season we planted close to 2,500 tubers. We’ve been diligent about w**d control, trellising, fertility and pest management and this is shaping up to be our best crop of dahlias yet! It feels so good when you get a crop dialed in and give it everything it needs to thrive. We of course are rewarded for our efforts with an insane amount of healthy blooms!
Tomorrow we will harvest dahlias for our Dahlia-En Masse CSA subscription. We’re so looking forward to sharing this flower with our share members. Members look for our newsletter in your inbox tomorrow afternoon with all of Wednesday pick-up/delivery details.
Y’all come get your dahlia fix tomorrow! She is the queen of fall flowers. We have buckets and buckets in all shapes, sizes and colors!
We’ll be 8-noon. Come flower at our bouquet bar or come quickly grab a pre-made bouquet.
Our sweet pals are working the for us today. Go visit , and Ana! They’ll be flowering there ‘til noon.
We have dahlias,lilies, gladiolas and some lovely second flush Lisianthus!
Loading up the van with pretty things. We’ll be 8-noon today. See ya soon Fall’s Church.
Bombay celosia is making our 💓skip a beat. She reminds me of sea coral and when I’m harvesting I think about snorkeling through the rows. She’s amazing fresh and also makes a stunning dried flower.
In two weeks my sweet hubby will join the farm full time. He’s been burning the candle at both ends-farming, Papa-ing and then working his gig for a fire suppression company.
I can’t wait to see how the farm grows and evolves with this major change and for Chris to get more sleep! With this amazing gift also comes risk and pressure for the farm to produce the entirety of our livelihood but we’ve been dreaming and preparing for this moment for seven years and it’s finally arrived. Here’s to dallying in the shallows no more and jumping into the deep end!
Rusty walk-in cooler doors make the best bouquet backdrop right?!
We jumped back into wedding work this weekend. The first of many autumnal nuptials that we get the honor and joy of growing and styling flowers for our couples to have and to hold.
Many of our couples have waited a year to celebrate with loved ones. I wanted to take a second and thank each one of my couples that have been kind and patient as we sorted out how to best honor them but also protect and pivot our business during 2020 and 2021. They have been gracious as I’ve navigated the first year of balancing motherhood and farming and flowering. Understanding when takes me a couple days to get to their email and supportive and willing to have Wendell chime in on their consult phone call. I’ve not gotten to know your faces but your kind hearts are radiant and it’s been such a joy to get to know them! 🧡
We cannot wait to share all the fall beauty with our couples, their families, and friends.
Time for another Friday introduction!
This is Sparrow. He’s our six year old German Shorthaired Pointer. He’s the most epic farm dog. He spends his days patrolling the farm at high speed-keeping moles, voles, mice, ground hogs, bunnies and deer at bay. He does occasionally get over zealous and the flowers bear the brunt of his zeal. He’s part of the reason we have no Tuberose currently 😬. He spends his nights as a couch potato and thinks 70lbs is just the right weight of a lap dog.
Sparrow loves snuggling under the covers, river swims, scrambling up mountains, catching mice in the greenhouse, and kale ribs (that right folks this pup will do anything for a kale rib 😂)
Chris and I made a pact when we we’re dating and moved in together that we had to live together for at least a year before getting a dog. We caved and Sparrow was our birthdays puppy(Chris and I have birthdays just six days apart).I’m grateful we have no self control when it comes to animals, plants and seeds. Sparrow has brought us infinite joy and has been with us for much of our farming journey. He was the perfect precursor to parenthood and is now the best begrudging big brother to Wendell. He’s very sweet and gentle with Wendell but is disappointed that there is less room on our laps for him these days.
Mary Oliver described the place of dogs in our lives best with these words.
“Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?”
My very kind and supportive parents and dear pal Liz will be covering for us at market tomorrow. Go visit them 8-noon
We have some gorgeous bouquets harvested and styled by and . Thank you to both of those awesome women for making our vacation possible and worry free.
It’s been a hot week! Go love and support your farmers extra for frying their brains and skin in this heat to bring you yummy food to fill your belly and pretty flowers to feed your soul! ☀️ ☀️ ☀️ 👩🌾 👨🏻🌾 🧑🌾
We’re doing it! We’ve left the farm and are heading north to enjoy a few days with our dear friends on Martha’s Vineyard with a brief overnight in New York City to see our pal .
I can’t wait for Wendell to meet my family of the north, see the ocean for the first time, get some North Tabor soil between his toes, play on the farm where I fell in love with farming.
Love and thanks to everyone minding the farm and covering for us while we’re away. and my social media-less parents. You guys are the best!
Enjoying the break in the heat and this breeze that wafts the sweet and savory smell of the monarda through out the field. This row is loaded with the happiest pollinators. Hummingbird moths, mason bees, honey bees, bumble bees foraging happily on these lavender hued beauties! 🐝 🦋
🐝
and will be tomorrow 8-noon.
We’ll be slinging the prettiest mixed bouquets you ever did see! Lisianthus galore! Cosmos, zinnias, sunflowers, ageratum, amaranth, eucalyptus, lemon basil and more will be joining the party. Come grab a bouquet or BYOB (build your own bouquet) at our ever popular bouquet bar. 💐
It’s this sweet man’s birthday today! I introduced myself last week and now it’s time for y’all to meet my other half.
Meet Christopher Charles Griffin aka Chris.
Chris is the mechanical and engineering brain in the family. He keeps all the tractors, equipment, irrigation systems and rickety bits of the farm up and running. He does all the maths required on the farm. The plants are grateful because my poor skills at ratios would have killed them by now with too much fish fertilizer and pyganic pesticide.
Chris has a degree in double bass jazz performance from . He’s stupid clever and can play anything with strings; fiddle, guitar, mandolin etc. He also plays old time/bluegrass music. He currently is trying to master the petal steel.
His favorite flower is Lisianthus. He loves the Boston Red Sox, cereal (eats a box in one sitting 🤦♀️), and pocket t-shirts.
He’s is the sweetest and most attentive papa to Wendell and patient, supportive partner to me. Happy Birthday darlin’! Twenty-nine looks good on ya!
📸
My Queen. 👸 Queen Lime Zinnias are one of my very favorite summer flowers.
I know zinnia are often called common and lots of flowers farmers get burnt out on them. I get it-they make you kinda itchy and they can overwhelm your harvest. I see them as the work horse of the flower field. 🐴 I love a steady pony that consistently gives and does not require a perfect ride to still be generous.
My appreciation for zinnias is deep enough that they are the flowers in my logo. All hail the zinnia queen! 👑
These sunny faces will be Saturday 8-noon.
We’ll have buckets of pollen-less sunflowers. These beauties have an amazing vase life and won’t make a mess on your dining room table.🌻
Lisianthus, zinnias, sea oats, ageratum, amaranth, bee balm, veronica and more summer bounty will also be present.
So apparently Friday is the day that introduce yourself. I’m a total failure at Instagram and an introvert so I usually let my flowers do the talking.
But here goes my Friday introduction.
I’m Chelsea Belle. My friends and family call me by my first and middle name more than just Chelsea (you can too!)
This is my 15th season farming. I got my first apprenticeship at 18 on a farm magical on the equally magical island of Martha’s Vineyard. We farmed both veggies and flowers. I fell in love so hard with farming that first season and can’t imagine being anything else.
I was and am still horse crazy. I dream of farming with a team of Suffolk Punch draft horses named Wynona and Naomi. For now I ride an orange steel pony.
I am settling into my identity of a mama-farmer. This is my second season farming with a baby on my hip. It’s harder but more joy-filled than I could ever imagined.
I love wool grandma sweaters, Subaru station wagons, and oatmeal raisin cookies and growing flowers for you.
Beat the heat and come see us early tomorrow morning . 8-noon. 👩🌾 🧑🌾 🌸
We’ve got the first Lisianthus of the season and heaps of other summer bounty!
The extra cool start to Spring and late frost have slowed down the development of the Lisianthus. We have 5,000+ of these beauties in bud and on the cusp of blooming. They are going to be late to the party and unfortunately will not be ready this week so we will have to push the start of our Lisianthus-En Masse subscription until next Wednesday. To our sweet share member, thanks for being patient and waiting on these. Can’t wait to share them with you next week!
📸:
Baby is down for the night and I’m out doing my final harvest before market tomorrow morning. We’ll be 8-noon.
These are two of my very favorite mints-mountain mint and apple mint. I wish I had an apple mint tooth paste! 🦷 They smell heavenly and last for ages. Mint extra appreciate being harvested in the cool of the evening hours.
Off to tuck these buckets into the walk-in cooler and then tuck myself into bed. 4 AM comes early. Chris, Wendell and I will see you bright eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow morning Falls Church.
Come get these “firework” nigellas to celebrate the holiday weekend! 🇺🇸 We have these and more 8-noon today.
34427 Hollow Oak Road
Bluemont, VA
20135
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