Hello, it's nice to meet you! My name is Jodi and this is my husband Aaron. We live in the beautiful little town of Olalla Washington, where I grew up. We have both lived and visited a lot of places but we love Kitsap County and hope to always call it home. We both have "real jobs" (gotta pay those bills!); I am a nurse and Aaron is a builder/constructor/real estate guy. While I am thankful for my nursing career, it's not my dream. But I have always had a secret dream of growing massive amounts of flowers to give away so when I had the opportunity to be a student of the Floret Flower Farming course this last winter I jumped on it! And I learned so much; enough to make my little dream seem possible! So we did it....we started a flower farm. Even though 2021 is our first year as farmers, we hit it hard and carved out a farm field where there was just stinging nettles and choked up woods. In just the few short months that we have been working on our little farm, we've learned so much about soil health and composition, irrigation, weed control (I use the word "control" VERY loosely!), and seed starting. Our hope is to use sustainable, chemical free, and water wise growing practices. We want the flowers we provide our neighbors and community to be safe to bury your face and take a giant sniff in, for kids to handle without parents worried about pesticides, and for floral industry professionals to have clean, healthy flowers to work with. We want our farm and woods to stay healthy and safe for all the creatures that call this place home.
This first year growing is a giant experiment! I am trialing lots of flower varieties that I have never grown and am learning about the perfect timing for planting and harvesting the best, market ready blooms. In the future we want to offer a flower subscription and DIY wedding flower options. This year though, we are keeping it pretty chill and offering flowers in our little farm stand. We will hope to do some pop-up flower sales later this summer too!
If you'd like to follow along and stay in the loop with the what's blooming and available, we'd love to be your friend on Instagram. Follow us at our IG handle: @mossandmadderfarms
Now that you know a bit about us, we'd love to meet you too! Drop us a line in the "Contact Us" page. Thanks so much for visiting, come back again soon!
In the beginning there was dirt....and it wasn't the best dirt either. Walt's Organic Fertilizer Co. in Seattle recommended their "Rainy Pacific NW Blend" to get us on the right track for growing flowers.
Our first seeds were started on the kitchen table in February! Humble beginnings to say the least. BTW- I overwatered all those trays and had to start over. But man! I was excited to get those first trays going!
The seed starting enterprise was expanded into the laundry room. Sooooo many seeds! And so much to learn. The subsequent trays went better. Still working on mastering the watering preferences of these tricky little seeds though.
Each of the different plants had such unique seedlings! These are the first sprouts of "Bunny Tails", which are a really cute decorative grass that has little fluffy white seed heads.
These little seedlings are for a nice filler green called Cress which interestingly can also double as a spicy salad green. These little seeds won the race for quickest to sprout! After the seeds went in the dirt, it was only 3 days until we had seedlings popping up.
It's starting to look like a real farm!
Spreading compost with Norman. He thinks he is helping....he was not in fact helping.
Such lovely little seedlings.
We use landscape fabric over most of our rows for weed control so we don't need to use chemical weed management measures. What the landscape fabric doesn't control gets pulled by hand.
Some of the biggest investments are the least glamorous. Landscape fabric and low hoops are boring but important. The hoops can be used to support tall plants and also be covered with plastic sheeting for frost/weather protection and to extend the growing season.
Planting in progress.....
Baby Bachelor Buttons coming along nicely.
Our little farm in the forest.
Our first flower! This is a Cosmos 'Xanthos' variety.
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