A Week at the Farm Market Day 3: Tuesday
Tuesday is one of the two biggest flower picking days of a farm market week.
The first thing I do Tuesday is load my car with everything that won’t melt. Tables, tents, wreaths, cards and the like. I also make sure I have an ample stash of plastic bags in the car to wrap flowers in for people. They’re all recycled plastic bags of course. People often give me their used bags knowing I use them for flowers.
After the car is all loaded, it’s time to start cutting flowers. If it’s during a lull in the flower season, I wait until late afternoon to start picking. But if it’s during high flower season, I usually start picking flowers right after lunch. During the summer it’s usually like standing in a hotbox out in the field with the sun beating down. I make sure to keep the cut flowers in the shaded grassy area then. There’s a benefit to the hot days though, it means the bees are moving quickly so they fly away when I cut the flowers.
During the autumn, the air is more comfortable for being out in the field, but the bees moving slowly because they’re cold. Flowers take longer to cut then because I have nudge the bees out of the blossoms so I don’t end up bringing them into the house. Sometimes one or two of them get through and once they feel the warm air the house, they fly around like crazy. I don’t like to kill honeybees or bumblebees, so it makes for a wild evening of trying to capture the renegade bees in a plastic cup and toss them outside.
Fortunately bumblebees and honeybees are pretty docile even when they’re confused. 
They don’t sting unless they really have to. Yellow jackets are another story. Those girls are just plain mean and will sting you as often as possible. It’s never fun when a yellow jacket ends up in the house with a bundle of flowers.
If I’m between patches or if it’s early in the season and there aren’t many flowers yet, I pick them on my own. I cut until my free arm can’t hold anymore, and then I lay the pile on the ground and move on. After I have the patch cut, I go back down the rows and pick up all the piles and load them on the back of the truck to bring them down to the house. Once in a while I miss a pile and find it a few days later. When that happens, I bring them home and drop them in a vase to decorate my own table.
If there are a lot of flowers, I enlist the help of my cousin as carrier. While I cut, he holds them until he gets a big armful and carries them back to truck. We keep ourselves amused by bantering back and forth about sci-fi movies or young adult novels. And we’re usually discussing plans for that year’s comic con or Halloween costumes (Halloween is a really big deal in my family, so we’re basically planning for it all year long)
Once the flowers are all picked, I haul the piles from the truck into the house. Then I sit for a several hours and strip off the leaves and make sure they’re all touching water in the buckets. I usually watch a movie or two while I’m pulling off the leaves to make it more fun. Ben-Hur is usually a good choice during high flower season because it’s such a long movie.
Once the flowers are stripped, if it’s not too late in the evening I make bouquets for the next day’s market. The mixed flower bouquets always get done first. If there’s a special order or two of sunflowers, I do those the night before as well, just to make sure they’re ready. Finally I set all the finished bouquets and remaining buckets of flowers by the door, ready to pack them in the car the next day.
Copyright © Amber Reifsteck ~ The Woodland Elf
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