Musings

My soapbox moment at the 2018 Marlborough Food and Wine Festival

I have a very cool flower pal from Los Angeles who once remarked, in an effort to vocalise her take on the Kiwi way, “You don’t march!”. Her point being that other than perhaps nuclear way back, and the original Suffragettes even further back, Kiwis seldom get agitated or mobilised politically, relative of course to her reference as a young, urban and liberal American. We’re a pretty sedate bunch, really. And probably because we can afford to be.

This is a rather roundabout way of saying it occurs to me, we really do need to (ought to) stand for something (some Thing), right? Where we are. Even if “where” is placid, pedestrian, provincial New Zealand. (Paradise, put another way.)

This little talk or script is me standing for something, then… This is me “marching” – for flowers! Local, seasonal, organic flowers at that… Thank you for coming to hear me out.

I recall a revelatory moment I had many seasons ago, when I was still researching flower farming. I had reached out to the flower exporters in Auckland and wanted to know where the opportunities or niches lie. Among other things and given my location in Marlborough, I was told there is real scope for exporting Lilac branches to the US. I remember thinking, without even truly having crossed paths with the local flower movement, how “wrong” it felt – this idea that I would be growing something in provincial NZ that would then end up somewhere in the States, hopelessly out of season, and with a food mile equivalent to make your eyes water. I knew there and then, really, that growing for export wasn’t for me. What’s more is, I thought myself into the role of the hypothetical consumer, Stateside, who would fall over her feet to lay her hands on a few stems of NZ grown Lilac – overpriced and days and days old, roundabout Halloween time, if you can bear to picture it…

I also knew that consumer wasn’t “my” consumer.

As it happens I stumbled upon a beautifully affirmative sentiment back then by an American who was commenting on the availability of imported peonies at the opposite end of the season there, and how a peonie at Christmas was akin to having eggnog on the 4th of July. I couldn’t have expressed my sentiments better had I tried!

Seasonality, then, is a huge part of what I hope to leave with you today.

I am addressing you at a wine and food festival, so you’d be forgiven for asking, “Why flowers?”.

I think my thread today mostly has to do with provenance, and all it encompasses, in answer to that question. All the while I’m trying to impart a sentiment around the fact that flowers are and or should be part of the local produce posse. Seasonality and origin pertain as much to flowers as it does to food.

Is provenance, or where something comes from to put it simplistically, only relevant if we are imbibing it, or ingesting it?

I have often reflected that it is precisely because cut flowers are ornamental rather than edible that their provenance is overlooked, dismissed, and that the ethics of cultivating them are compromised. (We don’t care as much about how flowers are grown or where they come from because there’s no harm implied to our bodies.)

Though, do me a favour and pay close attention the next time you hand a bunch of flowers to someone… The first thing we humans do, without fail almost, is stick our noses in there and take a deep sniff. We can’t help but touch some of the more textural bits, too (toddlers are especially hopeless). We bring these blooms into the intimacy of our homes and behold them and commune with them for days. They mean so much to us…  And yet we don’t know where they come from, who grew them and or how.

Yes, we don’t eat the flowers we are given in a bouquet, but let’s agree that flowers are also GROWN – just like vegetables – in soil, i.e. in the earth, and in a wider ecology, the wellbeing of which is of immense importance – to humans, animals and insects alike.

The arrangements I styled for this very venue was actually an exercise in illustrating that the line between what is ornamental and what is edible is a blurry one indeed. Sunflowers, for one, epitomise this duality; and then the gourmet (homegrown) capsicums I’ve used are such beautiful edibles I’ve employed them here as ornamentals, rather. Perhaps I never even intended eating them! Flowers in an edible sense are often herbal or medicinal in essence, i.e. they feed the body. In their purely ornamental form though, flowers feed the soul… they stimulate the higher faculties, if you like. And yet, we cannot feed our souls if we haven’t fed our bodies.

Do ornamental cut flowers have absolutely no utility, then? Other than being beautiful and making us happy, that is. They really do – have utility, I mean. Flowers are often used as a companion plant to vegetables, in a very utilitarian sense (the veggies NEED the flowers!). Think Marigolds with tomatoes, Borage with strawberries, Chamomile with onions, Cosmos with celery, and Sunflowers with cauliflower. I could go on.

My point is this: food and flowers (and wine and hospitality) go together. LOCAL food and flowers go together. We should care about both. Just like we do about fair trade bananas, free farmed bacon and banning single use plastic bags.

What’s an easy way of doing just that? Support your local farmer-florist.

And just like that we’re back at provenance.

What is a farmer-florist? A flower farmer who adds his or her own value, offering a range of floristry “products” and services (think gift bouquets, weddings, events, etc.)  and who sells direct to his or her local community. (More often than not farmer-florists grow organically, even if not necessarily certified.)

So the rise of the famer-florist is also the story of local flowers, which can probably in some ways be traced back to Amy Stewart’s 2008 book, Flower Confidential, the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful. Names like Debra Prinzig, Tara Kolle, Jennie Love and Erin Benzakein followed, and concepts such as “slow flowers,” “field to vase” and “the fifty mile bouquet” were spawned, and the rest is a little like history. Debra Prinzig especially has made a colossal contribution with championing the idea of slow flowers, specifically. I adore the impactfulness of her grip on what slow flowers are about: origin, seasonality, and conscious consumer choice.

At the time of writing, the farmer-florist hashtag had 147 369 posts on Instagram, slow flowers 137 079, and field to vase 30 698.

I won’t delve deep into the New Zealand flower industry right here and now, suffice to say that there might be a small revolution of sorts brewing “in the middle,” and that’s right where we need it to. Our  industry has bled novelty growers since the late 1990s and so is for the most part dominated by big, monoculture, high tech growers (note I don’t use the word “farms”). At the other extreme is the home garden, and somewhere between these two poles the farmer-florist comes into being, always on a real farm or at least field, always diversified, and always able to offer a mixed bouquet of deliciously novel or nostalgic blooms, in season, grown close to its market, and known to and in its community. Have I mentioned it’s all to do with provenance?

Since we’re at a wine festival right here and now, what I’m on about is analogous to the concept of  terroir…

Wikipedia refers to the “unique environment contexts, farming practices and a crop’s specific growth habitat” as having a collective character, i.e. terroir. “Some artisanal crops for which terroir is studied include wine, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, chili peppers, hops, agave (for making tequila and mezcal), tomatoes, heritage wheat, maple syrup, tea, and cannabis.”

I’ve arrived back at the beginning – yes we don’t eat cut flowers, but ultimately we should care about how they are grown, by whom and where. In short, the provenance of cut flowers is in some ways also a terroir of sorts.

To conclude, if I may seize this lovely little soapbox so… Hospitality is the height of (our) civilisation. And it is nothing if not food and wine and conversation. I believe hospitality is only ever completely complete with the inclusion of fresh flowers. My crop deserves a seat at the local produce table and I hope to have inspired you all a little to think again about flowers, their place in our lives, in our communities and especially their provenance.

Thank you for coming to listen!

In some ways diversified flower growing is a drug. A drug made for my particular body and soul.

I adore the total immersion it demands, the complexity, the problem-solving… and though failures are as common as success, when I find a plant that does well with me, at my coordinates and in my hands so to speak (read vase), the positive feedback is a rush as great as any of the chemical kind (read adrenaline or endorphins, not cannabis and whatever else!).

Asclepias currasavica, “Silky Mix” or “Silky Gold” is just such a plant.

I can’t even recall where or how or why I first sowed its seeds, but it has been part of our regime ever since, and in no way has the joy it inspires here waned over the years.

Farmer-florist portfolios are purposefully radical, even brave. Simply put: we grow and style the stuff you often can’t find via the commercial trade. Enter Asclepias.

That kind of novelty and speciality often does require a bit of extra TLC, whether it’s on the field or in the vase.

I’ve just posted on Instagram and Facebook that our weekly market bouquet delivery to New World in Blenheim this week included some Asclepias. Our little town’s support there has taken us by surprise, on top of having gone into this particular season with a very deliberate re-engineering of our business, but in an open-ended kind of way. My point being we went into this season not entirely sure where and how we will find our feet after having let go of large volume wholesale growing.

I mention this as I’d love our customers to know we are working on all kinds of added value bits, including tags to go on to the market bouquets advising of special care instructions and a detailed web page with more information and techniques for caring for these “higher maintenance” cuts. Please know, though, after many a season of growing and caring for Asclepias it has always, always been worth the little bit of extra effort.

So, it’s really no big deal… When we pick we recut the stems once in the shed with a bucket of a few centimetres of boiling hot water on hand. The freshly cut stems go straight into the hot water for a generous, lazy 30 seconds or more even. We then lift them and into cool water they go. If we then use them in a bouquet or vase we don’t cut again, unless proceeding with the hot water treatment again. Vase life varies from 1 to 2 weeks, depending on how mature the stems were picked in my experience. (More mature stems last longer.)

I’ll end off with a bit of nomenclature. Asclepias currasavica is also known as Tropical Milkweed or Butterfly Flower. It is related to the Swan Plant if I have my stuff correct and indeed attracts the Monarch Butterfly, which we spotted one of on the field just this week, having been without for a season or two. Asclepias is tender in Marlborough’s climate though I’ve seen plants come through the winter at the Wynen Street wildflower garden deep in the heart of Blenheim. I save seed pods here and sow from scratch every season in September. The Monarch’s progeny in the form of the THE most gorgeous zebra-striped black-and-white caterpillars you’ll ever see can sometimes be found in our crop in the autumn. A special moment for us.

When I met my winemaker-husband in the late 90s, “the flying winemaker” was an actual thing.

The so-called New World and especially the countries Down Under had made such advances in viticulture and winemaking that their young professionals were sought-after as help and consultants during the northern hemisphere, read “Old World”, harvest. The latter being smack bang in the former’s downtime made for many opportunities and many an adventure, including the one I tagged along to for a while there.

Travelling and winemaking, wine education or wine appreciation still go together like few other combinations in a broader sense, though the title “flying winemaker” probably has waned a little in its reach or use.

I’d like to propose, officially, the flying farmer-florist, then…

We don’t have divisions such as an old and a new world in flowers, but we do have the hemispheres and the natural downtime in each other’s winters that could potentially be used for travelling. Our “industry” doesn’t have a clear and academic career path like winemakers do, and so exchanging knowledge and sharing ideas, observing and learning … these become even more profound and necessary in a way. As anyone who has ever grown cut flowers and added the value themselves will agree, ours is not the easiest ways of making a living. Diversified farming of ornamentals can be an overwhelming, complex and fraught proposition and hence learning from each other, to my mind, is almost an occupational necessity – a way even of upping our professionalism, skills and enthusiasm for what we do.

We are old hands at hosting here at Verve and Chez Wardman at the top of NZ’s South Island. In recent years especially we seem to have been sought out by professional flower growers or farmer-florists who are using their deep winter for a spot of travelling and, well, cross pollination if you’ll excuse the obviousness of the pun.

Diversified flower growing is as rare as hen’s teeth in NZ (though there are a sprinkling of new growers popping up up and down the country of late), least of all a model where the value is added by way of “floristry” as in the farmer-florist example. Welcoming flower friends here for a week or three (or more) in our summer is a way of remaining connected and open to ideas, methods, experiences and, best of all, friendship.

We have a private cottage on the farm which we open for flower visitors and we welcome their help and input on the field and in the shed during their stay. Long and often deep and meaningful conversations and the occasional hearty meal come standard issue. High summer is a busy time for us and we work hard and long hours, but it’s also the time of year we have the most design briefs (and so we have a lot of fun), and it strikes me it’s also the one little interlude in our annual cycle where we’re not pulled in different directions. February, especially, is the one month of the year we are unlikely to be turning a bed over or sowing or planting anything of any kind.

I won’t say much in support of New Zealand as a destination here and now. It’s a beautiful country and we live in special part of it.

We’ve been hugely privileged to have welcomed names like Love ‘n Fresh Flowers (Philadelphia), Lindsey Myra (Melbourne), Pyrus Botanicals (Edinburgh), Carolyn Snell (Main), Juliah Thrift (Silverlake Farms), Leah Gerrard (Stone Barn, Rocksteady Farm), Alex Larkin (Floralora, Ontario) and even vegetable-growing warriors like Livia Urban Swart Haaland from OsterGrow in Copenhagen here at Verve. As I sit here writing this – listing these lovely and important names – I am humbled to think they were once present here to witness our endeavours, and so immensely grateful for their friendship and support. And for whatever innate qualities they share that made them get on a plane destined for NZ in the first instance!

The very, very beautiful – inside and out – Alex Larkin (the wisest and kindest 19 year-old to have ever crossed my path), currently with Floralora in Ontario, had this to say after spending a month with us in January 2017…

Jeanine has an open heart, and an air of kindness that surrounds her. I felt at home within her life and on her farm, the accommodation was generous and the area is stunning. Jeanine’s love of flowers is evident, each flower is treated tenderly from seed to stem, all that she does is with thoughtfulness. Having the opportunity to work alongside her was a beautiful learning journey, I would be back in a heart beat if I could.

If you think you’d like to visit, flick us an initial email at info@verveflowers.co.nz and we’ll go from there.

Jeanine

Verve is two acres of cut flowers and foliage grown on an old hay paddock, naturally sheltered from the relentless exposure across the rest of the Wairau Plains, 25 minutes west of Blenheim.

We live and work on a shallow and very free-draining stony loam in a fairly non-descript little side valley of the Wairau river. (I always think our valley’s name reflects its undistinguishedness… It’s just Centre Valley, you see.)

Although free of deficiencies, raising pH is a disciplined twice-yearly task and bringing our soil chemistry into a more harmonious interplay is an ongoing and organic goal. We are more intent on achieving this through making good compost than with an overly analytical approach and or commercial inputs.

Long springs and autumns, proper winters and warm dry summers make for relatively mellow growing conditions, reasonable season extension opportunities, and a deeply diversified portfolio of crops. (We can grow anything from peonies and lilacs to zinnias and amaranth – and well. Much to be thankful for, I know.)

The field is hugged to the east by the Centre Valley stream, in flood eight months of the year on average, and a solid knoll to the west on the epic Burnside Farm, quite possibly our single most valuable asset as it creates a little oasis and unique microclimate which we are so very grateful for. Our irrigation water is accessed as part of the Centre Valley Scheme, pumped from the Wairau river with its origin in the Southern Alps to holding tanks on our farm and gravity fed to the field. Without the shelter and the water there’d be no flowers here… and possibly not a real farm either.

The rest of our 10Ha small farm is home to a large genre-defying and exposed garden, about thirty head of cattle at any given time, the occasional orphaned lamb, a growing family of Indian Runner ducks, a rescued cat or two, a scattering of humans of course, and Jasper the Faithful, an old and gentle soul of the canine kind.

In spite of provincial childhoods and careers in the wine industry, we came to farming well and truly uninitiated. Certainly gardening is never something either my husband or I considered a pastime, least of all a vocation. We had not grown a single cut flower in our lives before sowing the first seeds on a sodden day in October of 2011, with an eight and a five year-old as help. What we did know was that Marlborough had no dedicated diversified flower farm (the model doesn’t really exist in New Zealand at all), that the climate was made for growing stuff, and that the little pocket of the province we had landed on had good soil, enviable water rights and great shelter from the notorious equinoxial nor’wester. (Sorry, I can’t say shelter too many times.)

Flowers had been calling me personally though, long before I ever thought a field of my own possible.

Prior to that momentous October day and after arriving in Marlborough as a South African via England in August of 2009, I had spent the better part of a year immersed at the other end of the supply chain, volunteering at a local florist and eventually being tutored in traditional floristry by the Marlborough institution that is Mrs. Bev Lyford, then in her garage in Rarangi. I am forever grateful for what was essentially the kindness of strangers, and of professionals. What I most gained, though, was the knowledge that I didn’t want to be “just” a florist, that Marlborough had no local supply of cut flowers, and that a strong business case could be made for vertically integrating the two and thus being both a grower and a florist. (Also that the New Zealand flower trade could’ve done with a bit of spunk at the time – hence, “Verve”.)

Little did I know that right about the same time in opposite corners of the US, Jennie Love and Erin Benzakein were blazing a trail along these lines and putting a name to what were just a jumble of ideas at my end still: that of the farmer-florist.

All the while public awareness of the virtues of local flowers as opposed to imported ones was gaining momentum on the back of the local food movement there. And Debra Prinzig was likewise coining the concept of “slow flowers” and communicating the principles of seasonality and traceability as it pertains to cut flowers with her “Fifty Mile Bouquet” and the field-to-vase hashtag.

Finding that my sudden and all-consuming interest in growing flowers, adding the value myself, subscribing to organics, and looking towards my local community for a market was a “thing”, out there in the world, that other women were already doing just that, that I could belong to a community of sorts… these were profoundly inspirational and affirmative sentiments and ones I clung to during those first few seasons. To say nothing of the fact that their flowers looked so very differently from what the commercial trade and retail florists could achieve… that their flowers had a sense of place – a terroir if you like, to borrow from the world of wine. In retrospect, the flowers had found me, more so than the other way around.

Several seasons have passed since.

The Killers have a song that implores: “you gotta be stronger than your story”.

Far from a romanticised meadow type set up where beautiful flowers effortlessly self-sow into existence, complete with elegant, unhurried pickers in straw hats, frolicking children and general placidness all round, ours has been a story we have had to be stronger than. Farming has been harder than I ever could imagine, and not as such. The physical demands I have mastered, the mental demands I am working on. Rather it’s the commercial realities of small scale farming, diversified crops and ornamentals ones at that, and their labour intensiveness – in a rural location far from an urban and critical mass – that have tested our mettle over the years.

For a while after we first got started it made more sense to grow and sell wholesale to other florists up and down the country at least in part, with the consequent infrastructure and logistics that that entailed, but we have well and truly wound our way back to our founding principles, and those of the authentic farmer-florist.

I have also heard it said that owning one’s story is one way of staying sane.

Our children have almost come of age and have done so on this very field I’m writing of. They will go off into the world in a matter of years with a vast knowledge of cut flowers and more importantly, an appreciation of the kind of work ethic farming such precocious and fleeting creatures demands. How this’ll serve them in their lives or if it’ll find application at all remains to be seen. Perhaps there is comfort to be found in simply claiming our story as truly ours, and the fact we have, all of us, been surrounded by immense beauty for what it’s worth.

All the while my husband and I have found peace in staying put and growing roots, too – on this field and in our community, after many years of seeking and roaming. We might very well be Marlburians and flower farmers for life.

Personally, my existence has been enriched immensely, in an untold number of ways. The flowers have played their part, it is true, but it is farming that has made me who I am. My politics, for one thing, are largely defined by my experiences on this field, by way of dirty hands so to speak. My interest in and commitment to organics, though tested thoroughly, has only been fuelled and made more sincere. Spiritually I have had to dig deep and often, and I think in coming to understand that gardening is truly a higher art my intellect has swelled and soared, too. I appreciate now what the American poet and farmer, Wendell Berry means when he claims the ultimate product of a season’s toil is the farmer’s mind. Perhaps more so even than her crops.

A great many souls have made a contribution on this field and shared in the Verve. Quite a few have probably left stirred, a little changed even. There have been employees, volunteers, overseas visitors, gardening clubs, neighbours and many a customer who have, in turn, touched us in many and important ways, too. For giving us a chance, for wanting us to succeed, for loving flowers and for valuing our work… we are deeply grateful to you all.

Jeanine

October 2017, Marlborough