To Spring 2023finity…and Beyond!

Welcome to the new year! Is 26 days in the year too long a time to be saying that?

I’d like to begin with some nursery news. We’re delighted to announce that we’ll be at the 2023 Vermont Flower Show! Our focus will be on willow’s use as cut stems in floral arrangements. We’ll have a selection of cut stems, rods, and live cuttings available. The show is March 3-5 so stop by and say hello! I’ve done similar events during my time at the USGS and they’re a lot of fun! We hope that this is just the first of many!

Even bigger news is that we’re officially reopening for Canadian orders! Sure, it involves us driving the orders to Canada ourselves, but we’re glad to finally be able to make it happen. Thank you to all of our northern neighbors who have expressed interest in willows and for your patience while we figure it out.

Big, but not as big: swag! We’ve ordered a small run of tshirts and sweatshirts with our logo and name on them. These will be high quality and printed at a business local to us and will be coming in a few weeks. On a personal note this is something I’m really excited to bring out. Most of my own shirts come from small businesses I’ve been to: restaurants, farms, community events, stuff like that. To have my own shirt is really kind of amazing to me. It’s probably not the most stunning achievement but I’m very proud here. We’ll expand our selection if the interest is there, so let me know what you think!

Gift cards are coming down the pipe! It’s finally happening! We have, like, the lamest gift giving system. A simple note. It’s what we had available to us at the time but lame! Still working on the final form of them, however, but they’re on the way.

This Spring’s harvest start date is still up in the air. So far Winter here has been extremely mild. I don’t think the temperature has dipped below zero once yet. According to my neighbors this is a prelude to heavy late winter storms, which would delay the start. If we get lucky and the temperatures remain relatively mild we’ll begin as soon as the nurseries become accessible. If that means we can start in early March we will. Hiking up and down the hills to get to them can be tough on a good day…snow cover makes it really tough.

That’s the future. I’ll switch gears here and talk a little about the past. Happy to report that this previous Autumn’s shipping season went exceedingly well! Expanding it to include hardiness zones 7a and b was a success, and we even snuck a few from 6 in there. I expect that this coming Autumn we’ll hold the course and next year we may expand it officially to include 6a and b.

I’ll wrap this up with a huge heartfelt thank you to everyone who supports us. The nursery exists on word-of-mouth and the number of people who reach us by referral is truly humbling. Really, I mean that. We run this whole endeavor out of our home, so your support of the nursery directly goes to keeping our lights on, and our house heated so our dog Pema (and us!) don’t freeze. I suppose what I’m saying is we’re actual humans here – not a conglomerate or faceless corporation – and we really do appreciate you.

Ok yea that sounds really corny reading it out loud.

-Aric