State of the Farm 2024

by Nikki Bartley

Today is March 24^th and I just returned home from a week-long writing retreat with 18 other wild and wonderful women in Yelapa, Mexico. My husband and boys are skiing in NH enjoying the best powder day of an otherwise lackluster ski season on the East Coast. This gives me a day to stretch out and consider the end of winter and the 2024 farming season ahead. Our 6 week Spring share starts this week as our first greenhouse tulips are blooming, and our Barn Shop opens for Easter weekend this Friday.

This is the 10^th season of Cross Street Flower Farm and our 9^th year in business. What do I want to say about this year? I read back through last year’s State of the Farm 2023 which was filled with our heady accomplishments in 2022 and the season of events that I had in store for 2023. I could certainly spend the next few paragraphs listing off the stats showing a record number of bouquets and cut your own tickets sold in 2023. It was our best season ever.

But what rabbit do I plan to pull out of my hat this year? How can I top what I as a farmer and we as a team have already accomplished on our 7 acres at Jacobs Farm? The truth is I have no suprise up my sleeve this season. I have been wrestling with this all winter, this sense of distress over the fact that after 10 seasons of unbelieveable growth, I have pretty much scaled the mountain that was my flower farm dream.

And standing at the top of this proverbial mountain, rather than being proud of my accomplishments, I have been looking around, doubting and fearing what comes next. All winter I have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for everything to fall apart. The truth is, I am scared that now that I have built the farm anything that comes next will be well, less impressive, or that maybe the community will stop loving our flowers quite as much.

I almost didn’t go to Yelapa on the writing retreat. The workshop is for travel writers and I am not a travel writer. I am a flower farmer with a blog that I sometimes post to and I am not sure anyone even reads. The trip felt extravagant. My oldest son is graduating high school and my husband is in between jobs. We have three boys that we have to put through college. So many things to worry about, endlessly, really. And that’s what I have been doing all winter, just stuck in my own head listening to a litany of worries.

But, two of my dear friends that I met in Nepal a year and a half ago on the Himalayan Writers Workshop were going to Yelapa and Lavinia Spalding, the amazing travel writer and teacher that first convinced me to go to Nepal, was also teaching this workshop in Mexico. In Nepal, I had met 9 amazing people with a connection that felt like kismet and out of that trip came the BLOOM mini-retreat and fundraiser for Quilts for Kids Nepal last summer on the farm that they all attended and helped me organize.

But more importantly than BLOOM, the truly lasting thing that came from my trip to Nepal were these deep, nurturing friendships I made without even trying. Before I went to Nepal, I had convinced myself that I was no longer good at making and keeping friends. Since I started Cross Street, I didn’t seem to have time to invest in friendships. But these people were somehow different, they were just like me. They travel like me. They abhor small talk like me. I mean, we go straight to the deep talk as soon as we are together, but somehow we have plenty of time to laugh too. Something about traveling together in a strange, magical place half way around the world really brings people together.

So, when Karen and Lisa, my Nepal besties, begged me to go to Yelapa, Mexico, this hillside, jungle fishing town an hour water taxi ride from Puerto Vallarta, with promises of fish tacos and margaritas on the beach, my resistance started to fall. I talked with Scott, my husband and my farm manager, Rebecca, and surprisingly, they both gave me their blessing.

On the first afternoon in Puerto Vallarta, we, as the group of 18 women sat in a circle introducing ourselves. I am not going to lie, I was a little nervous about a full week with this many women. The trip organizer, Christina Ammon, is an Oregon-based travel writer, paraglider and seasoned retreat leader. Christina has been leading Deep Travel workshops in Spain, Morocco, Nepal and Yelapa for the past 16 years. She leads these trips as she travels, offering us community sparingly, with plenty of time to be on our own. That reassured me.

Stepping off the water taxi in Yelapa and winding our way up the cobblestone street wide enough only for donkeys and ATV’s, I also started to feel a little bit lighter. Karen and I checked into our casita, a bungalow terraced into the hillside with a very steep staircase leading from the top of the cobblestone hill we traveled from town straight down to the beach below. Our strenuous hike up the hill was rewarded as we made our way down that staircase. Our view was of a perfect strip of beach, palm trees, Yelapan dogs running freely up and down the beach in front of a row of thatched beach restaurants serving Pacifico beers, fish tacos and margaritas. I fell asleep each night to the sound of waves crashing against the shore and woke to roosters crowing in the distant village. Yelapa time started to creep into my skin.

During an early group dinner in Yelapa at an open air restaurant called Pollo Bollo over pina coladas and grilled fish, I had two separate and intense conversations with women I had just met on the trip. They opened their hearts to me and told me their stories and I felt such a wave of gratitude that they would feel so comfortable sharing their lives with me. I went to bed promising myself that I would try to talk to each woman on the trip, to learn their stories and to meet them where and how they wanted to be seen. It felt like I was being given a gift and I spent the rest of the week sharing chips and guacamole and long hikes to waterfalls and swims in the ocean, getting to know these beautiful souls.

So today, home in Norwell, I sit at my computer, thinking about the season that starts full tilt tomorrow, and suddenly I know exactly how I want the 2024 season to unfold. Naturally and without expectation or fanfare, just with gratitude for the small miracles that unfold on the farm every day. I am promising to allow myself enough time to slow down and enjoy each moment, from the first daffodil bloom to the last dahlia bud.

This trip reminded me that it is my love of farming that has made Cross Street Flower Farm what it is today, that every day I bring my heart and soul to this farm, to my team, and together we bring this passion for growing flowers to our South Shore community. It is simple, we are not saving lives, but it is what I love to give. So, this season, instead of announcing any new grand plans, I am announcing that I will be looking for opportunities to enjoy the small moments of connection and joy, and trying hard to keep my heart open to the magic of flowers and the community that we create and share together.