Popping Up...Again!

Remember last summer!? We did this! And we're doing it again!

Tomorrow, Saturday 9/7, from 10-3 we will be slanging veg, making bouquets and talking up our new offerings! It's a great time of year for seasonal produce buying...my favorite, really. Because, finally, the tomatoes are on! We're growing about 30 plants this year, a notable increase from last year's 17. But I didn't experiment with varieties as much. I stuck with my true favorites: Cherokee Purple, Paul Robeson, Mortgage Lifter, Persimmon, Green Grape, Black Cherry, Sungold, Matt's Wild Cherry and Juliet Hybrid. My only experiments were a lemon yellow currant-sized cherry for floral designs and Indigo Rose, the *actually* black tomato, which I am still figuring out...hard to tell when that one's ripe!

We're also growing my favorite kind of tomatillo, Mexican Strain. It tastes nothing like it's bulbous, Hulk-green cousin! It's sweet...I mean, caramel-cherry-pineapple-kinda sweet, but with a serious tang, too. Oven-roasted in salsa, it will absolutely knock your socks off. Raw, cut into a green salad with sharp white cheddar and blueberries? Incredible :)

And with any luck, we'll have some hella-hot Scotch Bonnet peppers to continue with the socks-knocking-off!

Ok, speaking of new offerings...I have them! I'm still in marketing materials development, but I'm totally ready to talk vision. I've realized that my heart is calling out to do more of my art, extend my aesthetic out into the world, work hard to create sustainable beauty around me and for my community. So Flying Bear Farm is shifting business focus onto Floral, Event, Garden and Lifestyle Design! The other part of my realization was that, no matter what, growing food is life. It's what I do, what I want to teach others to do, and where I find true beauty. But it's not what's going to pay the bills...YET. So I'm turning my innate skills and gleaned wisdom around design into my livelihood. Come talk to me more about this awesomeness and what I can offer while I'm tying bouquets at the POP-UP FARM STAND!!!

Lots of summer love to you all!
-Melissa

Summer Love

Hello again, my loves! Time has passed...a crazy amount of it when I actually look back to what I was doing the last time I wrote to you all. Let me just say that last winter and spring were HARD. Yes, there were some really delightful things going on, and, as always, friends and family filled my heart-space with a ton of wonderfulness. However, depression wormed its way in...and I felt like a shadow for a while there. It is also really hard to talk about feeling depressed, so thank you for hearing me. And thank goddess for life coaching, walks around Greenlake, cross-country skiing in Glacier National Park, flowers, naturopathy, my childhood home, and my amazing habibi Ben, who weathered it all with grace, patience and love! I feel much more like myself now, particularly after embarking on a soul-nourishing, BIG LOVE journey! Ben and I GOT HITCHED!! Woot! To begin my re-entry into blogging and reaching out with my work, I wanted to share the vision that we had for the design of our wedding reception. The photos below are of a lil' photoshoot my mom and I did about a week AFTER the wedding. This is totally representative of the feel we were going for...cheerful, eclectic, sunrise-y, abundant and blissful! I hope you totally enjoy this little vignette!

 We found all of the dishes, flatware and table linens (enough for almost 20 tables!) at Goodwill, except for the table topper, which was a family heirloom. The flowers are all from my farm, as are the tomatoes. The tomato tarts are made with love by Molly. The jam favors, which we handed out at the wedding, were made over the summer by the two of us! The tags are handmade by me :)

 Nina, of course, wanted to know if we were done with those tarts...

Many new offerings, due in part to this amazing endeavor, are about to be revealed by Flying Bear Farm! Keep your ears perked and eyes pealed for more! 

With sweetest, deepest love,

-The Flying Bear

Creating a Floral Art Installation

 

Last Friday night I went out on a limb (good pun there!) and created an organic, whimsical, unexpected floral art installation for the Greenwood/Phinney Art Walk at Urban Light Studios. The back story is really pretty straight forward: I did wedding flowers for my dear friends Geoff and Carrie at ULS, the gals that run the space dug my designs and loved that I'm a local artisan and grower, we met and came up with this idea to get me some marketing exposure and them some added interest in the event space...done deal!

But what is really more mystical and slightly mind blowing (at least to me) is the process of actually getting to the point of creating this thing: coming up with the vision, planning it out, asking for help, trusting my skills, trusting that people wanted to see it...hell, actually calling myself an artist...this is all epic in the context of my growth as a designer and a human being. I engaged in probably 3 weeks of active creative thought, sketching, imagining, scoping out blooms and branches and budding things in my neighborhood...and about 5 days of incredibly challenging, anxiety-producing, yet fully blissful work to actually create the installation. Let me just say now, without the endlessly encouraging, pleasant, hard-working support of my mom, Molly, I would have crashed and burned on this project. Not because of any dire failing of vision or planning on my part, but because in any venture like this one, you just need help...it's just always freakin' true. On the morning of the show, I came down with a whopping head cold that left me in a FOG...and my mama pulled me through it with drugs, love and soup. And, she held the ladder...she held the SHIT outta' that ladder. Not only is that literally true, but is a figurative metaphor for how much she really did to help me with this show, from creating cocoon lanterns to sweeping up after me...I feel immense gratitude to know that she believes in me so much that she would dedicate so much to me...THANK YOU!

The Flying Bear Farm office, night before the show.

The Bower

My inspiration for the installation started with this time of year...the earliest buds on tree branches, forced bulbs in the garden stores, the tulips just beginning to push out of the ground in my garden, the very first plum blossoms, and a deep desire to see COLOR. After all that grey, white, brown, and evergreen around, a pop of magenta, cascade of saffron and streak of violet really speak to me! So the colors I settled on were a Bohemian mix of jewel tones and bright pastels with a weird splash of mustard yellow and pop of turquoise.

But deciding on colors wasn't helping me to create an actual art installation...What did that was two fold: a faerietale I told myself, and the bowerbird. I'll start with the faerietale...

There was a young man...a charming, dirty farm hand. He fell in love with a beautiful sylvan faerie he met in the woods beyond the farm. To show her his love, he created a wedding scene with all of the beauty he could find around him, on the farm and in the woods. When she saw what he had created, she fell in love with him, too...

 

And then there's the bowerbird, meticulously curating collections of beautiful objects to attract his beloved. Check out this video for the full story on this inspiring lover!

So I created an installation of collections, objects and flowers pulled together all for one imagined, overarching reason...to draw in the beloved! Flowers with intoxicating scents and bright, unexpected colors. Lanterns shaped like cocoons and tiny magical teepees to live in. An spell-binding bridal bouquet, complete with beets from the field, heavy with orchids, tulips, hyacinth and jasmine. Organic, gnarled, lichen-covered branches to get caught in. And a bower filled with precious piles of leaves, shells, rosehips, feathers and old tin cans filled with flowers.

The Bridal Bouquet...with beets!

I feel like this was a really successful event. Not only did I get to talk to great people about floral design (yay networking!), I also got to explore myself as an artist, put myself out into the Universe in a challenging and blissful way, and enjoy the hell outta myself while doing it! So, huzzah!! Thank you to all who came to be a part of this ephemeral event, and who supported me through the creative process. There will be more, much nicer photos soon, thanks to Katie, so keep an eye out for those! I can't wait to spread my wings again, as an artist and growing human being...xoxo!

With love,
~The Flying Bear

Seed Dreams

Pouring over seed catalogs and dreaming of the growing season...This is how I feel about having a garden, about farming and growing food and being an integral and intentional part of Nature. It gives me the whole universe as a gift...

The Seed Market

Can you find another market like this?

Where,

with your one rose

you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?

Where,

for one seed

get a whole wilderness?

For one weak breath,

a divine wind?

You've been fearful

of being absorbed in the ground,

or drawn up by the air.

Now, your waterbead lets go

and drops into the ocean,

where it came from.

It no longer has the form it had,

but it's still water

The essence is the same.

This giving up is not a repenting.

It's a deep honoring of yourself.

When the ocean comes to you as a lover,

marry at once, quickly,

for God's sake!

Don't postpone it!

Existence has no better gift. 

No amount of searching 

will find this. 

A perfect falcon, for no reason 

has landed on your shoulder,

and become yours.

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks

With big love,
~Melissa