A Week in July at PepperHarrow Farm

It’s been a busy couple of months at PepperHarrow! From hosting unique farm experiences, workshops, festivals, running to the Farmers Market every weekend, to just keeping up with everyday farm tasks, we have a lot going on and thought it would be fun to share with y’all what a typical week on the farm looks like.

Monday

While we usually take Monday’s “off”, the week starts with harvesting flowers to be picked up by a regional distributor. This is usually around 500 stems of various flowers we have a few extras of, after our weekends spent hosting events.

The rest of our Monday is spent focused on running our business, which includes: making business calls, answering emails, and preparing and planning for the week ahead. The week goes so much smoother if we take the time before it starts to sit down, connect, and be intentional with our plans.

Tuesday

On Tuesday mornings, we harvest and deliver flowers to local florists around the Des Moines Metro Area. It usually means very early mornings, but we love getting to share our blooms with our local community and connect with friends of PepperHarrow. The rest of the day involves a lot of weeding, planting, and general farm clean up. These are the things we don’t love, but are so necessary to run a successful flower farm.

As of recently, Tuesday mornings also mean sitting down with our Event Coordinator, Keilah, to discuss the week and maybe even the month ahead. We discuss newsletters, plan upcoming blog posts, brainstorm flower farm tips and tricks for sharing, and talk about plans and communications for any upcoming events. It’s been an exciting new position to have at the farm to help with large events.

Wednesday

Wednesdays are a lot like Tuesdays with a lot of weeding, planting, and general upkeep of the farm. It might not be the most fun, but these days are the backbone of what we do and are absolutely essential.

If the weather is bad, or if it’s super hot outside, which is very common in July, we usually have our team come inside our shop and make lavender products like candles, perfumes, soaps and sprays, and culinary goods. We also take time to get caught up on organization, which is usually lacking over here, but our employees rock at getting us back on track. Can anyone relate here? Lol!

Thursday

Thursday mornings start with harvesting flowers for the Downtown Des Moines Farmers Market, and for bouquets for specialty stores around Des Moines. We spend the afternoon crafting stunning bundles and bouquets.

When we have weekend events on the farm, Thursdays are also a great prep day for our Event Coordinator. We send email reminders to guests and class attendees, and gather materials to set aside, so everything is in one place and easy to find on the day-of. With the potential for lots of visitors, we also make sure our products are ready and labeled, and that our farm shop is fully stocked with our homemade lavender products and other goodies.

Friday

Fridays (surprisingly, we know), start with harvesting more flowers! We then spend the afternoon gathering farm shop goodies for the weekend and prepping our Farmers Market bouquets. Our takeaway bouquets are a favorite with our customers and we usually sell out each weekend.

Saturday

From 7AM until Noon, you can find us at the Downtown Des Moines Farmers Market selling the products and bouquets we’ve worked hard all week to prepare. We love to catch up with and see our friends and local partners and would love for y’all to visit us some Saturday soon!

When we’re not busy with the Farmers Market, we host monthly CSA flower pickups at the farm, where we have premade bouquets ready for pick up, or a group of folks come to pick their own monthly bouquet. Other weekends we host a number of classes and events like soap making, perfume making, essential oil distillation, or dinners among the flowers.

We hope you’ve enjoyed taking a little look behind what our daily and weekly activities look like at the flower farm. As you can see, it takes a lot of time, hard work, and patience to run the farm, but we love what we do, and we love getting to share it with y’all. We hope to see you soon!

XX Jenn and Adam