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0:13hi I'm Emily Bon trp from bonap flowers and I am flower farming in central

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0:23Vermont I am a zone four year round flower farmer we are harvesting here on this Farm 365 days a year a lot of that

0:31is my tulip crop our secondary crop here are lies that dovetail perfectly with the

0:38Tulips I grow you know five times as many flowers in the winter months compared to what I could do in say July and

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0:48August we're growing and providing Beauty for our community year

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0:57round I've been growing flowers since I was 12 the land that I farm on was

1:04originally purchased by my Omen opa my father grew up here on this land and they started a business here that

1:11originally started with vegetable market gardening um and then ultimately they shifted and started a Retail Nursery I

1:19started harvesting flowers making bouquets and selling them to markets locally and I've been now selling there

1:27for gosh over 30 years years it's been a long time I continued to do my flower

1:34farming even as I was off in college and then when I moved back here I was teaching but also flower farming and

1:42juggling a lot and that's when I started dabbling with growing tulips and initially it wasn't winter tulips for me

1:50my first year which was 2011 I started with 3,000 bulbs I found

1:56that having a crop that I could Pro program the way that I do with tulips was a game Cher for my business being

2:04able to grow year round brought me to a different level on what I can achieve throughout the farm we rely

2:12heavily on covered growing spaces and in our infrastructure we have six tunnels and then we also have a farmers's friend

2:19tunnel that we use here and I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing without that as a resource so covered space is

2:28huge even our lilies in High season we're growing under tunnels to protect them from insect pressure and the ly Leaf Beetle or to protect them from

2:36excess rain tunnels are a really critical part of our growing process

2:45here people are you know desperate for beauty and color in the winter and in the summertime we see

2:53people are going on vacation or they have flowers in their own yards the market isn't as ripe for me here in the summer as it is in the

3:02winter

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3:19months it's not just me here I have an incredible team that are helping me out on a daily basis I have two employees one is

3:29full-time and one is almost full-time um and they help me from anything from planting the tulips in the fall to

3:35harvesting to processing flowers um and doing

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3:42deliveries both my employees are passionate about what we're doing and bringing Beauty into the community so I feel really grateful that I have

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3:58them we Harvest here almost every day and those flowers are being moved out within the 24 hours of us harvesting

4:06them so that our customers are getting the freshest local flowers possible and those are going wholesale

4:15out to Market so independent grocery stores and co-ops a couple other boutique stores and partnering with a

4:22bakery and then about 20% of what we're growing here is going to our CSA we do 235 sheet chairs um to CSA members and

4:32we have actually seven different pickup sites and then we do an on Farm pickup as well and what we've heard from people

4:40is being able to come and step into the greenhouse on like a 5° day in the middle of winter is like therapy you

4:49know just the smell the sense of the humidity on your skin and then seeing all these gorgeous varieties of

4:57tulips and it's pretty amazing that that's what I get to do that I get to grow Beauty for my community and have

5:04an impact and know that my flowers are bringing smiles to people's faces that they're being gifted to other people that something we're cultivating is

5:13creating moments of happiness and joy for people all throughout Vermont in the summer we are growing a

5:22lily crop that we're doing in successions the same way we're growing our tulips so those are being harvested did

5:30weekly and being planted weekly as well we stay busy throughout the whole season uh and part of that is me wanting to

5:37make sure that my team is employed year round the other thing that makes this

5:45farm so magical in the High season is my father's Garden which is this beautiful

5:52display Garden that he developed over many years we offer Open Garden days throughout the summer because that is

6:00really a treasure and we want people to have access to it um cuz there's so much love and beauty poured into

6:10that growing in the winter and growing this crop they're um very dependent on sufficient water so I'm here every day

6:19checking on things making sure things are well hydrated a big portion of what we're doing is moving things

6:27around we refer to it as tulip Tetris so we're taking crates of bulbs out of cold holding and moving them into staging

6:34houses and moving things from staging houses into our growing house so it's lots of moving pieces lots of moving

6:41Parts lots of physically demanding work those crates weigh up to 65 lbs and we're moving you know a 100 a day and so

6:50we we call it tool of CrossFit we're staying very fit and strong here on the farm by incorporating tulips into my

6:59farm in 2011 I was able to really change the way I farm then I started using a

7:07process that I refer to as suspended animation where I created a snow bunker where I'm using the natural resources that we have here in Vermont of snow as

7:15the insulator and then cold banking our cold nighttime temperatures to slowly freeze down the mass of tulips that I

7:23have planted in there and by doing that I can have tulips blooming later than what are normal Al outside ground

7:30plantings when they're blooming and all of that has contributed to this like gamechanging component of my business

7:37which is winter tulip growing my business partner Linda diarco and I started the Tulip Workshop as a

7:46way to share uh what we've learned about winter growing and season extension um because we wanted to help other flower

7:53Farmers find the same success we did we're thrilled to be able to share all the inci out it's of tulip growing

8:01with our students who are now all around the world and it's pretty fulfilling to see the success that they're

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8:11having I was recently asked you know if you could give advice to anybody relating to my flower farming Journey

8:19what would that be and my advice would be to go for it you know there was so much time that I feel like I wasted

8:27being nervous about taking the leap and staying in my conventional job and I wish I had just been crazy um because

8:35what you will find is when you put your intention and your passion into something and you put that desire to

8:43create or to grow something out into the universe the universe listens and what can Blossom from that is absolutely

8:50exceptional and amazing

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9:04hi guys I'm Jonathan with farmer friend if you enjoyed this video hit the like button and subscribe to see more inspiring stories like this to learn more about our Innovative small farm

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