Jenny (00:28)
Welcome back to another episode. Today we are going to be talking about setbacks that actually spring us forward. And I'm having this conversation with Jennifer Galizia of the Flowering Farmhouse. Jennifer is a flower farmer, Dahlia hybridizer, flower educator, and fellow podcast host or based in Hood River, Oregon. She is the founder of
the flowering farmhouse where she grows sustainable local flowers with a very special focus on dahlias. She also has this amazing online learning community for dahlias growers called the Dahliya Patch, where she helps backyard gardeners and flower farmers successfully cultivate these beloved blooms dahlias. And as a fellow podcast host, she also hosts
A podcast called the backyard bouquet podcast where she shares inspiring conversations with flower farmers, gardeners, and industry experts. I'm really excited for you to hear this conversation because Jennifer's journey started like a lot of hours, a little bit unexpectedly. It sort of began as a passion project alongside her photography business, but it quickly flourished into her full-time career.
So when she's not tending to her flowers or recording podcast episodes, she's very passionate about teaching others how to grow things like dahlias with confidence, embrace sustainability and cultivate beauty in their lives. And today we're going to be talking a lot about Jennifer setbacks and how they've actually helped her.
move forward with her business. So let's get into it.
Jenny (02:11)
Hey Jennifer, thanks for being on the podcast today.
Jennifer Gulizia (02:14)
Jenny, thanks so much for having me.
Jenny (02:16)
I am so excited to talk to you. You are such an inspiration to me and you have such a wild story of overcoming unexpected things and growing your business from nothing. And I just think everybody listening is gonna have an amazing journey with us today. So would you mind just telling everyone just a little bit about you and your farm and where you are in your flower farming journey?
Jennifer Gulizia (02:40)
Absolutely. Well, I'm Jennifer Galizia of the Flowering Farmhouse and I live in Hood River, Oregon, growing zone 7B. And I like to say we're on the sunny side of the Cascades. Most people don't know of Hood River, but we're an hour east of Portland. You might know us as the windsurfing capital of the world, which is what brought me here. Really, I don't win. No, I don't windsurf anymore. I haven't windsurfed since I was pregnant with my daughter.
Jenny (03:02)
Really? You're a windsurfer?
Jennifer Gulizia (03:10)
But I still love the water.
So my story is not your traditional, grew up with no farming background, but I've always loved flowers. We had a flower farm in our backyard that was, well, it was right next to our backyard. We were leasing land for the last six years, slowly growing our business year after year. And we sadly lost our least growing space in 2023, which absolutely devastated me. I thought my world was crashing down.
but it seems like I truly believe that when a door closes, and I maybe didn't believe this in 2023, but in hindsight, I believe that when a door closes, if you look for that open window, there's something better coming. And for us, that was 20 acres. We're not cultivating 20 acres, but we have a 20 acre parcel that we are rebuilding our flower farm from the ground up right now.
Jenny (04:06)
Absolutely incredible. So you had this established flower farm that you were growing, lost the piece of land, had to find somewhere else to farm, move your whole farm. Just moving a farm, even in any capacity, is a massive undertaking. So what was going through your head when you lost that lease on your original land?
Jennifer Gulizia (04:30)
Honestly, I was so devastated. We, turned 40 in 2023 and I found out a week before we were leaving to Costa Rica to celebrate my birthday. And I was like, crap, do we cancel our trip? What do we do? And my husband's like, no, we go, we figure out how we're going to pivot and we'll be fine. And so we went and I mean, I thankfully was able to disconnect my mind for a little bit, but it was like, it's November, the gorge gets cold, we get snow.
how the heck am I going to move all of my peonies, all of my daffodils, all of these? Thankfully I hadn't invested in huge perennials, but I had like rhodo-beckyia and all kinds of little perennials that I had just planted that year. It's like, how am going to move all of this? And where am I going to go? We'd been looking for farmland for four years. Every offer we had ever made, we always lost out to a cash buyer. So was kind of like my husband had this mindset.
it's probably gonna be a couple years before you find something so you're gonna have to scale back. Let's clean up and we'll figure it out." And he's always had this positive mindset that everything is always gonna work out, everything is happening how it's supposed to and I was like, why is this happening to me? So honestly, I did not have a great mindset at first. was soul-crushing to think that like everything that I had poured my heart and soul into that I had put into the ground due to an unfortunate circumstance beyond anyone's
I was losing this space. So it wasn't easy at first.
Jenny (06:06)
So what mindset shifts did you have to make happen in order to accept that and move on to better things? Like you said before, you really believe that when one door closes, there's another one that's going to be opening. But it sounds like there were some things that had to happen for you to make that mindset shift.
Jennifer Gulizia (06:23)
Totally.
2024 was a year of incredible growth and it all started by hiring a coach. I hired a life coach in January. We started, I think our first meeting was probably on January 2nd and she asked me the question, my coach's name is Leah, I still work with her and she's amazing, and she asked me, she said, Jennifer, what is the one thing you want more than anything else in this world? And part of me wanted to be like, well, I want my flowers back.
But it really caused me to do deep soul searching and what I realized was I want time with my family. Our daughter is 10. Time is fleeting so fast. And so it led me to start thinking, well, how am going to have this time? We haven't had time to travel for all of these years. We've been so busy building up this farm and investing in other people's land that wasn't ours. We owned our house. Our house was in a neighborhood. We were, it was such a unique situation and it was a really
fun situation because I was growing on one acre on a two acre field that was surrounded by a subdivision and a school and we had a low fence so people were constantly walking by. You got those affirmations from the community of, this is so wonderful, this is so beautiful. You'd have old ladies who are altering their walks so they could see the dahlias in the field and so we strategically were planting for the community and so it, we just had this huge connection with everyone but.
when I realized that what I wanted this time, we thought, okay, well, we're gonna have to scale back to figure this out. So we literally had to not only clear out the weeds and all of our plants, but we had to clear out all the weeds in our life of looking at what is holding us back from having this time with our family.
Jenny (08:14)
So what decisions did you make moving forward to make sure that you could have time with your family? And I know that you have a beautiful business still. So what happened? What decisions did you make?
Jennifer Gulizia (08:17)
Yeah.
we
decided to sell our house, which was a huge decision to make. We lived in a great neighborhood, had the most amazing neighbors, but we knew that the only way to find land so that I could farm again, and the reason why, part of me even questioned, was like, am I supposed to be farming? Should I just close this up? And maybe I'm not meant to be a farmer. But I felt this calling, it was like,
you and I talked on my podcast, The Backyard Bouquet, about this feeling of we are creating these connections and we're creating this experience for people and it feeds our soul. I just felt like my soul was called to stay with flowers. So I was struggling with that and how do I create this time? And we realized that for us,
the lifestyle of building this flower farm. Like when we'd sit and we'd talk, it was, I see this porch. I see sitting out and seeing our field of flowers and seeing our daughter be able to play and not having to go to a nine to five job, being able to be present with our family and healing the earth, getting our hands in the soil. And my husband always says the quote, live the life you love, love the life you live. I think that's a Bob Marley quote, I'm pretty sure.
Jenny (09:39)
I love that.
Jennifer Gulizia (09:42)
how do you build this life? And we felt that finding this farm was how we build this lifestyle that we want.
not, it wasn't something like, we're going to go create this farm and make millions. It was, which isn't going to happen. but it was more of how do we build this life that can sustain our family allows us to live in our community, give back, but also have time as a family to be together and to do the things we love. And so we decided, well, it's a small town. It's going to take us a while, but we're going to sell our house and we'll figure it out. Well, we thought we would sell our house this last September.
In June, we got an off-market offer on our house that we couldn't refuse. And it just so happened we have a second property where we're now living and our tenants lease was coming up. So we thought, well, we'll move into our house. And my husband was like, I bet it'll take us like three to four years to find somewhere else. And I'm thinking, I'm not going to have flowers for this time. What am I going to do? So I started a podcast and through the podcast, I started talking to people around.
the world at different flower growers and I started asking myself well if they're doing this why can't I? And I had this mindset shift that I realized I was thinking too small. I put myself in this box that I'd been growing on an acre and then when we downsized it was on a quarter acre so I was limiting myself of what I was looking for to these smaller properties and I realized that in doing so we were competing with anyone and everyone
who just wanted to have acreage. So the doctors from Portland who wanted to be away from neighbors that wanted the peace and quiet, that wanted the big green grass lawns, I was wanting to build my flower farm in that same space. And after talking to a few growers that had more space, I started thinking, well, what if we had the space that the community could come to us and that we could truly create a community space?
And so the week we closed on our farm, or I'm sorry, on our house, our now farm came for sale and it was 20 acres. And so we went and looked at it and it's on exclusive farm use. It's called EFU land here in Hood River County. And we were like, well.
can we really do something this big? But we realized we're like, we don't have to grow on 20 acres right now. We can start small, but it allows us the opportunity to grow however we want. We can restore some of the land. We could grow on an acre. We could grow on five acres. We could grow on 10 acres someday. We're gonna start small right now though. But it opened us up to this possibility of thinking bigger and realizing that we were holding ourselves back from what was possible. Everything we'd been losing out on, we'd been thinking too
too small. And here was this great opportunity. Our new farm is on what's called the Hood River Fruit Loop. So we have great traffic where people can come drive by and actually see our flowers.
we're finding it's a little bit trickier than we thought it was going to be to have people onto the farm. There's some permits and things that are required, but we have the potential to be able to welcome people to our farm in the future. But even seeing the land, my husband, he was like, there's no way we're buying this property because it's this fallow piece of land. mean, there's it's, we're starting with bare land right now. After we watched the week we saw the property, we saw the film Kiss the Ground and it left us both in tears.
like this is it, this is the property we're supposed to have. This is our opportunity to really heal the land and show people the power of local flowers and what they can do to our community.
Jenny (13:28)
That's
amazing for people who haven't seen that film kiss the ground. Give us like just a real quick synopsis of what made you so emotional about it and made you realize that you could make this happen.
Jennifer Gulizia (13:39)
Yes, so Kiss
the Ground and Common Ground are two films that are coming out on Earth Day on Amazon Prime. They're really not available to watch anywhere else right now. They just took them down. But they are all about climate change and Soil degradation and how traditional modern farming is literally contributing to climate change and the loss of carbon in our atmosphere.
you
And they have this hopeful message that there's a better way to do things by regenerative farming, keeping the ground covered, by planting cover crops, by integrating animals, doing all of these natural things that us flower farmers are already doing heals the earth. And I was like, look at this. We can not only help heal the earth on these 20 acres, but we can grow something that's really beautiful too, that all of us that are flower farmers already know we're
doing this, but like to be able to show people that we can take this barren piece of land and turn it into something beautiful that heals the earth. That's what sealed the deal for us.
Jenny (14:47)
That's awesome.
So you really that your purpose was kind of reflected back to you through watching that film and made you realize like, all right, this is what we got to do. Yeah.
Jennifer Gulizia (14:55)
Yes, it just
was like saying, okay, look, this is your chance to jump on this movement. Kiss the Ground has this goal of turning, I think it's 100 million acres into regenerative farmland. And so you can sign up to take the pledge. So anyone that's listening who is a regenerative flower farmer could join this pledge on Kiss the Ground to contribute to shaping the world.
Jenny (15:19)
Awesome. So there's two things that you said that I want to come back to you real quick. One, as you said a little while ago, that when you lost the original property, you started a podcast. So what, what called you to be like, this is the moment when I'm losing all of my flowers and all my land for me to start a podcast about flowers.
Jennifer Gulizia (15:23)
Yeah.
Yes.
You know, for me, flowers is that one thing that I feel like connects us all together. When I look back at my childhood, there's so many pictures with me with flowers, whether I'm smelling the daffodils or at the rhododendron gardens or getting a bouquet of flowers for a dance recital that I just, feel like flowers have always been a part of my life. So when I was losing this land, I felt like I was going to lose flowers. And I love listening to podcasts because I feel like that
what connects me to the industry. Often I'll be out in the field, I'm picking flowers and I'm listening to other podcasts and finding inspiration. And I thought this could be my way to stay connected while I'm not growing flowers because I thought that there was this possibility that I wouldn't be able to grow flowers for a few years. I was like, well, this will keep me connected. I'll hear what people are doing. I'll get ideas and then eventually I'll find my own farmland again and I'll be able to pick back up and I won't be disconnected. Little did I know I was
going to stay in the flower side of it but that was why I started the podcast.
Jenny (16:47)
Yeah,
it just seems like that could have been a moment when, well, like you said, you're like, I even meant to be doing flowers anymore? But you said that you felt this calling and so you chose to go in that direction. And I love that you said that because I think a lot of people try to quiet that inside calling that they have. I call it following your North Star. Whatever is calling you someplace, as long as you're always following that.
Jennifer Gulizia (17:06)
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (17:13)
inside feeling like I really don't think that you can go wrong. And you've proven that for so many people. Yeah, so that's amazing. And you also said earlier that you had been talking to these flower growers on your podcast and you thought, you know, if they can do it, like, why not me? And
Jennifer Gulizia (17:20)
Thank you.
Yes.
Jenny (17:33)
Can
you talk more about that feeling? Because before we hopped on this recording, we chatted about that a little bit. But how powerful that saying is when you see other people doing something and you think, if they can do it, why can't I? Has that been a factor for you in growing your business, starting over in this new piece of land or anything else that you've done in your business?
Jennifer Gulizia (17:57)
Absolutely, I'd say as my mindset shift has changed this last year, I've really become open to possibilities and so as I was
looking at what people are doing, there was just this moment where I was like, well, if they can grow on 20 acres, why can't I? They're not growing 20 acres of flowers. This person might be growing maybe four acres or maybe even a quarter acre, but they have 20 acres. So why can't I consider this? I think that we get in our head so often that we're only capable of doing so much because our scope gets so narrowed. get so focused and hyper hyper
focused on what we're doing, that we forget to look at the bigger picture and we limit what we are capable of doing. We're literally what's holding ourselves back from doing something greater. And so when I realized like, it's my thoughts that are keeping me from finding my farm.
That was when I started looking at other opportunities. was like, well, what else is out there? Like, my co I have to give credit to my coach, coach Leah. She said, think about it like the wizard of Oz. And I love the Broadway movie, wicked. she said, think about it like you're going to see the wizard and you pull back that curtain. Like what's there? Like what's holding you back if you open that up, what are you capable of? And that was it for me. So now I always think like, okay, I'm to pull back that curtain.
What's there? What's available? What can I do? Instead of what can't I do, I think.
Jenny (19:29)
I love that.
think that piece is so critical for anybody who really is trying to do anything in life, whether it's starting a flower farm or growing a business or anything that you wanna do in life. So I love that about you. But now that you are at your new property, you said that you are kind of starting over at your new property, but.
Jennifer Gulizia (19:36)
Yes.
Jenny (19:50)
but also not. So tell us how it feels to be kind of starting over, but also not really.
Jennifer Gulizia (19:57)
It's a really unique perspective that we have to start over.
I feel very fortunate to be starting over because I get to literally start from scratch. mean, the irrigation line is being reset from ground zero. The field is a raw piece of land. We can design it however we want. There are no boundaries. And because it's 20 acres, I can choose. I can grow here or I could grow here. I can crop rotate where before I was so limited on a quarter acre. was like this last year was like, how can I squeeze everything into every little space possible?
So it gives us a fresh start, but what I love is...
This is going to be my seventh year as a flower farmer. And it's, think it'll be my third or fourth year full time, but seven years of experience. We are looking at hiring a soil scientist right now for the farm because the soil is so depleted, so degraded. mean, when we finally could get a shovel into the ground, there is no life in the soil, like no earthworms, nothing. And so we're like, okay, we need to heal this land so that we can grow healthy
flowers. Well, when I was talking to this one soil scientist, he said to me, he has a very extensive background in regenerative soil. But he said, I've never worked with someone who grows dahlias before, but that doesn't scare me. He said, it would be kind of like if you've been growing dahlias for 40 years, you have 40 years of experience, but you have 40 individual years of experience where every year is unique. So I look at that.
Jenny (21:35)
So true.
Jennifer Gulizia (21:36)
It's so true. As we're starting
over this year, it's like I'm bringing six years of experience with me. So yes, I'm starting over, but I have six different experiences that I can draw upon that is going to help carry me. Like all of that knowledge is helping me get started. Some of it's a little bad because I'm like, I'm and I have to rein myself back because I'm like, I'm capable of doing this. I'm going to plant this. I'm going to plant this. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Draw on that experience and look at what can I do
but also what should I do on this farm and drawing on those lessons from those past years. think especially, I love this time of year in January and February when you can't do a lot outside and you really are forced to think back and reflect on those moments because I think there's so much power in looking back to seeing how those moments shaped you or impacted how things worked. So I can look back and I'm like, I'm not doing tulips this year.
because they weren't profitable for my farm. And not only were they not profitable, but it's so freeing to be like, I'm not going to be harvesting tulips when I need to plant dahlia's this year.
Jenny (22:46)
Yeah.
When you said that you're drawing from those six years of experience, but every year is, was such a unique experience. I think that's something that is really difficult for other beginning flower farmers to understand is that literally every year is going to be a completely new challenge, but just between like, not even just the weather, know, every year the weather is nuts. Like it's so unpredictable, but other things too, like the market changes or economy changes or pests and
like new pests and disease pop up all the time, but something that I think is really cool as you get more experience, like you're going into your seventh year, you get more resilient carrying all those years of experience with you. even though the obstacles are still gonna be there, you just have like more tools in your toolbox that makes you better adaptable to those things and finding better solutions. Like, like,
Jennifer Gulizia (23:18)
Totally.
Jenny (23:45)
You've seen some things now as a flower farmer. You've had to move your farm. I'm sure you've had other challenges that have come from growing your delias and your other crops and like I have too. And now when something happens, it's like, well,
Jennifer Gulizia (23:47)
Yes.
Jenny (23:57)
Like we've been through worse before, we've been through something similar to this before, and you can draw on those experiences. And just for people listening, I want you to understand if you start getting, you know, four, five, six, seven years in your flower farm and it feels like it's still hard, it's because it is, but you have all that experience to draw on and you have more tools to help you along the way. So I just thought that was really cool when you said that. So what are you focusing now on your flower farm?
Jennifer Gulizia (24:20)
Thank you.
Well, at first I wanted to focus on a whole bunch of things, because I got so excited about the possibility. And Lenny Larkin from Bee Side Flowers and Flower Farming for Profit drew me back in and she was like, Jen, let's pick three things here. So I've had to narrow my focus. I have some things on the back burner for my five and 10 year plan. But right now we're focusing on dahlias. We're going to focus on farm.
Jenny (24:38)
You
Jennifer Gulizia (24:51)
Well, my plans might have gotten skewed a little bit yesterday after talking to the county. So I kind of have to go back to the drawing board a little bit, but.
The second kind of arm of our business this year is going to be farm sales. hopefully a farm stand, but definitely our wholesale outlet of selling our flowers. We are a huge wedding destination. So a lot of what we grow is wedding flowers. So we'll keep growing our dahlias. We have, I think we'll have about 5,000 this year between my seedlings, the ones we grow for cuts, and then the ones we're putting in the Yupik field. So.
There's the on-farm sales which is Yupik and Florist's and then my third outlet is my online teaching piece of it.
Jenny (25:37)
So can
you tell us a little bit about your DALYAs first? And then I want to hear a little bit about the other two things, the on-farm stuff and your online teaching.
Jennifer Gulizia (25:48)
Yes,
so I have loved dahlias all my life, like so many flower farmers, and I got fascinated with breeding them about five years ago. And so I jumped on the bug of let's sell our dahliatubers. It's a great way to make some cash to support the business every winter. We are kind of pulling that back this year because we are long term planning as we are trying to grow out our field. One of our goals is to eventually have dahliadays
on D. We're located on D Highway, so we thought that sounded kind of cute to do like a month-long festival. So looking at how do we make the farm work for our family, and so one of our things is how do we shorten the season but still make enough profit to sustain our family. And so dahlias will become a larger part of our focus going forward. So inside our dahlias we're going have a upick section where I've ordered plugs so they stay completely separate. I don't have to worry about what people cut and
Jenny (26:22)
I love that.
Jennifer Gulizia (26:47)
sanitize and then since they're plugs I don't have to worry about if they produce tubers or not I'm not even gonna bother digging them up if they die over the winter that's fine they're in the upic field and then we have our Dahlia tubers that we grow for our florist orders and that we sell our Dahlia tubers and that we collect seeds from for our breeding patch and then we have four years of Dahlia's that we have been breeding that we are working on increasing the quantity of them for me I have figured
that in order for us to make a profit on the breeding I have to produce large quantities so that's one of the things that's really exciting about having a bigger space is I have room to grow out my varieties so I have several hundred of a variety growing before I ever bring them to market.
Jenny (27:34)
So this is something about dahlias that always fascinates me is the breeding part of it. For a hot minute last year, I was like, I'm going to start breeding dahlias because it's just so cool. And it seems like such a rewarding and fun thing to do. But then, just me personally, was like, I already have a lot of irons in the fire. I don't have time to do anything else right now. But when I was really looking into it, there's so much that goes into it. You have to grow so many seedlings.
a lot of volume of work to do. So how are you, you know, tracking your profitability with that? That's, seems like a big project.
Jennifer Gulizia (28:14)
It's definitely a numbers game. It's definitely not something that you can make a huge profit upfront.
With time, the dahlias that I've been breeding are becoming better for cut flowers. So even if they're not something that I keep for the following season, I have been able to sell cut flowers locally of them so that I am still profiting off of cutting them each year. They're not a huge moneymaker right now. It's something that we are projecting into the future and building into our business plan as we grow. So.
Jenny (28:37)
Love that.
Jennifer Gulizia (28:47)
If I was still growing on a small space, it would not be a long-term profitable projection if I didn't have someone to partner with to grow out our dahlias.
I'm not sure if we'll launch any in 2026 because I want to have a very strong presence. our plan right now is 2027, hopefully to have about 10 introductions to release. Then we have about 50 varieties that third and fourth year now. then so, but it's been a numbers game. mean, that started with 600 in a season and then you narrow that down to maybe 60. And then the following year you only have 10 to carry on with you.
So profitability wise, I'd be much better off at this moment in time had I grown a whole bunch of Cornell bronze in that same space and sold them as cut flowers to the wholesale market. But my long-term strategy with that space has been to grow them out because if you can have enough to release an initial amount yourself, that's how we see making a profit on those and then let them get into the world and people can share them and enjoy them and not count on making a
profit on those varieties after that first year, or at least a substantial profit, I should say. I mean, it's going to be interesting to see how everything shakes out in the Dahlia industry. There's so much changing right now that another part of our reason for holding on to 2027 is just kind of seeing how things shake out with so much interest in the Dahlia industry right now.
Jenny (30:13)
Yeah, that's really smart. I love the way that you're approaching this because I think so many flower farmers right now are like, ooh, these new varieties are selling for $30, $40 a tuber. And they're like, people are getting rich on this. And it's like, no, that's not what's happening. It takes so much time and so much effort. But I think your approach is really, really smart and really fascinating. So looking forward to seeing your first Dahlia introductions in a couple of years. That's going to be really cool. Awesome.
Jennifer Gulizia (30:41)
Thank you. Our biggest
struggle is the marketing piece of figuring out what do we give a prefix for because the flowering farmhouse is a mouthful and Jennifer Galizia is not an easy name to say. So.
Jenny (30:47)
Hmm.
Could you do like an abbreviation? Like some places do that, right?
Jennifer Gulizia (30:59)
Yeah,
like JG or my daughter's initials are OG. And she's like, Mom, can't, I'm not the one breeding them, but I think OG is really cute.
Jenny (31:04)
the-
That would be adorable, like the original gangster. Yeah. well, that's, yeah, that seems like a big.
Jennifer Gulizia (31:11)
Yes.
Jenny (31:16)
I have a really hard time naming things. Like when, when I named my business, I didn't even name my flower farm. My husband did. I like came up. I was like, well, so our last name is Marks. And I was like, I want to do something with our last names. I was like, what if he did like trademark? And he was like, yes, that's what we're doing. I was like, I actually don't really like it. And he was like, no, we're doing it. And then with my other business trademark farmer, I was just like, I have no ideas. So this seems like it's okay. And I regret everything all the time. So naming things is hard.
Jennifer Gulizia (31:18)
Me too.
It's so
hard. It's like naming a child.
Jenny (31:45)
Yes.
Yeah. Also my biggest struggle in life is trying to pick a name for my son. yeah, but anyways, get back to flowers. So no, I took us on that tangent. but yeah, so you're doing the dahlias and then you're also doing the on-farm stuff. So are you just going to do the farm standard? Did you say workshops too?
Jennifer Gulizia (31:53)
Yes, sorry.
Well, so I didn't realize how complicated it is to get what's called a farm stand permit in our county. And so if you're on EFU land, anytime you want to do any farm events, you either have to have an agritourism permit or a farm permit. But it takes six months to get a permit here.
Jenny (32:26)
Why?
Jennifer Gulizia (32:26)
which puts me in, if
I get my application submitted this week, we will have a permit in August, which kind of lines up with when Dahlia's will start blooming. But, farmstead permit is even if you don't have a structure, if you have people coming to the farm to pick up product or I was like, well, if I do a private, you pick with 10 people, like, well, that's a private event. So you need a farmstead permit. So that will be what I'm working on this afternoon because I found out just yesterday.
that you have to have this permit, it's $900. Yes, it lasts for as long as you have your farm. But then if we want to, I was going to put up like a cute little stand, but I don't have it designed yet. So if I wanted to do a farm stand with a cute little roadside stand for people to come, that would have to be fully designed.
Jenny (32:57)
my god.
okay.
Jennifer Gulizia (33:17)
with the building specs, even if it's like a bus stop stand before I can submit my application. So we've decided we're going to scrap the little stand.
have to be, you always are pivoting, I think. And it's part of that resilience is that you just have to be ready to like, be like, okay, well, this isn't going to work. What else can I do? So being resilient right now, kind of having to pivot from what our initial plan was with that. We still want to have people to the farm this year. Another friend who's a farmer in the area, she was like, well, if you just put up a tent and a table, you don't have to have a permit for that. I have to have the permit for the farm stand. But if I get that approved, I could then have a tent where people could come pick up this year.
Jenny (33:28)
always.
Jennifer Gulizia (33:56)
as long as the wind doesn't blow it away. And then next year, 2026, maybe we'll have a really cute farm stand.
Jenny (33:58)
Yeah.
goodness. I just want to say that you have obviously been hitting roadblock after roadblock after roadblock, but you just keep jumping over them and just going. And I think that's so important and is such a amazing trait that business owners and flower farmers have to have. And so it's not easy people, but look, Jennifer is doing it. So that's amazing. Just keep going.
Jennifer Gulizia (34:27)
Thank
you. Well, it's not my word, but Marie, Forleo, She says everything is figureoutable. And so that's been my mindset. It's like, I'm gonna figure it out. I don't know everything, but if I just take that next step on building out this farm, we're gonna get it figured out. And then five years from now, we're gonna have a really beautiful flower farm again.
Jenny (34:32)
Yes, I love her.
Yeah, yeah. So that's great. And I love Marie Forleo, and I think everyone should follow her advice that everything is figure you said that you had a bunch of different things that you wanted to do on your flower farm, and you've had to put it into your like five to 10 year made you decide what to focus on right now instead of things that you put off to the future?
Jennifer Gulizia (35:08)
Honestly, because we have a huge 20 acre farm now with a big ag loan, which I have never borrowed money for our farm ever before. It's that weight of knowing that we now have to make an agricultural loan payment every month for this farm that I had to choose what was going to make a profit first for the farm. so the three things we chose were the things that were already making profits for us. And those were what we chose to focus on with the other things being things that we could build in down the road as we build a team.
Jenny (35:39)
Yeah, I think that's really smart to do it that way. you know, we've, we've talked about before how you have to both prioritize things that are profitable, but also that bring you joy because you don't want to build a business that just makes money, but you end up hating it because that's not sustainable.
Jennifer Gulizia (35:49)
Yes.
Totally.
Jenny (35:57)
But I think that's smart that you have that long-term vision of focusing on what's going to really help get your farm moving, things that are really moving the needle, moving your business forward. So eventually, you can end up doing whatever else you want to do, but starting with things that you know are already working. And I think another part of that is that
Jennifer Gulizia (36:15)
Absolutely.
Jenny (36:18)
A lot of flower farmers try to make things work really hard when they're just not working. And sometimes it is important to have that flexible vision of like, know I want a flower farm, or I know I want a lot of dahlias, or whatever your vision is, but to be really flexible in the way that that happens. Because zoning might come along and be like, no, you can't do it that way.
Jennifer Gulizia (36:44)
Absolutely.
Jenny (36:45)
really
interesting of the way that you're going about that. So can you tell us a little bit about maybe some advice that you would give to other flower farmers who might be in a situation like yours, like they have to move their farm or they're trying to find land or they're just having like a devastating roadblock in front of them. What would be your biggest pieces of advice for them?
Jennifer Gulizia (37:10)
well those are three different things that let's see here. I'm going to start with the advice for someone who's facing something really difficult. I think that if we look at a flower,
not to get cheesy or too literal here, but a flower starts out in the dirt and literally it's enclosed in the seed and it has to break free from the seed and grow through a lot of dirt before it can reach up to the sky and truly bloom and flourish. And I've tried to keep that mindset as we have gone through a lot of different things this last year that...
Sometimes you have to go through really hard moments in time to realize what's truly important in your life and what really matters. And had I not gone through those hard times this last year, I don't know that I would have gotten that clarity that truly made me realize how important having this now flower farm was to our family and to our future. And so I'll say that hindsight,
is one of those things where life only makes sense when you look backwards and sometimes we have to grow through that dirt to get to that next level. There was this picture on Instagram recently and it was kind of showing these two people's journeys and they were both standing next to a flower at the top and it saying how you can't compare their journeys because one person like climbed up this easy ladder and this other person was like climbing up these boulders and like crawling along the way. But sometimes you have to go through those hard things to get to that next level and when you get there
like, I understand why I went through that. It made me stronger or more knowledgeable on this. hopefully that can encourage someone that's in a hard time that like, one, those hard times, they don't last forever, but oftentimes they're preparing you.
for something better, if you look, you just have to look for that opportunity. Like I could have stayed in that mindset that like life is happening to me, but instead I looked, I was able to change my head and my mindset and say, all of this is maybe happening for me, what is life trying to show me right now?
Jenny (39:18)
I love that so much. That's such a valuable mindset to have. Thank you for sharing that.
Jennifer Gulizia (39:23)
Absolutely.
Jenny (39:24)
what advice do you have for people when they're going through really hard things and they kind of feel like giving up.
Jennifer Gulizia (39:31)
Yes, so I think that's it is just keep going and knowing that like whatever you're going through is going to make you stronger and there's something better ahead. I did want to say though that as far as if someone's in a situation where they're trying to find land.
It is so important to protect yourself, especially if you are looking at leasing land. If I had to go through everything again, I would 100 % do it. I leased my land from the most incredibly kind, wonderful lady that gave me such a gift to be able to learn how to become a flower farmer on her land. My advice for someone to be though is if you don't get discouraged when you see someone like me having to clear out the land,
because it led me to my next opportunity. I don't regret that now. But I would say that the only thing I would have changed going back or having that knowledge with me now is I wish I would have had someone like a lawyer advocate for me with a good lease, making sure that you are fully protected.
leasing agricultural land is so different than going and leasing a house. With a house, clear out your, you get 30 days notice and you can move all your stuff. Well, 30 days or 90 days in the middle of winter is totally different when you're trying to move perennials and plants and the ground is frozen or you have COVID and all of these different things are coming up. An agricultural lease needs to protect you and have discussion about
What is the process for removing those plants? And keep in mind that 90 days when you're really excited about this land might sound like more than enough time because 30 days is a typical time to move out from a residential place. 90 days is very rushed to move out plants. So I've talked to other growers that have had leases where they have a year. So if they get noticed that their lease is coming due, they have a year to relocate those plants. So I would just say advocate for yourself. Talk to a real
the state attorney if you're going to lease land. Don't get discouraged and think I'm not gonna ever lease land because it's a really great option for so many people. But make sure that you're fully protected and you know what you need for your farm so that someday when that lease does end, because it's not a matter of if it's gonna end, it's a matter of when is that lease gonna end and how am I gonna be protected and how am gonna move my business forward.
Jenny (42:00)
Right, that's
great advice. And how would you recommend that people go about knowing that they're doing that the right way, like to just hire a lawyer or find somebody else that would have experience with that? Like who would they go to for help with that?
Jennifer Gulizia (42:14)
That's a great question. would recommend, and I'm not legal and I'm not a professional at this, but my personal advice would be to hire a real estate attorney. Even if it costs you 500 or a thousand dollars, it's well worth it to make sure that your farm, your livelihood is protected and that both parties, both parties should be represented. So like this should be a mutually beneficial lease agreement that you're entering into that has protections for the landowner and you as the
Jenny (42:18)
Yeah, yeah.
Hmm.
Jennifer Gulizia (42:44)
farmer, even if you're buying a farm or buying a piece of property, it doesn't hurt to have a real estate attorney look it over and understand what can I do with this property? Because if you're buying land in some counties that has very strict rules of what you can do if it's not designated exclusive farm use, you might not even be able to farm on your land or there might be water rules or things that you might not know about. So having someone whose sole job is to understand
those rules and regulations can really save you a lot of heartache and headache and money in the long run.
Jenny (43:20)
Yeah,
that is such good advice. I love that. I think it's hard for us to protect ourselves sometimes because we want to believe that, you know, everything should be peachy key and easy all the time, but it's just a piece of paper just in case. You know what I mean? It's just in case. So I love that. So Jennifer, can you tell us just a little bit about, you said that you do some teaching as well. Can you tell everyone a little bit about what you do with that?
Jennifer Gulizia (43:37)
Totally.
Absolutely. So I run a community called the Dahlia Patch.
So the Dahlia Patch is an online community for anyone who is interested in growing dahlias. have anyone from those that are just getting started with their first five or 10 dahlias to those who are growing 50 to 100 to we actually have a lot of members who are just getting started on their flower farming career and they're thinking about taking this hobby and this passion of growing dahlias and turning it into a business model. We're almost a year into the Dahlia Patch and we're kind of going through
bit of a transformation right now. One of the things that we have added this year is a How I Did This series and so each month we are bringing on a featured grower and so I'm not sure when this episode will air but in February we are bringing on Christopher and Wyatt from Darcy's Dallias and they're doing a training on how they multiply their stock through Dahlia cuttings. This morning I did a workshop on how to wake up your Dahlia tubers and how to pre-sprout them so that they'll be prepared for this
webinar that's coming up. Last month we had Brooke Palmer from Jenny Creek Flowers. She joined us and talked to...
Jenny (44:57)
She's one of my students.
Jennifer Gulizia (44:59)
awesome. She
is amazing. She's been a guest on my podcast and she's part of the Delia Patch community. And she shared how she made the leap from being a full-time high school teacher to a flower farmer, which was super inspiring to a lot of the members. So one of the things I have in all of my different jobs I've done, I've always had a teaching component. I love spreading the joy, especially with something like what we do. just, fills my soul and my cup.
by being able to help other people successfully grow dahlias. And so that is a piece of my business that I just really love and I'm looking forward to growing more in the coming year.
Jenny (45:41)
That's amazing.
So basically, if anyone out there grows delias, go get on the Delia patch. Yeah, that sounds like a really amazing resource. And I feel like it's rare to have communities that focus on very specific crops like that. And that could be super valuable to someone or to anyone that wants to get really good at growing delias. So really cool.
Jennifer Gulizia (45:47)
We would love to have them as part of the community.
Thank you. It's in its infancy, so we're still growing, but it's super fun to kind of be able to start something from scratch. It's kind of like starting over with the farm. And the neat thing is we have this group of founding members that have, they did this wonderful survey at the end of the year, and so we're implementing these new things like the How I Did This series based on the feedback from our members.
Jenny (46:25)
that's amazing. I love that. Awesome. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for everything that you shared. Do you have any last pieces of advice or words of wisdom that you would like to share with everyone before we wrap this up?
Jennifer Gulizia (46:39)
Sure, I think the thing that's always been in my head this last year comes from Amy Porterfield who runs the Marketing Made Easy podcast that I think is rebranding to the Amy Porterfield show. But she says, do it messy, do it scared, do it anyway. And that's kind of been this guiding principle for me, especially with this new farm. It's like, this is so much bigger than anything I've ever done. But if I just take that first step,
I'm going to get started and then I'll figure it out and I'll do the next step and I'll keep taking the steps. Like you don't have to know everything it takes to get to that finish line. But if you can at least take that first step, you're going to keep learning along the way. It's kind of like when you start out with the flower farm. I remember my first year on a quarter of an acre, it felt so overwhelming and so hard. Irrigation lines blowing out and I'm just like, why? I don't, I can't do all of this. And then the next year I'm like,
That part was so easy because you've gained the experience. So that do it messy, do it scared, do it anyway. I think it's just a reminder that like, it's okay. You're gonna learn along the way. It kind of goes back to that. You're gonna kill a lot of plants. Just keep trying and you're gonna get better with experience.
Jenny (47:55)
my gosh, I love
that so much and I wholeheartedly agree. You just gotta do it messy. Absolutely. Jennifer, it's been so amazing to have you on the show. Tell everyone where they can find out more about you, what you do and find you at the Dahlia Patch.
Jennifer Gulizia (48:00)
Yes.
Yes, absolutely. Well, you can find us at thefloweringfarmhouse.com. We're on all social media at the symbol at the Flowering Farmhouse. We're on Facebook and Instagram and the Dahlia Patch you can find through our website as well as my podcast. And then we also have a little bit about our upcoming documentary that is a little sneak peek on the podcast too.
Jenny (48:32)
So
exciting. I will put all those links in our show notes for you guys so you can go check them out there. Otherwise, thank you so much for coming on, Jennifer. This was a blast and we will see you next time. All right. See everyone later on the next episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. Bye bye.
Jennifer Gulizia (48:38)
Thank you.
So fun. Thank you.
