Jenny (00:29)
Well, welcome, Krissa and Bill. I am so excited to talk to you guys today. I have like, out of all the farms that I follow, you guys are one of the ones that I'm the most impressed by that have been students of mine. So I just am really excited to talk to you guys today.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (00:44)
Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. That's high praise coming from you.
Jenny (00:48)
No, not really, but tell us a little bit about
what you guys do and about Daybreak Studio and Farm.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (00:57)
Go for it. So we're, we, β we have about an acre. We're right. We're about a mile from the beach in central New Jersey. β we bought a, basically a blank slate. We bought a property that had a bunch of big grass open fields. And when we came to look at it, I Chris has started crying. and it was actually a cloudy day and there was sun shining in the back where the field would be. And it was like one of those kind of meant to be, and we found it based on a real
Jenny (00:58)
You
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (01:27)
who we sold tulips to out of our old driveway. Yeah, so we got our space about three years ago and prior to that we had been growing β at another property and we had maxed out just our regular β our regular like 70 by 100 lot with a ton of flowers and we had this dream of β really
growing local flowers and selling to florists and you know we were doing dabbling in small events but we really just didn't have the space to do it so we finally got the space and kind of
Ran with it. Yeah, we ran with it. We we used to actually rent land or actually kind of work the farm at a local organic veggie farm. And we used to go and we would he's he's like, listen, I'm not going to charge you, but you're going to work for me. So we would plant corn and sweet potatoes and help swore the fields. And he gave us a couple of rows and we would I mean, we learned a ton from him. And then we're like, let's let's try to do this full time. And so we bought this property and
Anywhere that was grass is now planting space. Pretty much. So there's not much mowing anymore. I used to have a big, a big field to mow and now very small. could push mow it. So we grow. Yes, yes. So now we grow on about an acre. β our farm.
Jenny (02:50)
Knowing is a waste of time, so...
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (03:00)
primarily sells wholesale, β one, to our own wedding and events business, which we run very separately. I...
I kind of have a split job. I work at the studio with my sister. We operate the wedding and events studio and then am here on the farm β with Bill, my husband. β we sell to our own business. β Try to supply as many flowers as we can for weddings and events. β We sell through our cooperative Jersey Club Flower Market, which is a cooperative
of nine farms in New Jersey and we also do retail β mostly through our farm stand and then depending on the season we do a CSA. So we won't do one in the fall because weddings just get crazy but we do β we do CSA in spring and summer.
Jenny (04:06)
So I'm really interested to hear a little bit more, maybe later in the conversation about how you run your wedding and events business separately. Because to me, I always saw floristry and farming as two completely different things, but there's so many people that are doing it kind of together like this farmer florist model. But for me, I just feel like they're so different that I think it's almost better to run it.
separately like that? I don't know, I'm curious what you think about that.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (04:39)
I'm going to hang
I think it can be a really blurry line if you start to like Need an ingredient and just like have this idea of like running out and snipping it in the field, right? And don't get me wrong there are times when I need something and I'm like, what do I need and and that usually turns into me cutting it and driving it up to the studio, right? But because our studio is separate from our farm our studio is about 25 minutes from here β
they really do have to be two entirely separate businesses. And my sister, who is my studio partner, has no, β has really no, not that she's not interested in the farm, she absolutely loves it and she'll tell me what to grow. And she's like, this is trending, you need to grow this. But she's not, you know, in the day to day here at all. So
there's definitely parts that overlap in terms of like when I'm creating recipes, right? I know that I'm gonna grow certain things for certain clients, right? And like try my very best to like nail the timing, but it doesn't always work out like that. I would say 50 % of
Jenny (05:51)
It rarely does in my experience.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (05:54)
Yeah, yeah, I would say 50
% of the time it doesn't. Like I have, you know, rows of, of didiscus that I thought would be blooming right now for weddings this fall. And we're still like at least four weeks away from blooms. And I'm like, well, okay. So I don't know, I think, I think it's important that we have kind of local at the heart of all of our weddings and events, but
They really do have to be two entirely separate businesses. There's so much else that we grow for here that if we only grew for our own events, we would make no money. Yeah. That's that's another thing. Like we we would have to be so much smaller
I mean, we don't need a whole acre of flowers for all of our weddings, but for whatever reason this summer, we've sold almost every single stem that we grow. Everyone we've harvested, we'll finish a week and there's one bunch left. Yeah. And when you turn around and look at, like, you kind of recap the week, you're like, wow, that was a lot of flowers. Yeah.
Jenny (06:54)
That's fantastic.
That's awesome. So I am curious because you guys had, well, we met first of all, at my workshop, six figure flower farming, and you had sent me an email saying that this year after taking that things have just like kind of blown up. It sounds like from you selling all of your flowers this year.
So tell me a little bit about how your flower business looked before this year.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (07:30)
It was very unorganized. We quickly realized that. β We, after going to your course and like the drive home, we started talking about everything that we had and it was just like, we were doing things and there was really no rhyme or reason. β There was...
kind of a strategy to where we were planting stuff, but it was like, this is open. We're just going to throw something in the ground. β We had tools laying all over the place. We never could find anything. Like it was just a lot of it was we were doing well, but we were just very unorganized with with everything. And we realized that we were wasting a lot of time. β
Like the simple thing of like keeping rubber bands outside in our little storage area so we didn't have to run into the basement to grab them. Like it was all little things that we realized like, wow, we could be doing much better with this. β I think at a high level too. β
We connected to your story because you talked about like having so many different sales outlets and like throwing spaghetti at the wall. And we've definitely run through a lot of different sales outlets in the last couple of years. β So coming to your class kind of helped us think about what was like maximizing our potential, right? And our profit and what we really like doing as well as things that were just kind of like a slog.
our time, things that weren't necessarily...
They didn't have the return. giving us the return. Right. So like when we first started, we would quickly like drop what we were doing to go do a pop up at any place that offered it. And we would it would be all this prep work. Chris is sitting there for five, six hours and we sell three things. And it's like a business, a new business that gets no foot traffic. And we're we would take any any opportunity. We would be OK, let's go do it. And now we look at them or spending so much time on mixed bouquets for our
CSA and
Nobody really cared. There were like 12 or 13 or 14 different ingredients, you know, and it was it was beautiful. But at the same time, it was taking so long and I felt like I was my hand was cramping and I was so tired at the end and it'd be midnight. What am I doing? So we learned to like simplify the things that we could. There was so much wasted time. There were so many things that were a slog on our time. So we on our way home,
home, thought about what are the things that really we can maximize our time and our profit that way. Because obviously, like we still have a few different sales outlets, but how can we streamline this β to be more efficient, maximize our profit and also just what we enjoy doing. So I think those three things have really been working for us. And we kind of it looks a little bit different each season.
for
us too because I'm in the weddings and events industry. Spring and fall look a little bit different than summertime does but overall I feel like we've kind of refined some of our systems. Really like came up with systems. Yeah had to create them. So that was...
Jenny (10:56)
You
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (11:02)
foundational and then really thought about like what was going to work best for us and those things have have been really working so.
Jenny (11:12)
So it sounds like you, what were, what would you say was the biggest challenge or frustration that you guys were dealing with at that time?
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (11:22)
I would say like we just, felt like we weren't utilizing the property as we could. Like it was. Yeah, there were areas that would just sit empty for a while because we didn't really plan what was gonna go there. Yeah, we didn't have enough seeds started. We didn't have successions. We got ready. Like we would realize that we needed to plant something and it was too late to start something. weeks too late. So then we had to jump to, okay, we're gonna go to QPAC and go buy plugs. And then we saw the.
Jenny (11:45)
you
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (11:52)
astronomical amount of money we spent on plugs last year. Yeah, on our way home from your class, we actually we analyzed it. was scary. We were like going south and I'm like, you know, getting our bank account open and I'm looking at all of the expenses on plugs and plugs and plugs. And I think we added it up and it was something like ten thousand dollars or something crazy because we were always just trying to fill spaces that we were unprepared for.
we
thought about it and we were like okay if we it's even if it's just the two of us or one employee plus the two of us spend an hour a week even just one hour seating right and we each do 10 trays right
Okay, so that's 30 trays plus the cost of the seeds versus if you look at 30 trays that you're bringing in from somewhere, it's going to be so expensive plus shipping. And the shipping isn't cheap either. cause it's overnight shipping. Plus you don't have like any control over the product quality. Sometimes, you know, you get crap.
So we thought about it and we were like, β my God, that's like a huge savings right there. β
So that was huge for us this year and we've been really lucky in that we have an employee who had come to us with like a ton of greenhouse growing experience and she's faster at seeding at least than me. I mean, you're pretty quick, but she's way faster than I am like for sure without a doubt. So that's been really helpful this year for us and has saved us quite a bit.
Jenny (13:39)
That's awesome.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (13:41)
Yeah,
would say like, like looking at our bank account and just being like, where did all of our money go? That was a frustration. Like looking at our account, you know, it'd be July or August, you know, after what we considered a big spring, looking at our money and being like, oh, wow, yeah, it went all the plugs.
Jenny (13:48)
you
You
We actually, I just added something new to the online six-figure flower farming course. It's like an exercise to have people literally go through their expenses, like line by line, which sounds like super boring, but like you said, it ends up saving you so much money because you realize like, Oh my God, I'm spending way overspending on things that I didn't even realize because in the moment you're like, I need this. So it sounds like things were.
a little bit chaotic and unorganized and which I.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (14:33)
Yeah,
any?
It was the simple thing of like having like an inventory of things we know that we would need. I went back and I literally I went line by line through our expenses and the number of Amazon purchases of I need this, I need that. And this year we made the decision, we're going out to Lancaster and we went to Nolte's greenhouse and we put, I mean, we couldn't fit anything else in my truck. But like it was things like that where we were looking at like we were spending
on something because we weren't prepared. Yep. Or the fertilizer at the last minute, you know, really all of that, all of that, the drip tape, like just everything. I feel like that one trip that we took like. It set us up for success for the season because it was when we needed something, we had it and we bought extra. So we just have that little inventory. So it don't get me wrong, there's still things that pop up, but it's nowhere near what it was.
Jenny (15:17)
Hmm.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (15:35)
It's just really being prepared and having an inventory of things that we know we need all the time.
Jenny (15:41)
Yeah. I tried to do just like one huge order over the winter of everything that I'll need for the season from Nolte. And then just last week, I had to like last minute order something from Johnny's that I was like, shoot. And I know I paid like way too much for it, but it's like, yeah, but those things still happen, it's.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (15:58)
how it hurts. Yeah.
were doing that so much and it's all of those little purchases that just added up so much. Crazy.
Jenny (16:10)
Hmm. Yeah,
it's crazy. So aside from taking a hard look at where you guys were spending, I know that you mentioned that you had put systems in place and you had changed some things like your harvesting techniques or like how you're setting up your farm. So can you give us a few more examples of things that you've changed now and how that's impacted your business?
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (16:33)
I mean, we've...
We definitely we've planted with a purpose. So we've put things in spots where it's easier to harvest. β We used to have rows that would be like mixed. would be like zinnias, Cosmos zinnias. like it would be there was no rhyme or reason. So now we everything is kind of together. And even like zinnias, we used to plant them and have multiple colors all mixed together. So like when we're cutting bunches, it's like I have to run up a whole row to cut one bunch because they're not all together. Yeah, it something so.
Jenny (17:03)
Cause you're selling straight
bunches of one single color. Yeah.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (17:05)
Yeah. Yep. Right.
like the things like now we keep buckets at the end of each row. We β
where I lay them on the ground and we'll cut five or six and then put them in a bucket. It used to be, let's cut one, bring it back to the bucket. And the bucket was nowhere near where we were. it was just- Yeah, now we bunch in the field, which is a Yeah. And we used to, we actually, for a while, we used to just cut a ton and bring them inside and then pull the stems and bunch. Right, right. Yeah. Now we just cut, process, bunch right straight in the field and everything just goes right into the cooler when we're done.
So just efficiencies in time. β
And we like when we plant some, we've been like wire weeding at thread stage. Like that was something like we've the weed pressure this summer has been crazy, but I can't imagine if we didn't do that, what it would look like. Yeah. And like using like the Horta Nova netting and getting things twined up while they're still small enough and not letting it get out of control. Like we would use we used to like wait until there was a big storm coming like, we got to get out and twine this up so it doesn't fall. β
And it's just, it's trying to get ahead of the game. a lot of little efficiencies finding them where we can, I feel like. Yeah. One other thing is when we first moved here,
we were kind of still getting to know our property. So I just immediately went out front and put a bunch of Dahlia tubers and was like, okay, this is gonna be so beautiful. It's gonna be exactly where I want it. It's gonna be great. Like there's a field in front of our house. And I was like, if I get to look at it every day. And it turns out that that area is very wet. It used to be a drainage, like basically a drainage stream from the road. it there was like active running water.
back 100 years ago. it is soaking wet all the time. Yeah. We learned very quickly that everything would rot and die there. We lost so many tubers. And so, you know, we'd have a ton of rain in July. And I think that's pretty that's pretty consistent, actually. It's the last couple of years. And things just rotted and sat there. And I was heartbroken. But now we're kind of getting to know our space a little bit better. Last year, I put some like really
delicate things there. Didn't do well. Shocker. β And then this year we were like, okay, you know what, we're gonna get ahead of this. We watched a ton of YouTube videos on like, β like Dutch flower fields and how they hill everything. β And we put kind of like lower stakes things in the front that just like want to live like zinnias and salocia and things that just like are easy and
Jenny (19:53)
Yeah.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (19:57)
would hopefully not give us a lot of problems. So we healed it and then just put like the easiest things there that we could grow. And it's like thriving now. So finally, I felt like in the third year of trying to make that space work, we got a good return. So it was just like getting a little more strategic. Yeah. Trial and error, also like getting strategic, doing the research, putting in the time.
you hilling it. Yeah, I ended up I held it by hand. β We brought in we brought in 3030 yards of organic compost and I was trying to figure out how to use the tractor and I'm like, I don't have the implement so it was shovel. It was getting really scrappy. But it worked.
Jenny (20:30)
why?
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (20:51)
Got a good workout in. You did.
Jenny (20:53)
Yeah, sometimes you just
got to do what you got to do to get going and get started with something like that. Like even though it kind of sucks, it's like, that's real character building stuff.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (21:04)
And it was just
doing it with the end goal of like, okay, if this works, it's going to be very good for us. Like it's a, it's a big area. And for us, it, it adds, it gives us more space in the back, which the back kind of things do much better. we're like, we can get the front to grow and get anything out of it, it's going to be a game changer for us. Yeah.
Jenny (21:26)
Yeah.
I think a big part of that is like, there is this big learning curve when you do start growing at a new pace of
Jenny (21:34)
Sounds like you guys have done a lot of clarifying, organizing, being really strategic with your crop planning and overall just kind of putting a lot of systems and things in place. So can you give us an idea of what running lean kind of looks like for your farm now in terms of like your crop selection, your sales outlets, and just give us a little bit of insight into how you went through that journey to.
be a little bit more lean.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (22:06)
So because we're a small farm, I think we had to really get creative in terms of how we could set ourselves apart within our own market to β stand out.
There are farms in New Jersey that are huge, right? We have flower friends that have 10, 20 acres of flowers and they grill just so many amazing crops. We had to really dial in, I think, we could grow successfully and stand out with. So for us, we...
We have a little bit of a different focus, I would say, than the majority of the farms in our cooperative. For example, in the springtime, we'll still grow as many ranunculus as we possibly can. We'll grow your anemones, your beautiful β peonies, and obviously your spring staples. But we also kind of leaned into some
I say like things that people consider like a little bit more labor intensive or a little bit β more niche. β So we got a ton of bearded irises and for us that's really only a couple hundred, but hopefully it's a long-term investment. β I know our florists go crazy for it and can support, you know, the...
the price on it because we're close to New York City. People really want like those specialty things. β They'll pay for those, you know, really special colors of iris or β those like cinder rose dahlias that cost a fortune for one cutting, right? β For us in the summertime, we really dialed into things that
lot of people didn't want to take the time to grow. A lot of work goes into them, like the flocks. Yeah. is.
It's something that it drives me crazy out there with the netting and it's- pinching, all of that kind of stuff. But when we get a really good yield after a few years of growing it and kind of like dialing in, those are things that I can bring to the market 50 to 100 bunches and get a good solid price on it. β
things like the didiscus and the salpaglossus that people won't necessarily take the time to kind of specialize in, but I know my florist customers like go crazy over it and I know I can get a good profit for it, especially when we grow them from seed. So it's been really kind of taking a hard look at what is profitable for us.
as well as like per season what we can really kind of like dial into as far as like specific I don't know really kind of
specialty stuff. This. Because when you look at it, there's some some other flower farms that have what we have in planting space total. They have been just in us. Like we like that's just yeah, we're not going to compete with that. But we we looked at what we can do to make ourselves very unique. And especially for us, like we're a mile from the beach. There's no other there's nothing like this around here. β So we're we're kind of like that very unique piece.
where you can be in a beach town, but you can drive 10, 15 minutes and be at our place and get things that you typically can't. Right, that you might not find around unless you were to go into the city or something like that. β It's funny, we live in a kind of a weird area where, at least for us, the summer is pretty busy. β
I know for a lot of farms, summer is kind of more of a quiet time, but for us, the summer is reliably consistently busy. β Being close to the beach, people are still having weddings at beach clubs and parks and things. So the florist orders don't really, they don't really slow down in the summer, β which is good. And
I would say sometimes we go into 28th Street and if I have like a bumper crop of something really special, we'll bring it in. β And that never stops, right? Like the city never sleeps. So we find ways, I think, to maximize our profit regardless of the season. β And because Bill's a teacher in his full-time job, β
having off in the summertime, we can really focus a lot of effort on that time and stand out with a lot of those like specialty crops that we grow in July and August when other people are kind of taking a break.
Jenny (27:32)
Yeah.
I think one thing that I want to pull out from that conversation is that you seem to really know your forest customers and really understand what they like and what they want. And I just feel like that's so important to the success of a farmer farm to like really listen to your customers and what they really want. Or if they're not, you know, not crazy over something like maybe not.
Think about it so much, but it's really cool how you guys have found that niche in your market because New Jersey is a crazy cut flower market. Like you said, there's so many cut flower farms there. It's wild. And so I just think that's great that you guys have carved out that little specialty niche for yourselves. And it's really, really smart the way that you've gone about it and done it.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (28:19)
Thanks. And like for us, one of the cool things is like getting the trust of all of these local florists. So we we actually have standing orders with a bunch and they it's one of the we added a few years. It's taken a few years. There's been a lot of like a lot of ones that we've tried and they didn't work. But now we have a good a good handful where they trust us and we put together a bucket of what we know they like. And every week they're they're like this is like playing the lottery. You walk in.
And they're like, but they always know they're going to win. she like the reactions of the like, oh my God, I can't believe this. You know me so well. Like those connections we've made have been huge. So it's for us having that where it's not, OK, I need to get 10 bunch of this, 10 of this. It's like what looks the best? What are they going to like? What do we know that they like? And and that's been great for us. And to hear the reaction we had a florist this year, we added and she said in 30,
years of doing this. β They were the best, best looking flowers that she's ever gotten. Yeah, we sent her in like prime spring, like just beautiful vernunculus. It's kind of like we showed up with a bucket of like here this we're right up the road. This is what we have to offer and she's like the closest florist to our house and our property. She didn't even know we existed. β
Jenny (29:41)
Yeah.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (29:42)
And that's half the battle. I β sent a ton of messages to florists all over the area. And there's been ones that it just didn't work out. We tried for a couple weeks. That's OK. We're not always going to be everybody's cup of tea. I think it's really just finding those people that value what we're doing and really want to be a part of that and also get awesome flowers. Yeah.
Jenny (29:51)
Yeah.
Yeah,
that's so rewarding to have that kind of amazing relationship with your florist customers. I'm curious how you started with those standing orders. Did you ask your florists or say like, Hey, would you be interested in doing a standing order or like we could put together a bucket for you and if you like it, we can maybe keep doing it or how did, or did they ask you guys about it? How did that come about?
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (30:31)
I think it first started with β a florist that lived close to my sister or lived... No, her shop was close to my sister's house. β And she was, I think my sister saw that she had β some local blooms in her cooler. And so at the time we weren't β selling really at all through the cooperative. We really didn't have a lot of florist orders at all. So it was something that...
that we just kind of thought about offering. We thought to ourselves, like, this could be really a good match because we saw what she was already carrying. β And it also, I think we had done like a wholesale list.
for florists maybe that summer and tried to work it out, but it was a lot of work on the back end of things. We had an Excel sheet of here's what we have, it was just listed, and here's what we have, here's the quantities. we were not updating it. was a lot of, it was very, everything was manual, and it was just like, it wasn't working for us. Yeah, and a lot of them, you would hear, β we use DV to get it. Right, or whatever big holes they
and they didn't have the time to sit and try to order locally. So I think we kind of just were like, hey, we can bring you a bucket of our best stuff and see what you like. it was one of those, like every week they'd be like, I love this. I love the pink in this, or I love, we have some that love frosted explosion grass. β It's like when we're growing that, we know we have to put two or three in that bucket. I think another thing about that, the standing orders, is finding people who do
Not just wedding and events, our your retail florist rules that's like a bread and butter I would say for us is like our our retail florist that are just super busy and consistently busy like one of our retail force that we sell to is like What is she like an in-house? Florist for like ten funeral homes, and she's always got weddings and she does her trucks are you see them up and Seven days a week she is
Jenny (32:20)
Yeah. Traditional florists. Yeah.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (32:47)
We kind of saw her doing like a ton of business. We just saw her trucks out on the road and we were like, okay, maybe this is somebody that we should approach because it seems like she's really busy. So I think it was finding the right people. Not to say that we don't love event florists and I would say like our cooperative focuses on mostly event florists β and like all of that inventory is online.
Jenny (32:59)
No?
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (33:12)
And that's like another thing that we're kind of, you we're working out as far as like having enough product to fulfill our standing orders as well as listing on our cooperative. There's always like going to be a balance when you're selling through multiple channels, whether that be wholesale or CSA or retail or whatever. β But I feel like our standing orders have really been like our bread and butter. β
Plus they love getting like special things that we don't list on our wholesale availability. If I only have a few bunches of something, I'm not going to go through the trouble of taking a photo of it, know, posting it online, writing a description. Like it's just, it's easier for us to send it to one of our standing order customers. Plus then they feel like they're getting something really special, which they are.
Jenny (33:45)
Yeah. A perk.
Yeah,
that's a huge perk for them. That's awesome. Yeah. I love that. And I think that's so true. There is such a big difference that a lot of people don't realize between florists that just do weddings and events. And then you're like traditional florist shops. Like I know we'll, I mean, we like selling to both of them and we've done it in the past, but I found it so, and I've probably talked about this in the podcast a million times before, but I get so frustrated with some of our wedding and event for us because they want like such specific.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (34:07)
Yeah.
Jenny (34:34)
things in such specific color palettes at such a specific time. they're sometimes like because of their clients like are unwilling to be flexible. Whereas like those traditional florist shops, they're just like, just bring me beautiful stuff. And it's so much easier to work with them sometimes. β
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (34:34)
You β
Totally.
And I get it too because I'm in weddings and events. Like I save that headache for us for our weddings and events. But at a certain point I'm like, okay, these are absolutely beautiful. There's gotta be a place where this is easier to, you know, offload some of these stems, right? So we're really lucky in that we found some really great people in that regard.
Jenny (35:13)
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's awesome. So what has, have you guys had any big mindset shifts as business owners like over the past year or so? I'm curious to know about that.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (35:30)
I mean, I think like this year we truly started to see what we're capable of. Like it's, we bought this property with like this dream of starting this flower farm and it like the first summer, like it was good, but it wasn't like, was, it was more like, okay, we have this big garden. We kind of know what we're doing. Like we, when people come to our property and go to the farm stand and they get like peek in the back, they're like, this is crazy. Like this, this looks like a legit like operation here.
And like just that alone has been something like we now see like what we're what we're capable of. it used to be like these weeks where we had a huge wholesale week would absolutely kill us. Like we'd be up until midnight packing orders. It would be at the end of the week. We're like, wow, we barely made it. And now this week we'll like last week we finished every it was one of our biggest weeks of the summer. And by like Tuesday afternoon, we're like, let's go to the beach.
Like we're done with everything. Like we got it all done in two days. those, was a moment of like, wow, like we actually were ready. We fulfilled, I don't know, was 350 bunches of flowers or whatever it was. And we were able to still have a life. And because we were organized and ready and kind of.
It's one of those we believed in ourself to start the season. Yeah, we had to get really get it right and tight at the beginning I would say another thing that has been a shift and this is like an ongoing thing is Being able to take a negative and turn it in and flip it on its head β
So like my dad always says, he's like, he said this like, since I was little, he's like, you have this way of being able to like take something really bad and spin it and just like have it work out for you. But I think that's a mindset thing. Like you have to be willing to see something that's dying or a crop failure or you know, whatever it is, you can be sad about it for like a day and then just let it go. And I think that that's something that. Yeah. And not taking.
It's so extreme like we've had we've had things this year and we're like, hey we made back the cost of the seeds Being able to say you know it I'm gonna be sad about this for like a day if it didn't work out and then just
Try to try to take it as a learning experience like we've had Rose. I mean in July we had this like crazy Torrential rain, I think like two years ago. We had 19 inches of rain in July and this summer this summer We had back-to-back Tuesdays with over four inches of rain in an hour, right?
Jenny (38:17)
That's no
nuts.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (38:19)
And so on all of those like delicate things that we love to like specialize in, mean, there I mean, we were out there with a tarp. created a basically a I don't know. We used poles and I made a tarp and kind of protected stuff. mean, just like super delicate set like I needed, you know, and after all the rain and we had like a bud drop on on like a certain row.
all of that crazy rain it was like a hundred degrees for like three days and things were just super sad like just looking really really bad and β I was sad about it for like 24 hours and then I sometimes get this mentality where I'm like I'm just gonna mow it all to the ground and Bill's like no we're not like no we're not
Jenny (38:49)
Ugh.
Hang
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (39:09)
We're gonna
Jenny (39:10)
on.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (39:10)
just like squeeze what we can out of this. You know, we're not gonna chop it all down even if you want to. Like I'm just like set it on fire. Dig it out, low it down. But. β yeah. Our one employee, she's got a bunch of greenhouse experience. was like, why don't you just like wait and see if it grows out of that? Like I think, you know, maybe it'll turn around. And I was like. β
Jenny (39:19)
It's good that there's two of you to balance those kinds of emotions and things.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (39:38)
Okay, and we ended up getting β a number of bunches out of that row. So I think it's just being willing to kind of take those losses, not get too upset about it, and then just turn it into a positive and say, all right, well, there's always gonna be some loss. There's always gonna be something that doesn't work out.
Jenny (39:39)
you
Yeah. I think you just have to have that mindset to be successful. always say like, have one major disaster a year on the farm. Every single year we've had one major disaster and ours happened really early in the season. And I was like, well, at least that one major disaster is out of the way for the season now. Like you just have to like chalk it up to you. That's just a part of it. And I think that's great that you guys have that mindset about it. So.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (40:18)
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's like some some things that are like always unexpected wins too. Like your garlic this year. Yeah, it's I love cooking. So I'm like, hey, let's plant a bunch of garlic. I planted, I don't know, a hundred and something heads of garlic. And we ended up we learned that all the florists around here go crazy over garlic scapes. We sold.
Jenny (40:32)
Yeah.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (40:48)
my yes. So because we're like in a market that's like close to the city, think people like love these like modern, weird, like curly stems and things. And we didn't even think about it. So I planted, I bought all this garlic. We're eating the garlic now and we sold every single garlic scape. And now next year we tripled our order because we couldn't like, people were messaging us left and right. Like you have any left? Yeah, the florist of my co-op were texting me. They were like, Hey, I heard you got the scapes. I was just like, I only had like a hundred.
Jenny (40:57)
Mm-hmm.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (41:17)
You know, didn't have that many at all. Like I had ten bunches It was one of those surprise things like I didn't even know there was a market and now all of a sudden like the garlic that we're eating is actually paying us because we we profited off of it. I know I was like maybe we should grow a thousand next year. People loved it. It was crazy.
Jenny (41:30)
awesome
Yeah, though.
I'm like, I have seen people selling the craziest things to some florists and none of my florists would ever want any of those things. And I'm like kind of jealous. Yeah, yeah.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (41:45)
Last week we sold a bunch of tomato vines. I grow a ton of tomatoes
and like it's crazy that someone's buying tomato vines and I'm like I usually trim these off and get rid of them and Chris is like this is is a hot item. Yeah tomato girl summer very very busy or very popular wedding theme I guess around here especially in New Jersey. Did she do tomatoes in a bouquet? Yes, yes.
Jenny (41:56)
You can throw them in the compost.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (42:12)
Crazy. People love it. They like all the weird stuff. think there's an appetite for weird stuff in our area and we just have to lean into that.
Jenny (42:12)
That's fantastic. Lean into it.
Yeah, do it. Tell me what else you crazy things you're going to grow. so that's fantastic. β I love that you guys have found this like specialty niche and it's been really exciting to hear from you since before you took the course. And then after just seeing some of the changes that you guys have made, I'm really excited to see what's coming next for you because I can see really big things happening.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (42:25)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jenny (42:50)
For you guys and your farm, you just are so business savvy and you're so organized now and you've made this niche for yourself. So I, I'm just really excited to see where you guys go. β I have just maybe one or two more questions for you. And my first one is what made you decide to sign up for the course and what is the biggest thing that you got out of it?
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (42:57)
it.
I mean, I think it was just the fact that we were trying, like the ultimate goal of turning this property into what it could be and like realizing we didn't know everything. β We know nothing. We were out here just trying to, like we were trying to just get by and we- Yeah, think every time we would check our account, we would think like, well, we sold so many flowers this week. Like, where is all of our money going? And-
Jenny (43:32)
You knew something.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (43:47)
I listen to your podcasts, listen to a lot of podcasts.
just the focus on profitability for us, I thought to myself, okay, this is what we need. We need to really zero in on those things because I know how much we're taking in every week. Like I know how much, you know, our gross sales are, but when it came to like actually profiting, we were really struggling. And I think I had like the mindset of you have to have a ton of property to be able to do this. And I remember when Chris had came to me, she's like,
there's this class up in New York and she grows on an acre and and she and I was like I never knew that was possible like to to grow on an acre and profit enough that you could you could potentially do this full-time and I was like this is it's it was definitely eye-opening so when we heard that we're like hey let's let's do it I know I almost didn't make it because of our lunatic dog yeah
Jenny (44:46)
I forgot about that.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (44:48)
We
have two dogs one would bark at this entire conversation. He's completely deaf. he's sleeping right below us. He doesn't hear us right now. hear us at all. So worked out for the podcast. Thank God we ended up coming to your class because it made a massive difference for us. Just like everything from like big picture to like these little small things that add up. Like I remember we were in your hoop learning like how you filled trays with dirt and
That day when we got home, we drove home six hours. I built that exact thing in our flower room. And we put whiteboards up everywhere. It was like, I don't know, those simple little things that like, we built this, I built a taller seating bench. it was something, we used to use folding tables and they weren't at the right height and like, things like that, you might not even realize like our huge game changers.
also like really big stuff. So we were just scratching our heads prior to like, where is this all going? And now we definitely have more of a sense of like, okay, here's where we want to be. And
here's like our piece of the pie and how we're going to get there. And I remember at the course, like walking around, I have pictures of random spot, random things that are on your farm. Like, like the hose, the hose reel that comes back in, like we bought three of them. Like it's, it's all of those things. Like we're like, wow, we do this, but I didn't know I could do it this way. ways to really like streamline a business. Put it this way. I used to buy the stop, the end caps for a drip tape. And then I was like, why would I do that when Jenny said you could just tie a knot?
You
Jenny (46:31)
Literally
just tie a knot.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (46:33)
And then it was like so many things like that. like
an amazing amount of stuff. Like by the end, we were, I think we were like mindful and we needed like a couple days to process it. Like there were certain things we could put into effect like right away. And then other things we were like, wow, like I think on the drive home, like, we back at all of these notes. I think we said we have a lot of work to do. was like overwhelming, but in like the best possible way, just because we knew there were so many different things we could take from it.
Like, where do you even start?
Jenny (47:09)
I'm so glad to hear that because I every time I teach any class or any workshop I'm always so nervous because everybody is so different and they come from different backgrounds and I just like want everybody to get something out of it and just I mean everyone always says that it's incredible and they get so much out of it but I never want it to be too much for people where they feel like they can't take action on it so
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (47:35)
All of the like materials too that you provide afterwards I think were like very good references for us because we could go back and even if our minds were like blown, know, we were like, okay What was that one thing right and we could go back and look it up. So I felt like that was just unbelievably helpful
Jenny (47:55)
Great.
Well, I'm so glad to hear that. And I'm so excited to hear about all the successes that you guys have had this season. I know you've told, I mean, you've shared a lot of them just with us talking here, but you've also shared a lot more with me. Just like you said, you had used to buy in stems for your flower CSA and now you're growing them all. And you said you had some larger like wedding orders come in this spring. You've had systems in place for all that stuff. And so it's just really.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (48:22)
Yeah, plus we had
like no midnight nights. Like there was no, like. Eating dinner at a normal time and. Yeah. I don't know, enjoying life. Yeah, Bill's been to the beach, well both of us, we've been to the beach like. A dozen times. A dozen times this I golf each week like. Yeah, he's golfed. Last summer we, I mean we live a mile from the beach. I didn't golf once and I didn't go to the beach once. We just worked. Yeah, we just worked all summer long last year. I mean like all season long really. Yeah. Like this year there have been hard stops.
Jenny (48:45)
Okay.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (48:52)
There have been. Yeah, we've learned like, okay, it's it's 105 degrees at 12 o'clock. We're done. We're done. And we'll drop it and be and guess what? It'll still be there tomorrow. Yeah.
Jenny (49:03)
Just that alone is huge, huge.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (49:07)
yeah.
fact that we've been able to like be so much more profitable to really like dial into certain aspects of our business and also have more of a work-life balance has been awesome. Like that has, I mean, that's worth its weight in gold. and then... Like I'm going into fall wedding season not feeling burnt out.
as last year I was just like absolutely exhausted. look at pictures of myself and I'm like, my God, I was just so tired all the time. I got physically sick. I was really sick last fall just because I felt like I was just doing, I think I just did too much and got like really overwhelmed. You just hit a certain point where you can't do it all. So this year having all of our systems in place.
It's between that and then just the the reaction of the florist and the people that come to the farm stand and like we're part of their routine now, which is like one of the coolest things like they're like, every Saturday I go get coffee here and then I come to your farm stand and religiously, that's another thing this this year. I think this you mentioned this like consistency if you're gonna have like your market right you're there every single week religiously like for our farm stand. It's really one of
are only like retail outlets. It's been open every week, Saturday and Sunday since Pretty much all year. We might have had one week we weren't open. Yeah, I we had one week, like one day we weren't open. But every single other week we've shown up, we've had plenty of stuff out there and it's gone really Consistency is key.
Jenny (50:50)
Yeah, it really is. that's so cool. You guys, you don't know how excited I am for you and how awesome it makes me feel to see like the difference that has come out of this. That's just, my mind is kind of blown right now, honestly. I'm like so excited for you guys. β
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (51:05)
Well, thank you. It's seriously all thanks to your class because there
are so many things that have changed. I wish we could have filmed us trying to go through a harvest last June.
Jenny (51:14)
Well, that's awesome.
Dude,
I have so that's all amazing. I'm so glad to hear those things. One last question for you. If there's one thing you want other farmers to take away from your story, what would that be?
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (51:35)
I'd say just go for it. I mean, we've, just kind of dove in, like we sold our house, moved here, like with this dream and we didn't know what we were doing at all. And it's like, go for it, but also use resources that are out there. you've got to. many resources out there. Just like dive right in. I'm never without a podcast or, you know, some kind of book or, uh,
some kind of resource out there. And not every idea is going to work the way you want it to. it's like we're Chris is the queen of ideas. She's like, we should do this and we'll do it. And if it works, great. If it doesn't, we'll find a way to. I think not being married to like every single thing, like sometimes, you know, things aren't going to work out and that's OK. But really, you do have some trial and error at the beginning. β And then once you're able to find those systems,
that work for you really kind of like streamlining those things and getting good at them and getting faster at them and leaner and more efficient. I mean, I think that's the name of the game. Yeah, mean, flower farming, it's all risk. I mean, look at you're relying on the weather. You're relying on.
there's so many factors that you can't control. So it's you do everything you can to get ready and control what you can control. That's it. It's it's kind of the name of the game because if you if you don't if you go into the attitude of like everything's going to be perfect, you're going to it's not. I mean, you learn so fast. It's like you could you could set everything up exactly how you want it. But I also think it doesn't have to be.
so hard and so all-consuming all the time. I think for me that was like my major shift is that like I thought that we would never be able to leave. Not that we have like taken like a major vacation or anything but there's been so many days where we've left at like noon right and it doesn't have to be all-consuming at all times. I think dialing into systems and then also just like boundaries and boundaries for yourself.
Right? Like, I am not going to answer this florist email at five o'clock on Friday. Right? I will answer this on Monday. Or I am going to the beach this afternoon and I will worry about weeding that row tomorrow. You know? So I think for us it's β several mindsetships. But like that's, think it's really important is to.
to know that like it's still gonna be there tomorrow. I wish the weeds weren't though. wish we could just say that'll get done. Someone else will do it. We gotta teach the dog how to do it.
Jenny (54:17)
That's right.
Don't we all?
Yeah. Wouldn't that
be great if they could like earn their keep a little bit? My dogs too. All right. Well, thank you guys so much for coming on the podcast, taking the time to chat with me. β I'm just so impressed with you guys and so happy that you could come on. So tell everyone where they can find you and follow you online.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (54:30)
I mean, he destroys enough, so...
you
Daybreakflowers on Instagram and daybreakflowers.com.
Jenny (54:54)
I'll link you guys in the show notes to their website and Instagram so you guys can go find them. And with that, thank you guys so much for being here. It was such an honor to talk to you guys today and we'll see. Yeah, of course. And we'll see everyone next time in the next episode.
Krissa & Bill Hoermann (55:06)
for having us. Thank you for having us, Jenny.
