Jenny (00:29)
In this episode, I'm chatting with Christine Covino, who is the founder of Wild Iris Flower Farm in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Now, Christine is known for her sustainably grown designer quality flowers, and she loves to share her passion for gardening and flower farming through CSAs and workshops. And as we talk about a lot in this episode, her vintage flower truck, which is just about the most adorable thing I have ever seen.
She also helps home gardeners with her writing and digital guides. And the thing that inspires me most about Christine is that she is a mother of three and is beautifully blending her life as a mother with her work as a farmer, entrepreneur, and storyteller. And in this episode, we talk about business efficiencies, improvements that she's made on her farm, and flower trucks. And Christine will tell you if those flower trucks are worth it or not.
I think that you'll enjoy, so let's dive in.
Jenny (01:28)
welcome Christine to the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast.
Christine Covino (01:32)
Thank you for having me.
Jenny (01:34)
I'm really happy to catch up with you today because you were at the farm for the Six Figure Farming Workshop a few, it was a couple years ago. It wasn't last summer, right? Two summers ago. Okay, yeah. So, and it's been a while since we have talked, so I'm really excited to catch up with you. So before we dive in though, can you just give everyone a quick rundown, like two minutes of your farm and what you do and who you are?
Christine Covino (01:44)
It was last summer, July 2024. Yeah.
Yes, so I'm Christine. I own and operate and dreamed up Wild Iris Flower Farm. We're located in Richfield, Connecticut, and we grow on a small scale. I'm about a half an acre total. We grow all sorts of cut flowers, which I've been honing in on kind of my favorites and the best and the most profitable. So ⁓ we
grow a lot of different varieties, but ⁓ we're definitely taking a step back from doing so many different ones and kind of focusing on our main ⁓ crops that we love. So we sell at local farmers markets. We're at the Ridgefield farmers market and the North Salem farmers market. We do a CSA. We have subscriptions four months of the year. I kind of just do
Two months in the spring and then take the summer off and do two months in the fall ⁓ We do workshops so we do a little bit of in-person education ⁓ Whether it's like floral designing We do a Dahlia digging and kind of like how to grow Dahlia's workshop in the fall and ⁓ I guess last but not least we have our flower truck
which is always a hit with whenever people see it, because she's really cute. She's a vintage 1961 VW single cab that we've outfitted into a mobile bloom bar. So it's a way that we can get our flowers out there to the local community. And ⁓ it's also kind of doing double duty for like exposure and marketing at the same time.
⁓ So we bring her to events, we do pop-ups at local Qube shops, ⁓ we do private events like weddings and baby showers, bachelorette parties, like you name it. ⁓ She's kind of a, just like a fun addition to a celebration. ⁓ Yeah, I think that's me.
Jenny (04:14)
Awesome! And yeah,
you guys should definitely go check out her flower truck. It's super cute. We'll probably talk about it in this episode today, ⁓ but we're gonna link to Christine's ⁓ Instagram and stuff in the show notes as well, so you guys can go check it out. But it's super cute. So I...
Christine Covino (04:21)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (04:33)
think everything you're doing is so great and I think you're so talented with design and your marketing and sales. Like your website is super pretty and I love your Instagram and I think that you're great at it. ⁓
Christine Covino (04:44)
Debbie, so much coming
from you. Such a compliment.
Jenny (04:48)
I mean, honestly, you're way better at branding than I am. I suck at branding. That's not my strong suit at all. But so I was super impressed by that. But ⁓ I would love to talk a little bit today about when you came to the workshop, like what your farm and your business was like before we met and if there's been anything that you've changed or anything like you've transitioned from and what it's like now. So can you tell me like a little bit about what your farm
Christine Covino (04:51)
No, no, no. Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (05:17)
This was like before I knew you.
Christine Covino (05:19)
Yeah, and
also I can talk about like when I started. I had been farming for like, so like there's a difference between gardening and farming. I was gardening before I decided to up the ante to the flower farm for probably about five years. Yeah, I started like gardening, growing my Dahlia tubers. Each year I grew
Jenny (05:24)
Yeah.
Christine Covino (05:48)
exponentially more Dahlia tubers until 2020 when I decided like this was it. I'm going to go full force into the farm. That's year we bought the flower truck. So that's kind of like where I started. I didn't really have a plan. I really wanted a flower truck. I had seen Amelia's who's in Tennessee and she was kind of the only one doing it at that time.
And I was like, how fantastic that she's getting flowers to people in these urban areas. ⁓ She was buying from local flower farms. And I was like, I love gardening. I love growing flowers. Maybe I could grow my own flowers to supply my flower truck. So that's kind of where the flower farm and flower trucks blossomed and came together. So I started out doing
that and deciding to turn it into a business in 2020. ⁓ It was a crazier to do it. I was also pregnant with my second. So it was like, I just, it's kind of a personality trait of mine is I just like dive in head first and like, no one's going to stop me. And I get kind of obsessive about ⁓ just putting my mind to it and doing it.
Jenny (06:49)
Seems like a crazy year to do that.
Christine Covino (07:12)
⁓ so luckily I have a husband who really, really likes old vehicles too. So he helped me out, finding the truck and, ⁓ like driving it. Cause you have to drive a manual transmission. That's how old is that? 60 years old. ⁓ so he, luckily I have him as my supporter. ⁓ but yeah, so I was doing that. I was just popping up at like local.
spots, mainly the Apple Orchard, is owned by my in-laws. So was kind of like an easy way to, I just had this in kind of at my one spot. And then people really liked it. People really, really liked it. ⁓ People were asking to buy my flowers, like aside from the truck, like where else can I get your flowers? How else can I get your flowers? So that's when I started to do the CSA. And I feel like from there, I
kind of like discovered, wow, there's all these avenues I could go through to get my flowers to people. And I think I kind of lost a little bit of my vision in those early months and years and kind of just tried to do everything. So when I came to take your course, I was a few years in. ⁓ And it just really spoke to me when you were talking about like,
honing in and picking certain avenues to focus on instead of trying to do everything, instead of trying to grow everything. ⁓ And I was like, this is something that I need to learn more about. So I was at that time like selling to Floris, event designing, like doing the flower truck, doing the CSA. I felt like I was doing so many things ⁓ and I wasn't really focusing or like trying to do.
one thing well. And I feel like that was something that your core course like brought me through was like, let's, let's do the audit. Let's focus. Let's see what's working, what's not working. And so I feel like both in my income streams and like physically what I'm growing on the farm, I was able to come out of your workshop and like say like, okay, this is what I need to do. And yeah, you helped me do that.
Jenny (09:36)
No, that's
good. ⁓ so what did you change? Like, what's it like now?
Christine Covino (09:37)
Thank
Mm-hmm.
So I really don't sell wholesale at all anymore. I have a select few like really awesome florists that I love in the area that I will sell to, but I kind of don't entertain those inquiries anymore. ⁓ I have toned down and kind of pulled back from event design also.
For me, it was just something when I looked at it. I was like, I didn't love it. I don't know. ⁓ I really didn't like the communication end of it. I don't know if that's like horrible to say, but the amount of emails and time that I had to spend
Jenny (10:28)
No, that's why I stopped.
Christine Covino (10:35)
like kind of holding people's hands. I don't know, maybe I wasn't set up for it with like my systems and stuff, but I just also didn't enjoy it. I ⁓ will entertain still some. I don't want to say that we're like never gonna do event design again, like we did a few this year. ⁓ I, yeah, just didn't really feel it was worth it, number one, for the time I was spending on the communication end of it. And then I wasn't getting...
a ton out of it, ⁓ both with like the flowers and just with like my passion and my joy. I like the farmers markets. I like the flower truck where I can go and like meet new people and even meet old customers and just catch up with them. ⁓ And just like they're experiencing the joy from like picking out their flowers and making their own bouquets and arrangements. Like the workshops too bring me that kind of feeling that I like. So
So yeah, we kind of cut out ⁓ those couple of like avenues of income and kind of honed in on just like what felt better to us.
Jenny (11:46)
That's great. Yeah.
There's so much to be said about doing stuff that brings you joy and not doing work that drains you or, and, at least delegating that work if it's something that you still want your business to do. ⁓ because like, what's the point of being a business owner if you're still going to be like stuck doing work that is draining or you don't enjoy, like there's no point.
Christine Covino (11:54)
Exactly.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly. And I was feeling really stressed about the events, like when we were doing the designing and stuff and like people have really specific, like visions, like we're a flower farm and we advertise that and I try to be really, really clear about it. And then sometimes it just doesn't translate to what they're expecting. So I would rather just do what is making us feel happy and yeah, not.
exhausting.
Jenny (12:40)
Yeah, exactly. And I think, I think being a farmer florist, like if you are exclusively only growing flowers or weddings and events, and you are not supplementing from a wholesaler or other, other places, I think that is so difficult to do. And I know people that do it and they do an amazing job at it, but you really have to position your brand in a way where it's super clear that
Christine Covino (12:46)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (13:09)
you're using this, they don't get a lot of choice and people really have a hard time understanding that unless you like really build a whole brand around it. And so like for all the same reasons you said, that's why we decided to stop pursuing weddings a long time ago too. It was just like really hard for us.
Christine Covino (13:10)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And like,
maybe it was a gap in my marketing or advertising that I wasn't attracting those customers who knew like what it was. So it just started feeling really exhausting for me to have to explain it every single time. And I just, it was not sparking the joy.
Jenny (13:42)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. I mean,
I stick to a lot of the same sales outlets as you like our farmers market and our CSA. And for me, they are just so easy because it's like, whatever is blooming on the farm, we, we just bring whatever we have. There's no catering to super specific color requests or flower requests or trying to explain to somebody that vernunculus don't bloom in August or like, it's just so much in like farming is already hard enough, you know?
Christine Covino (13:58)
Mm-hmm.
Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
Jenny (14:16)
And like,
so if anybody listening to this, if you really do weddings, I think you're amazing and you could totally do it. But, um, for me, yes. Yes.
Christine Covino (14:22)
So much credit to them. follow
a lot of, ⁓ I follow their journeys, a lot of the flower farmers who strictly do events and weddings and I am just in awe of them and they must be really good at communicating and marketing, which they are, and marketing and all that and yeah, more power to them. I just wanna do, also at this time in my life with our family and trying to balance everything, ⁓ the events,
Jenny (14:40)
Yeah. ⁓
Christine Covino (14:51)
being on the weekends and you having to spend hours and hours and it's a lot with small children.
Jenny (14:58)
Yeah, I don't,
I now I, my son's almost three and I'm like, I will never voluntarily work another weekend. I mean, like, obviously I work weekends every once in a while, like for tell you a tube or digging or like planting in the spring. But it's like, I'm not building my business around something that is going to require me to be there every single weekend. And I know the farmer's markets do, but it's so much easier to do with kids. It's so much easier to.
Christine Covino (15:08)
Mm-hmm. Same.
Mm-hmm.
Yep, yep, yep.
Jenny (15:26)
delegate that workout to somebody or like bring a kid along to a farmer's market is way different than like a wedding venue.
Christine Covino (15:27)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. I worked
a few of my farmers markets this year and I could bring my son, seven. brought him a couple of times. He's helping me. He's like interacting and you know, he's just not like, I wouldn't bring my two year old, but he was great. So yeah, and the farmers market is like a limited time. You know, it's like you prep and you get ready. It's like eight o'clock. You're there setting up and the market's like nine. My longest one is nine to two.
Jenny (15:47)
Right.
Christine Covino (16:00)
And then that's it, I can bring him to baseball afterwards. like that's not, I enjoy doing that. And again, I enjoy like talking to the customers. ⁓ I have a farmer's market employee who does most of them. So like, I love that and I'll fill in when I have to. ⁓ And then the flower truck is mostly on the weekends as well. But again, I have a flower truck girl or
Jenny (16:02)
Right.
Awesome.
Mm-hmm.
Christine Covino (16:28)
You know, I can pull from kind of, know a few people who can do that for me and it's great. Like I, and again, those are limited times. It's not, you're not like working all hours of the day. It's like, we'll do four or five hour pop-ups. Number one, like because that's what I like to do. And number two, because the flowers would die if they were out there for longer. So we don't want to like be doing long, long days and like the hot.
You know, you probably know that from like the farmers markets ⁓ and just being at the the whim of Mother Nature. But yeah, so those limited amount of times events on the weekends. Great. I love doing that. So.
Jenny (17:11)
Yeah, and so you've mentioned a few times that you've had some helpers. How many people do you have helping you out with the business?
Christine Covino (17:16)
So I have two part-time people, and then we hire laborers to just come certain times of the year when we're like, you know, we need extra help in the, this is one thing I have not implemented yet, but weeding, we're still hand weeding. One of the things, I know. So it's.
Jenny (17:38)
Christine. It's okay.
Christine Covino (17:43)
One of the things that's on my list to work on for next year, we need a different weeding system because the amount of labor, the cost of labor of that specifically, but we do bring in help in like the spring, like right around when we're planting all of the new stuff and like the dahlias are just coming up and we need to keep it weeded. And then around this time of year when we're also turning over beds and planting for
planting the fall stuff that'll bloom in the spring and digging the Dahlia tubers. like on the list are my two part-time fellow local moms who we all kind of just like tag-team to make it work with like making the bouquets or, know, today do we do a little bit of farm stuff and then split it and we'll do bouquets later. ⁓ So we tag-team it and then I have a flower truck weekend employee.
And then that's it with the supplementing of the ⁓ laborers and the different times of year.
Jenny (18:43)
Awesome.
Yeah, we kind of do something similar. Just bring in extra help for specifically, deli trooper digging.
Christine Covino (18:53)
Just, yes. Mm-hmm. Yep,
I actually put a call out on Instagram a couple weeks ago, and the amount of local people who were following me that were like, I'll come and help you dig, and I want to learn how you do it. And you don't have to pay me. I was like, anyone who is doing work on the farm is going to get paid. I don't want to be that way. But I mean, people want to do it.
I will take them up on their offers.
Jenny (19:25)
Yeah, for sure. And so
it's funny, just before we hit record here, we were kind of talking about Dalia tubers and efficiencies. And I'm not sure when we'll publish this episode, but we're recording it right around Dalia tuber digging time and late fall. So, ⁓ I'm about to mow mine down. Probably going to do it this afternoon or tomorrow and.
Christine Covino (19:40)
Mm-hmm.
Ugh, it was devastating
this year. It was early for us. Are you October 15th, your like normal day?
Jenny (19:51)
Two.
Yeah!
Yeah, but we've had frost anywhere from like, I think the earliest one we've ever had here was September 21st. And the latest one we've ever had was November 4th. And those have all happened within the last like five or six years. And I felt so stupid this year. I'm a very seasoned farmer and I felt so dumb because...
Christine Covino (20:11)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jenny (20:20)
We didn't have any forecasted frost at all. And then like all of a sudden they were like frost advisory kind of like out of nowhere for this past week. And, ⁓ I was like, ⁓ it's probably just going to be like a light frost, no big deal. So like I set up my sprinklers cause we have a sprinkler system that will turn on to protect them if it's going to be a light frost. And, ⁓ I just really wasn't that concerned about it at all. And I went out there at four 30 in the morning.
Christine Covino (20:34)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Jenny (20:49)
And everything was toasted. ⁓ completely toasted. And I was like, well, these sprinklers are not going to do anything. And we lost them all. It sucked.
Christine Covino (20:51)
No.
Yeah, it was, yeah,
was devastating. I don't know why I was so devastated this year. I feel kind of dumb too. Like again, growing dahlias for almost eight years now, whether it's like gardening or farming. And so our frost came last week. It was the morning of October 10th and it like, I don't know. I just wasn't ready. Usually I'm like, okay, done. Like let's start digging these things. I don't want to see them anymore.
I wasn't ready and I was like really emotional about it. Yeah, yeah. So I think that was part of it is that they like didn't get into their prime until really a lot later than normal. ⁓ And so it was a very short time. I think we had them, we're enjoying them for like five weeks and then that was it. So yeah, this week we are...
Jenny (21:33)
Well, they were all so late this year.
Christine Covino (21:57)
starting to and I guess silver lining is that we're getting an early start on the digging and and the dividing because we like to do that in the fall too, so Never stops
Jenny (22:08)
Yeah.
Christine Covino (22:12)
Peace!
Jenny (22:12)
Yeah. ⁓ I know you were saying that you were kind of looking at trying to improve your Della tuber digging and, ⁓ trying to put some more efficiencies in place with that. Are there any other places on your farm where you feel like you have been making strides towards being more efficient or changing some of your systems or processes? Cause I know that's something that we talked about a lot when you were here on the farm.
Christine Covino (22:20)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, and so I was on the farm about a year and a half ago, a little bit less, ⁓ and I did start implementing some things right away that I was able to. So one of the things that stands out for me that I learned at the workshop was your bouquet making process. So that was something that we did right away. got home and I was like, okay, girls, like this is how we're doing it now. ⁓ Just setting up our...
tables. We have two folding tables that we do it on. I would love to eventually have a really amazing workshop space, but ⁓ right now we're we work out of my garage and we have. Yeah, so we'll get there. ⁓ It works and we have fun. So we set up like an L shape and we lay all the stems out on the table ⁓ and we kind of just bunch them together. My recipes have also gotten a lot.
Jenny (23:17)
I did that for many years.
Christine Covino (23:35)
simpler, that was one of the things that you said in the workshop was you don't need to have 17 ingredients. If I'm making like a 20 stem bouquet for my farmers market, I can have four to five ingredients and just like multiple stems of each of those elements. ⁓ So those were two things, both the process of making the bouquets and the recipes that I implemented right away. And it made a huge difference. ⁓
One of my main ⁓ employees made 60 bouquets in like an hour and a half for one of those days. And it was like mind blowing. ⁓
Jenny (24:17)
How long
would it take her before to do that?
Christine Covino (24:21)
Like four hours.
Jenny (24:23)
Torch!
Okay, let's,
so let's just do some quick math here. I'm gragg, I'm programming my calculator. So four hours to like one and a half. So that means two and a half hours of just bouquet making a week. And if you make bouquets for 35 weeks out of the year, that's 87 and a half hours. Let's just say, I'm going to just say you pay her 20 bucks an hour. That's $1,750 in savings.
Christine Covino (24:32)
my god.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And we can be doing other. Yeah, it was way more than worth it. It was way more than worth it. that, so we've continued that through this whole season. ⁓ so I was able to implement that in the summer and it got us through last fall. And then that's how we do it now. It's like really honed in. yeah, it's, it's so much better and I'm not overthinking things. And then this has also, so like by the time I took your workshop,
Jenny (24:53)
So would you say coming to the workshop was worth it?
Christine Covino (25:19)
Last year, I had already bought all of my stuff for the next year. So I had so many flowers again growing this year. But through that and through this simplifying the recipe and the bouquet making method, ⁓ we're now eliminating a bunch of flowers that we grow. I still want to have some of the filler stuff ⁓ for our market bouquets. They're a big hit. Mixed bouquets are...
our number one seller at the markets and at the truck. As much as I try to do straight bunches of stuff, everybody wants a mixed bouquet. They love it, they want it, they pay for it, which is the other part of it. We sell our mixed bouquets for $35, and they're always around like 20 stems. It works really well for us in this area. But yeah, so we are just...
Jenny (25:56)
Yeah, you gotta do what your customers want.
Heck yeah.
Christine Covino (26:18)
looking at what we're growing and the space that it's taking up and whether we're going to keep it for next year or eliminate it. And we have eliminated a lot. ⁓
Jenny (26:30)
That's awesome. So I'm curious what your bouquet, what was your bouquet making process like before?
Christine Covino (26:31)
That will be.
So we would keep everything in buckets in water, and everything was tangled together. So we would harvest and kind of process as we harvest, which I did, let me backtrack, I did get a lot of tips about harvesting from you too, and like how to just physically place the stems in your arm, like strip and place and strip and place. we, that definitely has saved us a lot of time.
Jenny (26:40)
Mm-hmm.
Christine Covino (27:07)
over the last year. But we were stripping in the field previously, and we would just keep them in the buckets. And when we would make the bouquets, we would put the buckets on the table and try to take the stems out. I think that was wasting so much time just trying to untangle some of the stems. ⁓ And then with that, my recipes were super complicated.
because I thought I had to have all these cool elements and like, well, we're growing that so it needs to be in the bouquet. We have it. ⁓ They were bigger too. We were doing like 30 stems probably, and it's just too big. And it took too much time. ⁓ So it really like toned down and got me to see what was like, like people will still pay for that bouquet.
with less ingredients in it, but like more of each individual ingredient. So we're doing like five zinnias, three gum, and like that too, like doing like five, five, five, five, or three, three, five, five, five, something like that. ⁓ Instead of like, I was like, we need two of this and one of this and three dahlias. it's like, I feel dumb for not thinking of that sooner. It made such a difference.
Jenny (28:13)
Yeah.
Well, that's the thing is,
yeah, but people like, I feel like a lot of the things I teach are very like simple and, and it's like, have to uncomplicate everything, right? It's like, you have to unlearn certain things and be okay with letting simple be kind of the best way to go sometimes. And I mean, not in every situation, of course, like.
Christine Covino (28:39)
Yes.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jenny (28:59)
it's probably not gonna apply if you're doing like high-end bridal design, wedding design, but like, exactly, we don't do that. But even if you are doing that, like I have a good friend, her name is Fran, she owns Heirloom Soul Flowers Inn, and she does a lot of weddings and she does like high-end bridal, I shouldn't say bridal, wedding design and...
Christine Covino (29:03)
We don't do it anymore.
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (29:25)
She has systems
and recipes written out for all the bouquets that she makes, all the arrangements she does. And it's like, she has those processes in place. And I think she also leaves it open for her own creativity. Like she does go out and pick out like those special little elements for the bouquets and arrangements and stuff. like she has simple systems for it. And, ⁓ yeah, it makes a huge difference. Like these tiny tweaks.
Christine Covino (29:35)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jenny (29:55)
have
these like really crazy outcomes, I guess.
Christine Covino (29:59)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean all those hours look at all those hours that we saved that we you know I still had the girls working so we were doing other things then we could go out to the farm outside and like You know plant a couple things or like put down some Amendments to the soil or something because as moms again, we have limited time. It's like ⁓ okay. My kids are in school from
nine to like the little one is only 12 so nine to 12 so it's like we have three hours what can we do so we yeah we every minute counts and is valuable so that helped
Jenny (30:30)
Yeah.
Yeah,
just this morning I was working on a presentation. I'm giving a talk at a conference and I was like, the whole thing is kind of about like simplification and how we're all trying to do too much. And it's just like, we don't have any time. We literally don't have time. Especially if you have a family and you have young kids, like you do not have time to like mess around. You just don't.
Christine Covino (30:54)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yep, yep, and
I needed that. When you were saying those things that hit me in the chest and I was like, my god, this is so easy, why did I not think of this or do this before? And you're right, we're just complicating everything too much and we need to simplify every part of our lives.
Jenny (31:21)
Yeah, that's like my, I feel like my life mantra now is just like simplify, like literally every single piece of my life needs to be simplified. And it's still not simplified enough. feel like, I don't know if you really can do that with kids, um, everything, like for me, everything changed when I had kids too, when I, well, I just have one, but it's just like, it, know, you can't prepare for that. So.
Christine Covino (31:24)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
I love it. It's not yet. No, it's not.
⁓ yeah, I haven't figured it out yet.
Mm-hmm.
No, yeah,
you can't. And as much as people will tell you, you just have no, no idea. No idea. Yeah. Yeah. I'm still figuring it out as I go.
Jenny (31:54)
Not until you're in it.
So what do you think, is there anything you wish you would have done differently, like early, early on when you were starting out?
Christine Covino (32:08)
I love this question ⁓ because I don't think I would have done anything differently. And I don't know if that's like a pretentious thing to say, but I really think that I had to go through all of that and learn from my own mistakes and try out all these different things to then understand what
Jenny (32:16)
Love that.
Christine Covino (32:37)
works for the business, what works for my area, what works for me and my family. Like I, yeah, I wouldn't change anything. I think I had to go through that to figure out, and I'm still figuring it out. I'm still, you know, but no, I like, I've made so many mistakes and I've lost so many crops and you know, ran into like problems in the business and everything, but
Jenny (32:50)
You always will be.
Christine Covino (33:07)
I think that only makes me a better business owner and a better farmer now, because it's like some of the stuff, yes, I could, I learned it. I learned a lot of it, but a lot of like how I do things now is what I learned from my own mistakes and like going through all of that. So.
Jenny (33:26)
Yeah, that experience is like,
you could read as many flower farming books and take as many courses as you want, but like the thing that's really going to make the difference is just stacking up the experience.
Christine Covino (33:30)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. All of these experiences and things that I've gone through, like on the farm with the flower truck, with like event design and stuff has like led me here and like made me like force me to make these decisions of like where the business is going to go and where I want it to go. So yeah, I, no regrets.
Jenny (34:02)
I love that.
think that's, I think more people need to embrace that because I think it's so easy for people when you make mistakes or you kill a crop or you have setbacks and failures to just like, I know I do. I'm like, I am such a failure. I suck at this, whatever. It's so easy to fall into that, but you have to look at it from a piece of like, well, I just learned a ton.
Christine Covino (34:13)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Jenny (34:28)
And that
is going to make me so much stronger and help shape my business in the future. And it's so important to have those experiences and to not avoid them. Well, not like you can, I don't know. That's probably a weird way to say it, but like not be afraid of it.
Christine Covino (34:35)
Mm-hmm.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, like I would
love to avoid losing like $5,000 in my tulip crop. like, mean, in the moment, in the moment you're like, yes, I do all the same things and I like hate myself. And I'm like, oh my God, how could I do this? Like we just lost all of this. We lost money. But now like in retrospect, looking back on it, it's helped me. So my tulip loss.
Jenny (34:45)
Yeah.
Yeah, I love that. So yeah,
that's, I hate tulips.
Christine Covino (35:08)
⁓ It's one of the
things that we're cutting down on for next year, for sure.
Jenny (35:14)
Yeah. We cut down on them a lot too. We just grow
like a couple thousand just for like the first couple, like early, early few weeks of the season to like get us started before like other things come on like Renunculus and, ⁓
Christine Covino (35:20)
Mm-hmm.
Mm
Yeah, it's
a good gap, like not gap, but like start. You can get them bridge. Exactly.
Jenny (35:32)
It's like a good bridge crop. Yeah, exactly.
So I feel like the flower truck has come up a few times. So I want to talk more about the flower truck. is seriously the cutest thing I've ever seen. Tell us. Yeah. Does, does the flower truck have a name or is it just the flower?
Christine Covino (35:44)
She's so cute. Yeah.
So her name is Elle, ⁓ which is kind of everyone's like, are you Elle? No, it's kind of a like symbolic thing to all my kids names. They all all of my kids have L's in their names. LLE is the flower truck and it's just kind of like is our other baby. ⁓ Yeah. So she's Elle the flower truck.
Jenny (36:03)
Aww.
I love that.
Christine Covino (36:15)
She's, yeah, 1961 is when she was created. And we bought her in 2020. So it was during the pandemic, which like was crazy because I lived in New York at the time, which was like Westchester, New York, which was like literally the epicenter was Nur-a-Shell, which is 30 minutes from us. like, nobody was entering the state. So we bought the truck.
from someone in Colorado and we had to have it shipped out here and we couldn't find a truck driver who would enter the state. Yeah, because they were from out west and they were like, well, we're not coming over there. It's like pandemic. And it was April. So it was right at the beginning. So we finally found someone who would brave the New York air and deliver the truck.
Jenny (36:51)
my gosh.
Yeah, why would they?
⁓ my gosh.
Christine Covino (37:11)
And like serendipitous, the truck got dropped off on the same day that I was due with a baby that I had lost the year prior. So it was like, thank you. It's a big part. This like grief journey is also kind of a big part of like my flower experience and ⁓ like kind of what pushed me to build the business to like bring joy to other people because it helped me so much through that time.
Jenny (37:21)
⁓ so sorry.
Christine Covino (37:40)
I had lost the baby in November of 2019 and his due date was April of 2020. And it was just like this weird, we didn't plan it or anything, but the truck, I still get goosebumps thinking about it. Like it was delivered on the due date. So it was crazy. yeah, kind of just like the start to this whole journey. So that year we like outfitted her with, you know, the canopy and we had to build the structure to,
Jenny (37:56)
meant to be.
Christine Covino (38:09)
like hold the canopy up and then my husband just built the bar that holds the buckets. And I hired a local artist to do our signage and do like the calligraphy because I love calligraphy. If I could like be artistic, I would love to learn how to do calligraphy. So I just appreciate it so much. ⁓
Jenny (38:30)
Actually, last side, no, not to interrupt you, but like last
winter, I was like, I need a hobby. I don't have any hobbies. I'm going to learn calligraphy. And I bought all these like lettering books and stuff. And then I did it like once and I was like, well, I suck at this and I don't have the patience to learn it. So never went back to it again.
Christine Covino (38:44)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love it. You need a hobby. Wait, can we go back to you need a hobby? I know I did the same
thing though a few years back like around my wedding. I was like, this is so beautiful. I love calligraphy. I'm gonna learn it and then quickly found out I was terrible. But yeah, so we like had it all set up like made it cute. And yeah, we
Jenny (39:03)
Hahaha!
Christine Covino (39:12)
So like we had the original investment of like purchasing the truck. So it's a 1961 single cab. It's they don't actually call it like a pickup truck or anything. They were made to transport parts around the Volkswagen plants. So they weren't ever like planning on selling these like like it looks like the van, but it's a full down flatbed in the back.
So it's kind of a cool like origin story. They like were never supposed to be sold. And then people were like, wait, these are really useful. So the guy we bought it from in Colorado used it for like hauling logs, like up and down mountains. So that's where she came from. No, they're like so strong. Like the transmissions, you know, must be pretty solid. Yeah.
Jenny (39:56)
I wouldn't, can't picture that little.
Good to know. I just imagine
this like cute little flower jug hauling like giant logs and lumber like, she's a worker.
Christine Covino (40:10)
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's what she used to do. Lumber. Yeah, she is. She's
she's serious. ⁓ And the other cool thing about the Volkswagen's is that there was I'm going to get this wrong. But like, if you look back in like the history books, there's I think it was called the chicken tax in the 70s. So the you it like restricted the US or
possibly other countries from importing the Volkswagens from Germany anymore. So there's this like time period where they weren't coming into the States anymore. like, apparently this truck that I have is like one of those that was like one of the few that was like let in. ⁓ So they're hard to find. Most of them are out in the West part of the US if you're looking for one.
Jenny (40:56)
⁓ wow.
Christine Covino (41:05)
And then you'd have to get it shipped over if you live out here. Yeah, we know guys. I love it. Yeah. And then we bought her the way that you see her. didn't do any body work. We got her new wheels. ⁓ We didn't do any painting. That's the color that she... Yeah, that's her color. Yeah.
Jenny (41:09)
Christine can hook you up with a guy who's not afraid of germs.
Really?
You didn't do any painting or any... Wow. Okay, that's really impressive. For a log truck.
Christine Covino (41:35)
No painting, nope. It's like, I know and I say to people sometimes
like I want to paint her, like fix her up a little bit and they're like, no, that's part of the charm. And I was like, you're right. You know, I have to, I see all these like kind of new flower trucks popping up and they're like shiny and pretty, but I love her color. It's, it was meant to be. was just like, that's the color that she was.
Jenny (42:01)
That's so cool. I like fully
thought that you must have like gotten all this like body work done and painted it and everything. Cause it's so cute. And that is so special because it has, well, first of all, it has such a cool story behind it and it has all this character. Like what an amazing way to like market your business. Yeah.
Christine Covino (42:06)
No?
Nobody works. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
So much character. It's so fun
doing events too because you get the people who are like obsessed with the flowers and they come up and they're just like in awe of like the bloom bar. And then you get like their partner or like friend who's coming over and like checking out the like setup of the stick shift inside and like, my God, it's from 1961. Like, do you really drive this thing? And so we get like, like these people who are just obsessed with it and like all different ways. And it's really fun to talk to them.
Jenny (42:49)
That's awesome. I love that. Super, super cool business idea. So tell me a little bit about like the logistics with things. Because I once upon a time thought about doing something like this, and then I was just like, I'm gonna have to buy this vehicle and like fix it up. And I don't want to like spend the money for it. then like, do people even like, how am I gonna coordinate everything? So like, tell me a little bit about how it works like with people booking you and stuff.
Christine Covino (42:50)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it's like
an amazing idea in theory and everybody wants to have a flower truck and then I think they start going down the road that you went down and you were smart to be like, well, maybe this is like too much because yeah, flower farming in general. Yeah, exactly. Cause it's a lot harder than everybody thinks. ⁓ You know, I get the people who come up and they're like, this is a dream. You're living my dream. And like, am living my
Jenny (43:19)
You
think same could be said for flower farming.
Mm-hmm.
Christine Covino (43:45)
dream too. If you want to talk about the logistics though, like everybody would quit, I think, because it's why am I doing this? So number one, you have to learn how to drive a stick shift and not just any manual transmission. It's like from 1961. So you have to be able to drive a vintage vehicle. ⁓ It's a learnable skill. Luckily, my husband
Jenny (43:47)
It's just hard.
which is a learnable skill.
Christine Covino (44:12)
knows how to do it and has always driven, like he's just always had a love for old vehicles, so he's like kept up with his skills. And he was able to teach me, but I still don't feel comfortable driving it on the road. It is not safe. It's not a safe vehicle that you want to be driving. It doesn't go over 35 miles per hour. So, and...
Jenny (44:38)
like at all.
Christine Covino (44:40)
Yeah, I think like top it'll go like 40. it gets hot, like the engine gets hot. So we can't really drive it far without like stopping and taking a break. ⁓ so we've kind of set our limits to like, you know, 10, 15 mile radius. And we, we have gone further than that because we also have a trailer for her. So yeah, so we'll also trailer her if we have to go.
Jenny (45:04)
Yeah, I was just gonna ask that.
Christine Covino (45:09)
to an event like further than 40 minutes away. ⁓ And that's also where we house her, because I don't have a garage or anything. You have to keep them out of the weather, otherwise they would just rust and completely deteriorate and get so crappy. ⁓ So the trailer we invested in as like a home for her to just stay in and be safe. And also if we are hired for further away events, we'll take her in that. So she's not being like 30 miles an hour down the road.
causing traffic. ⁓ So yeah, the logistics are getting her, like that's the pain point usually is getting her where she needs to be. ⁓ And then we usually have like someone who's working the truck like meet us there. So we would stock her with the flowers and everything. And ⁓ then the person who's working the event that day would come and like have everything there for her and she would set it all up. But
Jenny (45:41)
You
Christine Covino (46:09)
getting the truck where it needs to be is hard because I don't, I haven't been able to train the person who's working the flower truck to also drive the flower truck. So that if I could do that, that would make it a whole lot more easy for us. But right now what it involves is my husband driving it down and either like I go pick him up or.
⁓ he now has, he's really, really creative and loves all sorts of vehicles. So he also has a tiny motorcycle called a monkey, which he, yeah, Google the monkey. I forget who makes it, but my husband's like this six one like giant, you met him like big man and he rides. It's the funniest thing to see. So he had his friend who is a, ⁓ welder. He like works with metal.
Jenny (46:47)
I have to Google that right now.
I met him. He's like, I think.
Christine Covino (47:07)
this guy, he created a specific hitch for the flower truck to post the monkey motorcycle on. So Alex will drive the truck now wherever it needs to go with the motorcycle on the back and then drive the motorcycle home. It is it. He is so creative. He thought of that. ⁓ He really is a huge supporter of this whole thing, and I couldn't do without him.
Jenny (47:23)
That's so creative. I love that.
Christine Covino (47:35)
⁓ He drives the flower truck and gets her where she needs to go. And he does obviously a lot of the farm stuff with me. On top of his regular job, right? Because this is not his job.
Jenny (47:42)
I love that. mm-hmm. Yeah, of course. So
why, why don't you just like, yeah, I was going to say, why don't you just trailer everywhere, but your employee would have to learn how to back up a trailer. Yeah.
Christine Covino (47:58)
So the employee would also have, yeah, they would have to be comfortable
driving a pickup truck that's trailering a 20 foot enclosed box trailer.
Jenny (48:05)
Yeah. And your
insurance would have to be okay with that.
Christine Covino (48:09)
Yes. Yes, exactly.
So there are some roadblocks and logistics that like I, I feel lucky that I have my husband and that his business is also ⁓ heavy into like machinery and stuff. he has all of like his access to like tools and help and fixing things all the time, because that's the other thing is that the flower truck being so old constantly has problems.
Jenny (48:38)
Yeah, of course.
Christine Covino (48:39)
Because we
drive it, we physically use it, like as it's meant to be used, but it's so old that every other week it's like being worked on.
Jenny (48:49)
Yeah, of course. Of course.
Well, I know that there's used to be a gal in my area who had a flower, like a horse trailer that she. Yeah. She used to buy flowers from me. She's awesome. She's now moved down to your area and like, ⁓ I don't want to like spew her entire life, personal on my podcast. Cause I haven't talked to her.
Christine Covino (48:57)
Bar Fiori. Yeah, know her. Yes. Yes, she's awesome.
I didn't know.
Yeah.
Jenny (49:15)
in a while, but she was in Rochester area. I, she told me a while ago, she was moving down to like, cause she got married somewhere near the city. I don't know, but she had.
Christine Covino (49:25)
yes,
think I, yeah, I think I know where she, she like almost around Kingston area, I want to say. ⁓ Yes, I love.
Jenny (49:33)
Yeah, something like that. But she had an amazing little flower trailer and
it seems like that could like solve some people's issues. Like if people are hearing you right now they're like, I don't, I do not want to learn how to drive a 1961 Volkswagen single cab. Like you could just learn how to drive a trailer and maybe do like the horse trailer thing or like retrofit, another kind of van. Like there's ways around this, right? But, um,
Christine Covino (49:44)
Mm-hmm.
I'm
Mm-hmm.
Yes, I don't want to be a dream
crusher. I just want to be honest about
Jenny (50:03)
No, I
really appreciate that. People need to consider these things.
Christine Covino (50:06)
You need
to consider it. ⁓ Yeah, I just feel like I have, I'm lucky that I have ⁓ like access to basically a mechanic at my husband's job that can help us like whenever we need to. And he can drive it and like figure out all these creative ways to like make it work. ⁓ So they are things to consider if, if you're looking into getting a flower truck, but the trailers are so cute too.
Jenny (50:19)
Mm-hmm.
Christine Covino (50:34)
Her trailer is one of the most beautiful things that I've seen. It does a really good job with it. Yeah. Yeah.
Jenny (50:37)
Yeah. Yeah. She does a really good job. She does a really good job.
So would you say that overall between the investment for the truck and getting it places, those logistics and everything, is it worth it though still?
Christine Covino (50:50)
you
Yes. So I feel like there's different types of worth it. Like, is it worth it monetarily? Not really. Is it worth it to bring joy to the community and like I get something out of that and exposure? I feel like that is that is kind of how I look at the flower truck now is like it's not my
Jenny (51:19)
Yeah.
Christine Covino (51:21)
biggest money maker, it doesn't bring in a lot of money when we do the bloom bars, but it's exposure, it's people remembering who we are and maybe coming back and being a CSA member, visiting us at the farmer's market and saying, oh my God, you're the one with the flower truck, your flowers are beautiful, I love your flowers, because I love the flower truck, she's a huge part of our identity, but I want people to buy my flowers and I love growing the flowers.
Like being the farmer is my favorite part of like my position in my business, which I don't get to do very much, but it like, that's what started the whole thing was like growing the flowers and then, ⁓ yeah, so it's worth it in those, in the culmination of senses of all of that. But if you're just looking to make money, I would say it's not like the best.
Jenny (52:11)
You
Yeah, I think every person that I know, I'm not saying this can't be doable. I'm sure that it is, but every person I know who has some kind of like flower truck or flower trailer or whatever, they also have another facet of their business. but not to say that it can't be done profitably or anything. just don't know anybody, but I think that's huge thing that like, it makes you memorable and it's a big part of your marketing. catches a ton of people's attention. When you get people's attention.
Christine Covino (52:26)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
⁓
Jenny (52:49)
That's what matters.
Christine Covino (52:50)
I can leave them. know, we have a big email list. That's how I get the word out about that. And I feel like as a tool, the flower truck has like made us stand out, gotten us to that next level. ⁓ we get repeat customers, we get people who recognize us and know us. and then they, you know, hopefully buy flowers and become a CSA member. And cause like, if you're talking about profitability,
of the farm, like not, know you talk about that a lot, like profitability versus like revenue and like what your, like numbers are big in like some of my other revenues, but like profitability, ⁓ I would say like my CSA and my like farmer's market stuff is the most profitable. So I want them to like learn about us, be exposed to us and like know that we exist and like buy our flowers in these other ways. Yeah. ⁓
Jenny (53:45)
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's
an amazing way to set up your business model. Really, really smart. So, ⁓ Christine, you are a gem and I think people are going to love hearing about your flower truck and some of your efficiencies and everything that you've put into the farm. I'm so glad that we met through six figure flower farming. ⁓ and you coming to the workshop on the farm, like I, you're one of my favorite people I've gotten to meet and gotten to know. So.
Christine Covino (53:50)
Mm hmm.
⁓ jeez.
Yay!
⁓ It was
the best. I would love to come up there again. You have such a beautiful thing going there and all of the education and help that you put out there to other flower farmers is like invaluable. Like everybody should take this course. No, no, she did it. I'm sorry. No, really like, it made me figure out a lot of things about my own business that I was like,
Jenny (54:15)
you
⁓ thank you. I did not tell her to say that, by the way. ⁓
Christine Covino (54:39)
able to implement. feel like there are courses and like stuff out there that you can learn that isn't as easily ⁓ implemented as like what I learned from you. So it really brought me to the next level.
Jenny (54:53)
Awesome. I'm so happy to hear that. So yay. Well, can you
tell everyone where they can find you online and where they can look at Elle, the flower truck?
Christine Covino (55:03)
Yeah, yeah,
so there's some pictures of Elle on the Instagram. The Instagram is at wild iris flower truck and then our website is ⁓ wild iris flower farm dot com. So yeah, there's pictures of Elle all over the website too.
Jenny (55:19)
Awesome. I'm going to tag that for everyone listening in the show notes. And is there anything else you want to share with everyone? Christine, before we say goodbye.
Christine Covino (55:27)
no, thanks for listening and yeah, thanks for having me.
Jenny (55:33)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for Christine for taking the time to come on the show and we'll see everyone next time on the next episode of the six figure flower farming podcast. Bye.
Christine Covino (55:42)
Bye.
