Jenny (00:29)
If you're a flower farmer who feels like you're constantly overwhelmed, you're always behind. There's always more tasks to do than there's time to do it. Well, the truth is you're probably always feel like that, but today's episode can help. We are sitting down with Michelle Elston of roots cut flower farm in Pennsylvania. And we are talking all about efficiency, staffing, training.
and efficient systems.
Now, Michelle Elston is an absolute professional. She has been cut flower farming for at least 19 years. And I think doing things in the farming slash greenhouse industry for much longer than that. But she founded roots cut flower farm in 2007 when she moved back to her Pennsylvania roots to raise her family. She now employs over 15 seasonal local people and produces over 30.
thousand supermarket bouquets each year. Her farm is about 10 acres. I think I pulled that off of her website because I forgot to ask her,
but she is an absolute professional and as an expert at all things that have to do with efficient systems. So you don't want to miss out on this episode.
Jenny (01:43)
welcome to the show, Michelle. So excited to talk to you. ⁓ And Michelle, I always love talking to you because I feel like we're kindred spirits and we share a lot of the same passions when it comes to our businesses and stuff. And you're such a talented business owner. You have your finances and your systems down pat. And you move a large volume of bouquets. You do grocery. So you do.
Michelle Elston (01:45)
Hey, thanks for having me.
Jenny (02:10)
How many mixed bouquets a year? Around 30,000?
Michelle Elston (02:13)
Yeah, yeah, it's usually 28 to 30,000 that we do.
Jenny (02:16)
Okay, so
lots of volume, means that you have to have like some pretty efficient systems in place in order to be able to do that. So tell us about why you think it's important to have those efficient systems in place in terms of profitability for a flower farm.
Michelle Elston (02:35)
Yeah, so I guess I should first say I just really love efficiency. it probably is important to me because it's a value of mine. And I do want to talk about profitability for sure, but it just sort of scratches an itch for me. So I get a real kick out of it. And that's probably the biggest reason that we take it so seriously on our farm. But in terms of our...
Sales model, grocery does tend to be a lower price point, like grocery and selling to a floral wholesaler would traditionally be your lowest price point to sell flowers. And so we have to make that up in volume to be profitable. And the only way to do a decent volume on our scale, which still really is small, is to be... ⁓
really efficient in the way we use our time and ⁓ really in the way we make decisions all around everything we do on the farm.
Jenny (03:35)
So can you give me some examples of areas that you really focus on being efficient in your farm in terms of maybe tasks or specific areas or something like that?
Michelle Elston (03:49)
Yeah, so the obvious ones are planting and harvest, really trying to, we, and bouquet making, but we drill down to like, the movement for all of us in those areas. And I do want to talk about those. But I was thinking about this piece as I prepared for this, there's some other things that,
I like to really think about zooming way out. we are efficient because we say no a lot.
We say no to smaller one-off orders. We only allow pickups at the farm for a two-hour window on Tuesday nights and a three-hour window on Friday mornings. This is a hilarious one that ⁓ just happened this week. We do not have a phone number, period. So we're efficient in that we only take communications via email, period. So I have all of my DMs turned off on my social media.
I really do not share my personal phone number with barely anyone and everything has to go through email. that, you know, we're not accommodating everyone. That does not please every person. And we have a little sign out by the road that says by appointment only for the farm. And always someone shows up. It just happened last week where they're like, I couldn't find your phone number anywhere online. And it's like, yeah, we do not share that. So it's like we're sort of.
funneling our sales into smaller windows. It has worked really well for us. I know that this can sound really elitist and we try really hard to be accessible, but we are sort of making our customers work within sales systems that are appropriate for us. I should also say that I am a raging introvert. So it's really important to me that I have boundaries around when people can show up here. that's like, it's kind of it's efficiency and it's also
reflect what suits my lifestyle and I live here on the farm and we can't, know, drop-ins would not work well for us. ⁓
So yeah, so the way we communicate with customers and then a couple other pieces zooming back out to your question are the way I set up my crew schedule. We try to batch things and we just really try to approach the whole farm from a systems mindset. And we talk about programs, we talk about systems all the time. So a program could be, you know, a CSA like we...
to only offer two CSA options. ⁓ We do one four week session and then it's a monthly, this year it's a five month thing, but we don't have like all these different options for everything. And I'm really working on that even with like when we do pre-orders for holidays and things, I'm realizing that there's usually like two or three items that sell the best. And so we're trying to like limit all the options in all the ways ⁓ within reason. People definitely do wanna feel
like they have a choice and selection. And so we have to be careful with that, not to get too narrow, but just really trying to hone in on the things that work the best in all the realms.
Jenny (07:11)
Yeah, I think we honestly do a lot of the same things where we are very selective of our sales outlets and how we communicate with people. And it really does make your life so much more streamlined. But ⁓ tell me a little bit more about your team and your scheduling and batching, because that's something we do on our farm as well, where basically on our farm, every day of the week kind of has its own.
like theme per se, and we almost split it into like morning and afternoon. like every week, it's pretty much the same rhythm. So everybody, when they come in, they know what's happening that day. They know what's going on. Do you do something similar or a little bit different? Tell me more about that.
Michelle Elston (07:41)
Thank you.
Yes,
yes, I would say we have that exact same thing in the summertime. And the one piece I didn't explain about our firm is we do this crazy supermarket bouquet program, but it's actually only 13 to 14 weeks long. So we are selling at least 25 of those 30,000 bouquets in a 14 week time period. So it's super intense. that it's it's July, August and September.
period we are laser focused and yeah every day has a very consistent rhythm to it. ⁓ You know we harvest in the morning, make bouquets in the afternoon, they go out at 7 a.m. the following day, Tuesdays and Fridays we don't make bouquets and those are like our field work catch-up days actually a pretty limited crew those days. ⁓ Yeah so there's a very distinct rhythm to those but then spring and fall we actually focus more on retail ⁓ so that's
⁓ scheduled around demand. mean, event season, wedding season, retail, holidays, all those things are...
much much higher demand in spring and fall and so we can get a higher price point if we focus on retail during those seasons of the year. In the summertime it can be more difficult to move volumes of flowers so that's when we sort of drive further out, do the supermarkets and that's across the whole state of Pennsylvania and we sort of do this big bubble when local demand is a little smaller. I should also say that we
choose ⁓
at least in my opinion, a path of least resistance in what we grow. So we do not have any green heated greenhouse space. We only have three unheated tunnels and we're not doing any winter growing at all. So we have been selling flowers. ⁓ We're recording right now at the end of April and we've been selling flowers, I think for about a month now, usually mid March is when we get going. ⁓ People would love to have flowers earlier on, it's like we're back to your quest.
we're trying to like plant for this big bubble season and our staff is doing all the retail things right now and so ⁓ we don't have a huge volume of flowers. So our daily rhythm is twofold. One, it's by the season and then it's also
Well, I guess they're both by the season. One is by the season of what enterprise we're in and two is by the growing season. So spring, I'm still, my crew, first of all, is all part time except for one person. So they work Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. That logic is only around our supermarket bouquet season, like when we make bouquets. But it turns out humans prefer some consistency in their lives for the whole year, not just for.
Jenny (10:28)
You
Michelle Elston (10:56)
supermarket season, so I've sort of shifted the work for spring and fall when we're not doing supermarkets to those same days just because it makes more sense. It makes my people happier to have a consistent rhythm. I will say that they're very, very flexible in March. Probably everywhere in the country, but definitely in PA. Like March is, it could be 90 and it could be 20. So they're super flexible. Sometimes we will shift it.
day
if it's going to be amazing weather on a not normal work day or something like that we will move. ⁓ So everyone is seasonal we have like a slow build to our staff where I'll bring in a couple of people at a time gradually until we get to like full.
the full team, usually by end of May, we're at our full crew. And that is just unique to Roots. Like again, because we're not heating greenhouse space, we're not even heating a propagation house. There's just not as much work to be done in early spring. Yeah, we, and that's an efficiency that in another way. we hire out a custom, ⁓
plug producer to have to grow our first two rounds of transplants. the like March 1, you know, the cool annuals and then the early May planting. ⁓ custom hire all of those to be grown for us because twofold. One, we're still not quite at a volume that it would justify heating the entire prop house. We would have to like wall it off and heat a smaller space. But more importantly, it's a quality of life decision that I
I just really...
don't want to, I always say I don't want to work and I am totally working 12 months a year. It's not that I'm not working, but I don't want to have ⁓ schedule obligations 12 months a year. My husband's a landscaper and we both really value our downtime in the winter time. So January and most of February, no employees work on the farm whatsoever. And if we were heating a prop house, that would mean that I would be chained to watering, seeding, you know, all the growing.
Jenny (12:46)
I
you
Michelle Elston (13:10)
pieces of that and for, I call it efficiency but you might call it quality of life, it just makes most sense to pay to hire someone to grow those plugs for us offsite and we have a great relationship and he's a good grower so it works out good for all of us. ⁓ Yeah, go ahead. I keep going zigzaggy, I apologize.
Jenny (13:29)
No, not
at all. just, think just a couple of clarifying questions. The first one is how big of a crew do you end up having during your main season, like your grocery season, like July through September? How big does your crew actually get?
Michelle Elston (13:48)
Yeah, so I think,
It depends a tiny bit on the season, but usually our core crew is around 12, including myself. And then we do have a couple of peripheral people that aren't involved in that program. So I have a sort of admin person who does all of our sales and communication. She works from home. I have someone who does some seed starting sort of on her own schedule and a few other peripheral people. But our core is day to
like on a production day, we're usually at about eight to nine people and not all of them work every production day. So our team is usually around 11 or 12. So I guess I should say something about that. It's really important. You know, we take this part-time model really, really seriously and I'm gonna talk about why in a second, but if I only offer part-time seasonal employment, I must...
accommodate people's and you know to make this a positive relationship on both sides. I've got you know some moms who only work two days a week. I've got some younger people who don't want three full days. ⁓ My daughter's she's part of the team but she only wants to work mornings and I have another I have a mom who wants to come in late because she has young children and we make that work like they do have to work the days of the week that the farm produces
bouquets so Monday
Wednesday and Thursday, in our case, those three days, but they don't have to work the full shifts because I just wouldn't be able to attract enough people. And I just really value them giving me schedule flexibility in terms of seasonality. And therefore, I just feel like they deserve to have that same thing. They're making a commitment for the season. It's not like it changes every week, but ⁓ I'm trying to give them as much flexibility as I can and still make the whole system work.
Jenny (15:50)
So who
manages all that scheduling and making sure you have the right amount you do? OK, because that sounds like, I don't see how you could do it. Well, I'm sure there's other ways you could do it. But that seems like ⁓ a lot to manage.
Michelle Elston (16:08)
So it's really not because I just do it for the year. So like I said, like they make a commitment.
for the whole season and then it's consistent week to week. have like, yeah, I just know how many bodies I need per bouquet day. And then I just like, I have a little chart that I ⁓ use year to year to compare. we track things by the hour, like collective hours that we need kind of per season and really by month. I track total hours worked by the team by month. And that really makes sure
Jenny (16:15)
Yeah. ⁓ okay. Yeah.
Michelle Elston (16:43)
that we're staying on track. I ⁓ have the beautiful problem of my crew loves working here. And so I want them to be here and being a farm, there's always something that could be done. And I have found that I tend to just say yes when they want more hours, but sometimes that's not.
Jenny (16:58)
is.
Michelle Elston (17:07)
profitable, know, it doesn't work. So tracking hours year over year by month and by season ⁓ really keeps us on track for that. And, and, you know, I think, I guess.
Jenny (17:08)
Right.
Michelle Elston (17:23)
The challenge is when you're starting out, because you have no idea how much you need or how long things take. we do have the luxury of this is our, I think this is our 19th, maybe 20th season, growing. So we have a lot of history. I keep a lot of records, a really, really lot of records. But so we can reflect back on that to know if we have enough people. just like always trying to be aware of when we're doing tasks that are crucial or sort of luxury tasks.
and you have to balance them. Sometimes you have to advance the cause and sometimes you have to wash the windows and dust and do things that are ⁓ not crucial to the machine, but also do, you know, make the whole farm run better. But try not to do all those all the time ⁓ is how we keep our hours sort of tight, really tight.
Jenny (18:14)
Yeah, no, that's great, a great way to look at it.
when you said, you know, we have the luxury of having a lot of, you know, time and records. And so for people who are just starting out, like if there's someone listening to this and you're kind of just getting started with your flower.
growing or your business, I think it's critical to just at least keep rough track of how long tasks are taking you. it's not that, like people get all like uppity sometimes like, I don't have time to track this. It's like, it's not that hard to track. don't think, especially if it's just you or if it's a small crew, like there's apps out there. It's like, you can just write it down. But I think that is a huge
Michelle Elston (18:42)
Yes.
Great. All right.
Jenny (19:00)
asset to have when you're trying to plan for labor and we're trying to like schedule your week is like actually knowing how long things take so
Michelle Elston (19:03)
Yes.
Yeah,
those are very intimidating to people who work here, these standards, and we actually have them for everything. know, you know,
By week two or three of a new employee, they should be able to clean a whole percona of gum preena by 20 minutes. A bucket of coxcomb should take 12 minutes, a bucket of sunflower should take 20 minutes. We know all of these things for harvest. every bouquet maker should be able to make 10 buckets of bouquets an hour minimum, which is 50 bouquets.
like we're tracking all these things, but it's really just like you just total up like how long did that job take, how many people were on it for how much time and you do the math out. We do have clipboards in the barn where we'll try to do some focused time trials of tasks that we're either struggling with or we just really don't know how long they take. There's a major pile of tasks that we have no idea how long they take, right? Like mean stuff you do once a year, stuff you don't do that often, and I'll try really hard to communicate.
that to my team. Like I don't, have no, I think that you're going to be doing this for an hour or two, but like I could be super off and that's okay, you know. But yeah, the things that you repeat tons and tons of times, you absolutely should have standards for. Knowing that ⁓ your best person, it should be above that standard and your slowest person should be below it. They're just averages. And ⁓ I'll go a step further. You know, you were talking about like how to decide when to hire.
⁓ I always like to talk about hiring as part of this process. So a piece of my interview with anyone who applies here is informing them that they will be timed on things. And that is so that they don't get hung up and think it's about me like wrapping their knuckles or blowing the whistle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Jenny (21:00)
Cracking the whip. Yeah, because
that's not what it's about, really.
Michelle Elston (21:08)
It smells at all. with our
our bouquet program, especially, we have to fill our orders. And the way it works here is no one leaves until we're done making those orders. So if if we have 35 buckets of gumfrina to clean and they tell me that they're 20 minute buckets, but they're actually taking 40 minutes that I can't do that math real quick. That's 700 minutes. Right. Like that's like
Did I do that right? Yeah, 700 minutes. Yeah, yeah. So that's like, how many hours is that? We can just do this right now together. But like, I translate.
Jenny (21:40)
Hold on. me pull up my calculator. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, almost 12 hours.
Michelle Elston (21:51)
Yeah, so like, so if there's four cleaners and we're 12 hours longer than we thought, that's three hours longer per person. That's like a serious problem, right? That's the difference between working till 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. and everyone being so sad and cranky. So they know that it's a communication and it's a planning tool and it's a management tool. if they are
Jenny (22:08)
Yeah.
Michelle Elston (22:15)
behind, maybe it's a really difficult harvest. Sometimes stuff is harder to clean or assemble because stems are wonky or it's brittle or you who knows, there's a million things.
Jenny (22:26)
Mm-hmm.
Michelle Elston (22:27)
But if they're just really struggling because they don't have their technique down, then we can bring someone right along beside them, watch their body. Where's their compost bin? Where are their hands? Are they twisting? Are they picking every stem and then doing like a half circle turn? Are they looking at their peers instead of looking down at the thing they're supposed to be cleaning? All these little things can really make a huge difference. And if we catch it early enough, then the whole day is saved. And even moreover, the whole season.
because they get good really fast and that feels really good to people to master something. I guess the other thing I've learned is people actually really want to know where they stand, how they're performing and what's always shocking to me is that they want more feedback. When we have our check-ins, I think they're gonna be crying and be like, this is so hard. I feel like I'm just being like, I'm not going fast enough. And so many times I've had employees say, I would like more feedback on my performance.
It's pretty cool. People really want to do a good job and know that they're meeting standards. yeah. So yeah, that's the story. They do really want to do well. And you need, in order to tell them if they're doing well or not, you need to have...
Jenny (23:35)
Yeah, generally people do want to do it.
Michelle Elston (23:45)
just raw data, it's numbers, it's not personal, it's just numbers, you need to have that information so that you can tell them like, Whoa, that was really fast. You crushed that job or so just so you know, like normally that takes like three hours and we're at six. So what's going on here? ⁓
Jenny (24:05)
So tell me, can you tell us a little bit about how you train new crew members? Like if you have someone that's brand new, no experience with farming or flowers before, what is your training process, like onboarding and training process for someone like that?
Michelle Elston (24:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yep.
So.
their first couple of days working, ⁓ I try to devote at least a few hours each time of my time right with them. And that's like some really basic, we go over the employee handbook, we do a really, really thorough tour of the barn, because that's where we process everything. And so like they know, you know, where the clippers are, where the dirty buckets go, where the clean buckets go, where to, you know, just all the weird things.
so they're like really comfortable with the farm. I actually don't really give them a tour of the plants very much because I find that a lot of them don't know plant names and that just becomes incapacitating. Like they think they have to remember like whatever, you know, these wild, especially like all these like lisianthus and gumfrina and whatever. just like, I don't even know exactly. They sound like diseases. don't know. I don't know. And so we don't, we don't really worry about that. It's more just like
Jenny (25:13)
And they're like, what disease are you talking about?
Michelle Elston (25:22)
you know, if I tell you to get a wheelbarrow, this is where you would go for that. And this is how you would open the door because the latch is kind of funny. And this is, you know, just all the little things. So we do we do those sessions and then ⁓
Ideally, I give a pretty concentrated session on planting and a pretty concentrated session on harvesting pretty early on. Now that doesn't always work out depending on when they start and what we're doing. I've brought people on in June because we really needed a harvest help and they might never plant, so then they just don't get that part. But we try to do those sessions where I'm right there with them for the things that they will do a bazillion times on the farm.
On that, I rely very, very heavily on peer-to-peer training. So the beauty of me batching all of my part-time people together is that there's always an experienced person right there doing the same thing that a new person is doing. And so that's like, you know, I'll say, you know, whatever, is a great harvester. I want you to work straight across the row from that person. And we do, it's really intentional, especially with harvest and planting, we will put them directly across the row.
from an experienced person, the experienced person will break down what they're doing to the movement. We plant all of our plugs just with our fingers, but I'm showing them. You are holding it with your left hand. You're using your, if they're right handed or left handed, you're using your right hand, your two pointer fingers to dig a little hole, pushing it in with your left hand, moving on. I'm breaking it down by the finger or whatever, exactly how we're standing, what tool we're using.
Jenny (26:54)
Yeah.
Michelle Elston (27:06)
those things. And then
I always always say I don't expect you to be as fast as I am right now. I want you to focus on having this feel good to your body. So I want you to just do these movements. Please don't try to keep pace with the person across from you, but really get down the movements that we're talking about. And this is like an old, I think this is like Mike Hutchinson from Robin Hollowflower. He always said like you show them what to do. You stick with them for a few minutes and then you go away for an hour and you come back and check on it because they need time to practice.
So like, either they work straight across the row ⁓ and their trainer person is just doing their own thing for 20 minutes and then they check back or you just go and you pop back ⁓ in a little while. It doesn't have to be a whole hour, but like pop back in a little while. But that feedback loop, that coming back and checking is crucial because depending on how people process information, you might've like just downloaded this huge...
elaborate thing to them and hopefully they heard and processed most of it, but maybe not all of it, but they need some time just to like try it and like ⁓ see how that feels to their body. And then, especially if something's feeling awkward, it's super powerful to come back in and be like, ⁓ now I'm noticing that, ⁓ with hoeing, I'm always like, I see that you're holding this hoe, like you're choked way down on the handle and you're
bent over like a 90 year old woman, but if you hold the end of the handle, you can do the same amount of effort by standing up straighter and your body's gonna feel good. And because they've just struggled for 20 minutes, when they make that change, they're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing, that so good. Or whatever, if you're holding flowers all awkwardly or if you're stripping with the wrong hand or all these things, after they've practiced a little bit, it's easier to give those pointers.
Basically that feedback loop would be the trainer, myself or whoever their buddy is would literally watch them and see where it looks great, where it looks seamless and easy or where they're struggling. Now we're not super rigid. Like I always say, we will literally try anything on the farm and if it's faster, easier, better, we will all switch. So it's not like they can't try a different method, but.
I think probably everyone who's listening knows like that, just like where something just feels so...
awkward and hard. Those are the things we're really looking out for and like I even tell the new person like if it's if something's feeling really difficult to you just pause for a moment and watch the other person who you're doing it with because there's probably some weird movement that you're doing that they're not doing or vice versa that if you just make this tiny shift you're gonna feel a lot better. So we want them to be able to keep looking right? We don't want them to die and break.
Jenny (30:03)
Yeah.
Michelle Elston (30:08)
It's good in all the ways. Yeah.
Jenny (30:08)
No, definitely not. Yeah, I think two things came to mind when you were saying that I was always like, I always think that speed comes after skill. Like you can't like they have to get like exactly what you're saying. They have to actually get the movements and have the skill first. And once they have that, that's when the speed comes. You can't expect them to be like harvesting hundreds of bunches, like, you know, right from the get go.
Michelle Elston (30:19)
for sure.
because they'd
probably do a terrible job. Yeah, yeah. We talk about that all the time. Like, I want you to do well and then we'll work on speed. And usually in like two weeks they get it or sometimes sooner, but depending on the person. Yeah.
Jenny (30:37)
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And the time to practice when they're not under the boss's watch as well. I know, I always think of this example for myself. When we first got our skid steer that we have, I had driven skid steers in the past, but this one had different foot pedals from ones I had used in the past. And it was really scary for me to learn how to use them. And my husband was just standing over me, who's the most experienced equipment operator in the world.
Michelle Elston (30:51)
Yeah.
You
Jenny (31:15)
And you can just like, it's so natural to him. And I was like, so nervous with him watching me. And like, finally he left and like for a few days on the farm, like I was just like cranking it around, like jerking the bucket up and down. And I'm like, so thankful that he wasn't there to watch me because after a few days I was like, I got this now. And then when you like have no pressure, like a little bit to just like practice. And like, I always think of that when I'm trying to teach somebody, I'm like, don't be the person that's like,
Michelle Elston (31:27)
Yeah.
Right. Right.
Great.
Jenny (31:45)
hovering over, but it's need a minute. So what would you... Go ahead. No, you go ahead.
Michelle Elston (31:46)
Yeah, yeah, they need a minute. Yeah, yeah. And I think, yeah, go ahead, please.
I was just gonna
say as that training person, that can be really hard, right? Because so many times I'll say to them, I have no idea how I do this. Just give me a minute. I have to try it and then I'll be able to some words. And I've tried really hard to embrace that as my next level of maturation as a business owner is getting language around these things and training around them because I could have...
Probably couldn't tell you how I do most of the things on the farm if I hadn't had to teach them to someone else, because you just do it. I don't know. I don't know what happens to my body, but it gets done.
Jenny (32:32)
Yeah,
no, just this morning we were harvesting tulips and I had to stop and do it in slow motion so I could say the words to somebody else. We grab the head with my left hand as I'm moving my hand down the stem, I'm stripping leaves off as I'm going to the bottom, then I grip it at the bottom, then I pull up. I had to slow down so I could figure out what I do to tell somebody else.
Michelle Elston (32:55)
Yes. Correct. Yep.
Yep.
Jenny (33:00)
They watched me as I was like, basically trying to figure out what I do and it helped all of us.
Michelle Elston (33:05)
Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah. And I
think that's that mindset is it's going to teach you so much about what you're doing too, you know, that breaking it down. And and sometimes you're like, Whoa, why am I doing that step? I have no idea. Like, that's what a waste of time, you know. And but the other the big piece for me is I think we're all guilty of
Jenny (33:27)
Yeah
Michelle Elston (33:35)
saying, I'll just do it. It'll be faster for me to just do it than you or that person, you know, and that's
Oftentimes, because we haven't broken down the task in a way that we can explain it to another person. So many of the tasks on the farm now my crew is way faster than me. You know, I'm still the fastest bouquet maker, but a lot of other things they can whoop my butt. it's, you know, so I think this mindset of like only I can do everything on the farm and only I can do all these things best. that's, that's really, ⁓ you're just setting yourself up to go completely nutso because then all the
Jenny (33:58)
Ha ha.
Michelle Elston (34:14)
pressures on you all the time, but you have to pause and invest that energy into teaching someone, which is completely not efficient in the short run, but hopefully in the long run, it is way more efficient.
Jenny (34:32)
Yeah, I feel like if you want to scale your business, have to have this. You have to have come. There's like a moment where you have to let go a little bit and just realize you have to pass these skills onto somebody else in order for the business to scale. Otherwise, like you said, all just going to be the single point of failure. It's not going to go well for anybody.
Michelle Elston (34:42)
Yes.
Yes. Yeah,
it's really humbling too to then have someone like figure something out that you hadn't figured out and like just soar and then your business is better and your life is better and it's awesome.
Jenny (35:10)
Yeah, for sure. So we've kind of been dancing around the topic of harvesting efficiently. We've been talking about teaching people how to do that. But do you have any specific systems that you use to like, we all harvest so much on the farm. Harvesting and processing flowers, feel like is probably the biggest time suck on a lot of different flower farms. And I would actually love to talk about gumfrina with you.
Michelle Elston (35:16)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes. Yes.
Jenny (35:38)
personally, because I feel like I tell this, I tell this story all the time about how I used to grow all these different flowers. And then like I cut a whole bunch of them because they just weren't working with us and our business model, or I wasn't making enough money from them. And people always ask, well, which ones did you cut? And I'm always like a little hesitant to answer because I'm like, well, they just didn't work for me. And one of those is gum freena. Like I couldn't find a way to make it efficient and profitable. Plus I just, I really didn't need it for like my mix of sales outlets.
Michelle Elston (35:58)
Totally. Yeah.
Jenny (36:08)
⁓ so it wasn't the right choice for me, but for other people, it could absolutely be the right choice. And like for you, you grow a ton of gonfreena. So tell me like that specifically would be a great example of how you found specific systems in place to make that.
Michelle Elston (36:11)
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so first of all, sort of just like back myself into a corner that now we have to have it. I think if I had to do it over again, it's a difficult crop. Like there's no doubt, you know, it's a difficult crop to clean. But the truth is, if it's in our supermarket, okay, they sell better every single time. And so if they sell better for my store,
Jenny (36:36)
no.
Michelle Elston (36:54)
then they're gonna order more for me and everyone's gonna be happier. And so we've just had to figure it out. So gumfreeness specifically, what we call clear cut. So we harvest it with a sickle, a rice sickle, a serrated, it's the only word I know, it might be called a harvest knife, but it's like a hook shaped.
⁓ serrated knife that we harvest it to the ground. ⁓ We just plant a really lot of it. We do get two flushes out of our first two successions. In our third succession, we usually don't get a second flush because it's too late in the season. But basically by growing a lot of it, we are whole plant harvesting. Yeah. So right at the bottom. So we're clear cutting it. We're... This is all
Jenny (37:31)
But the whole plant. Yeah.
Michelle Elston (37:43)
Well, I'm gonna say this in a second. So we're clear cutting it.
We are putting it in piles that are the size of a Pocona bucket and we have expert harvesters at this point that I would stink at harvesting gum frina because it would just take me a while to figure out how big is a bucket, you know. But they're putting it in a pile ⁓ in the row of how big that bucket is and they've actually started now they take their empty no water buckets into the field with them as essentially their measuring cup. And so they're filling the bucket in the field with no water so it's really light. ⁓
and they put them into a golf cart or a gator and take them back into the barn and put the water in in the barn. And gumphrine is pretty tolerant of being out of water. It probably takes them...
Beth could tell me this I think it's like 40 minutes round trip with whatever her harvest vehicle is So basically some of the gumfriena is out of water for up to probably 30 35 minutes and it's totally fine so we get it back to the barn we Fill the buckets with hydrating solution and water let them drink and then the cleaning happens in the barn for gumfriena So you always want to keep as much of your organic matter
in the field as possible because you're just double handling it if you're bringing it into the barn to strip stems. So most things that are single stemmed, we're stripping in the field. But gumfrina is super tangly and way easier to clean in the barn. So it's in the barn, ⁓ it's had a little drink and then my cleaners work up on tables.
So they hug the whole bucket. We never take a few stems out of a bucket of anything. You always take the whole bucket at the time. So they hug the whole bucket, take it out, let the stems drip up, drip off and throw it up on the table. And then. I don't really know exactly. They hold it with their left hand. They figure out how rough they can be with it. We all wear a glove because gumfrina can like somehow stab you. don't know why, but it's like.
Jenny (39:50)
Hahaha!
Michelle Elston (39:51)
has these
like the knobs like can cut you. So they all wear at least one glove. ⁓ And they I think they all strip with their right hand. We have to strip pretty high because they're going into bouquets. ⁓ But and we always talk about you strip you for us you're leaving no more than 10 inches from the top of the plant that is like a
Jenny (39:54)
Mm.
Michelle Elston (40:12)
big hang up that people get confused like, I stripped the bottom 10 inches. Well, we're making a bouquet. So everything's getting cut down to the same height and I need 10 inches from the flower down to have any foliage leaves, flowers, anything on everything below that has to be stripped no matter if it's, ⁓ you know, a 20 inch stem or a 30 inch stem. I still only want 10 inches of foliage at the top. ⁓ They have like little tricks where they keep their compote bucket high. They prop it
on another upside down bucket so that the compost is like right under their stripping hand instead of it all flying on the floor. I know a lot of florists like to just strip right under the floor. ⁓ We don't, we like to put it right into compost. Obviously we sweep constantly in the barn anyhow but we feel like if we can keep the bulk of the mess right into the bucket we do. ⁓ They line up their heads as they're stripping so that ⁓
It goes into the bucket nicer and it's a lot easier for the bouquet maker to use the gomfrina if the heads are lined up, not the bottoms of the stems. And they're keeping their stems pretty parallel, not all crisscrossed and sloppy in the pile, which also helps the bouquet maker. So some of these things that they're doing makes the bouquet making piece of it go faster and some of it makes the stripping piece of it go faster. I have some people that will like bunch strip so they'll grab
like a little handful of it and rough strip it with their whole hand and then rake it through their fingers. I have other people that just do like one it's it's a stem but it's a very branchy stem because we're cutting it all the way at the base of the plant you know and some people will just do one at a time. I let them figure that out it honestly seems like it depends on the day like if the gumphrine is a little softer like maybe it wasn't quite as mature or some of the varieties aren't as firm as others though.
⁓ they might switch up their technique a little bit. But the main thing is we strip in the barn up on a table, flat, high, like it's up at waist, you know, or higher so that they're not hunched over and they're not doing that picking of leaves out in the field.
So I do want to say one really important thing, not just about gum freena, but we have because because of this supermarket thing there is like so much repetition like every movement really counts on this program. So we have
three all staff meetings a year where we get so nitty gritty about what we do. talk like in all of everything I just described to you for that system has been born out of these meetings. So anybody can say anything, anybody can present any idea. I will try it. It's like this meeting is like, did we have enough carts? Did we?
Where was the bog is the language we use on our farm. So like, where was the bog? What was driving you nuts? ⁓ You know, this year, our big field, the rows are 450 feet long. And Beth was like, why is there not a break for me to cut through halfway down the road? Like, ⁓ we can definitely do that. That was like, why did we not think of that?
was anything and yeah, somebody had the idea of taking the empty buckets into the field as the measuring cup, we used to just like make a mountain of it in the back of the gator and bring it in and then we'd have to like split it all up into
things we talk about. like to pick ⁓ my crop like plume silocia is the one I mostly harvest and coxcomb. I like to pick it into a wheelbarrow so I keep that right in front of me in the row and I put it in. Some crops it makes more sense to put the piles like on the net or on the ground. Like we talk about every single detail of every major crop. You these are ones that we're picking at least two or three times a week, some five or six times a week, but like exactly where do you hold
stem for this crop, where do you hold, like you said about your tulips, like all that we talked about for the major crops and people just, all of this information has been born out of people brainstorming and all of our energy is focused on it. So it's them. It's not, it's not all my ideas at all. So it's really fun. Right. Right. Yeah. So we have one. ⁓
Jenny (44:34)
When do you have these staff meetings? You said you have three a year.
Michelle Elston (44:40)
before bouquet season starts. And that one's always funny for new people because they're like, what the heck are you guys even talking about? Why are we talking about like you put your aster pile upside down and strip it upside down? Like, well, this will make sense to you later. And then we have a very brief revisit meeting.
Jenny (44:56)
you
Michelle Elston (45:01)
like two or three weeks in and that's the one especially for the new people where I'm like, okay, this is where just reminder. This is how you want to do this one thing or that one thing and that one's that one's smaller and then at the end of the season we have our recap and that's also like a celebration. You know, we just survived this crazy big thing and so we, you know, we I always get lunch and we just sit because we haven't had a long lunch for three months and we're just so happy to, you know, rest
Jenny (45:20)
Hahaha
Michelle Elston (45:31)
and then that's when we can sort of celebrate our victories and see where our opportunities are for making it better. And that one's really good because if you can ask those questions when people are really tired and really worn out, they're gonna have the best information. Because they're like, man, I am so sick of, like the one, we have those caterpillar tunnels from Farmers Friends with the zippered ends and like.
By the end of spring, you're so freaking sick of zipping and unzipping everything, rolling up and getting wet. like, I still haven't figured that one out, but we're gonna try another, a new door this year. Cause like those are the things we talk about. Like what is driving you bananas? And when you're tired, it's a good, good time to know what's just, you're so tired of doing.
Jenny (46:00)
⁓ You
Yeah, no, that's a great time to start asking questions. We always do like at end of the year, like what went well, what didn't, frustrations. like a lot of good things do come out of those meetings. ⁓ It's really amazing. So if someone is listening to this and they're listening about the level of detail that you get into with how you're doing things, which I think is, I mean, we do the same thing. I think it's
Michelle Elston (46:29)
Yeah.
Yeah.
haha
Jenny (46:47)
I think it's amazing. And I think more people need to be more detail oriented about how they're actually doing things on the farm. And I think if you come, like I do this on my farm where I have compared the old way of doing things, like the actual number of hours and the number, like the money we've saved in labor versus the new way. And when you do that, it's so eye-opening. It's incredible. But a lot of people ask me, well, like, how do I even know?
Michelle Elston (47:05)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jenny (47:16)
if there's a system on my farm that needs improvement. So like, obviously I think if there's a frustration, that's a sign, but how would you think about it? Like, how do you know if there's a system that actually needs to be improved or have there been systems on your farm that as you've scaled that have like broken and you've needed to figure it out? Like.
Michelle Elston (47:21)
Mmm!
Yeah.
Well, I've certainly broken, um, those things.
Jenny (47:40)
Hahaha!
Michelle's needs to be reconstructed. ⁓
Michelle Elston (47:47)
Yes
I mean there are some like like even just moving to a rice sickle. They're terrifying Those things will cut you like they'll cut you you put it in your armpit and they cut they nick your back and they nick your legs and like but like you know If you've used Clippers for 30 years of your life you definitely have carpal tunnel syndrome and you have learned that you have to switch tools and Then you learn that a rice sickle gives you 12 inches more handle and you're bending 12 inches less every single
Jenny (47:58)
Mm.
Michelle Elston (48:22)
single cut and it's like my gosh this is amazing so so i guess yeah some of them have been like that but mostly it's been more of like a slow thing that's that's been like this is crazy you know so
We use an old dairy barn as our processing barn and in the beginning it was three different ever so slight levels of cement in the floor and
that meant and also there was gravel right outside the door but what that meant is I would have to pick up every single bucket to load the van in the morning and we're sending like 140 160 buckets out three times a week so I was bending down and picking up a thing 140 times three times a week like that's insane right and then we
made enough money that we could pour this little slab of cement outside the door and this slab of cement on one of the three areas and that allowed us to buy these carts. And now everything goes on these racks that I wheel immediately to the back of the van. I climb in the van and I just pull all the buckets in and I'm like, my gosh, like, first of all, I gained like four hours a week of my life back because I'm not running in and out. And I mean, I guess I did that when I was in my thirties.
and it was okay, but now I'm like gonna turn 50 and like I couldn't I just couldn't you know so some of them we knew we wanted to do and we just we had to wait till we had made enough money to do it and others we we they ⁓
you know, became emergencies. But the last thing I would say is I got off the farm and that is so, so hard. But you have to go see what other people are doing and not just on the internet. Like you have to leave your farm and you have to go other places and see how people are doing things. And it might not be the like, you might go thinking you're gonna learn, I don't know what, like some...
other thing, greenhouse management or whatever, but then this one weird thing is gonna catch your eye and your mind is just gonna blow and you're gonna be like, my gosh, like, I wish I could think of an example right now, but I know every time I've gone to another farm, I've found some tiny, tiny, tiny niche thing that I was like, ⁓ my word, that's gonna change my life, I can't wait to implement that thing, but it's like you really just have to get out of your own bubble to know what you're blundering over.
to know how much easier it could be.
Jenny (51:01)
Yeah. So there's two things that you said, I want to come back to you. You said we had to wait until we had enough money to pour that concrete slab. And I think this is something that a lot of flower farmers really, really struggle with. And it's actually something I've been thinking about a lot this week, because I was just telling you before this week, we're getting a brand new walk-in cooler. So we can roll our rolling racks.
Michelle Elston (51:09)
yeah.
Jenny (51:26)
from our studio just directly right into the cooler. And we are 11 years in, and it's happening now. it took, mean, I probably could have done this sooner, but like we had, our cooler was back of a freezer truck we bought off Craigslist like many years ago, and we retrofitted it into a cool bot. And it's like,
Michelle Elston (51:32)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.
Jenny (51:52)
That was a really cheap cooler that worked amazing for so many years, but we were doing what you did, picking up buckets, haul, like picking them up, putting them in the cooler. And then came to a point where it was like, this is so inefficient. We could save so much time and money, but like it wasn't the right time until now. And people will hear me saying this and they'll like, you're 11 years into your business and you haven't done that yet. And it's like, this is like the reality sometimes. And so
Michelle Elston (52:17)
Yeah.
Jenny (52:21)
I talk to flower farmers all the time who are just kind of getting started or in their first few years and they're like upset that they don't have a brand new walk-in cooler, a brand new pole barn with, you know, a perfect studio or like a brand new hoop house. it's like, these things take time sometimes. ⁓ So I just wanted to like say that for people listening.
Michelle Elston (52:28)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and
that's a value thing too. I think people just have to get clear on you can either grow really fast and take on debt or you can grow slower and be debt free and there's no right, there's no wrong. You have to know your own risk tolerance and figure out what works for you. you know, for us, we value debt free. And so that just means we're slow in growth and
Jenny (52:48)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Michelle Elston (53:07)
Yeah, just is. It's not right or wrong.
Jenny (53:10)
Yeah,
exactly, exactly. And then the other thing you said was going to other farms, which I think everybody needs to do. Now, selfishly, I'm asking this. You used to do a farm tour thing at your place. Are you doing that this year in 2026? Because I have always wanted to go to it and haven't been able to make it.
Michelle Elston (53:27)
Thanks for asking, Jenny. So this
year we are on the ASCFG Farm Tour list. So it's Friday, August 7th. And yes, I used to do a growers tour at least twice a year. And because we're doing this one for the ASCFG, we are only offering that day as our farm tour day. So it's we're doing a morning session or
an afternoon session, everyone's going to meet together for lunchtime and we're going to actually have a little panel discussion on hiring and labor and ⁓ crew culture. It's going to be really fun. We have Laura Beth Resnick from Butterbee Farm and Maggie Taylor from Delight Farm ⁓ both coming and we're going to have this panel about crew and different crew setups and you know, all part time, all full time, you know, all the different models and just talk about that. yeah, that's the
only tour we're having this year, the growers, the tour part of it here at the farm will be...
me just walking around and showing all of our different systems. So we, the inefficient part of our farm is that we are totally out of land. And so we have no standard row length, no standard bed. I mean, we have standard bed width, but not, not length and not shape. And so we're just going to walk around and I'm going to show where we use weed barrier, where we use bare ground, where we use plastic, where we use open bags.
you know, all the different systems that we use and how we grow the different crops that we grow here. So it's really just going to be a grower's tour on what we do here at Roots. And you all should come.
Jenny (55:15)
Yes, I'll make sure I put a link in the show notes. I'll get it from you and we can put it so people can easily find it. So awesome. Actually, I think that's kind of a great segue for us to kind of wrap up the conversation because Michelle, just one last question for you because I know that you do some consulting with farmers as well. Where can people just find you, find more about you, learn more, maybe work with you, tell people where to go to learn more about Michelle Elston?
Michelle Elston (55:27)
Yeah!
Yeah, yeah, probably our website is the most comprehensive place. So that's just rootsflowerfarm.com. We do post on Instagram and Facebook fairly regularly. So if you wanted to know day to day what was happening, that would be the spot. But yeah, the consulting information is all on our website. There's an inquiry form there to if you are interested in pursuing that. ⁓
We don't work with brand new farmers. We are really focusing on
values-based decision-making for a farm, financial management of a farm, crew management, and then this efficiencies piece that we talked about here. And so I find that for all of those things, it's a lot more impactful if people have three to five years under their belt to really sort of dig into fine tuning and improving their business. there are so many great resources out there on how to grow flowers. And I do work with people on their crop plan.
but not we don't talk about how to start a seed or how to net or ⁓ You know how to lay out a bed or those things because there's that that feels redundant to me. There's so much good information available through ASCFG or other ⁓ Platforms to learn from so so we it's sort of this middle ground It's just one-on-one consulting and I also only do it in the wintertime. So we Usually start taking like reaching out to people and getting back to them
them
in October. try to line up, people set their own goals, we line up the sessions and then we get started right around the first of the year. And that's again, you know, that's just me. It's what works for my life because we're so busy in the summer. I can't do this work then. ⁓ So that's it.
Jenny (57:31)
Well, Michelle, is there anything else you want to share with us?
Michelle Elston (57:35)
⁓ I just keep saying ASCFG and so that's the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers. I really encourage anyone who's listening and who is not a member to join. ⁓ I've been a member since like... ⁓
first year out of college, I was a student member and I just, literally everything I know is from the ASCFG and I know that this is an era now where you can Google anything, but this is a group of almost 3,000 people who are doing the same thing that you're doing and making money at it and it is just the most beautiful group of peer to peer learning and honest, real people and I just really encourage everyone to check it out. I have the honor.
serving on their board. Jenny served on their board. She was a great asset and I just always like to make a plug because it's really has been absolutely critical to my success as a flower farmer.
Jenny (58:33)
Yeah, mine too. When I first started growing, my first few years, like I had had a lifetime experience of farming, but flowers were new to me. And my first couple of years, I like kind of struggled getting the farm off the ground. And somebody told me, they're like, you just have to join the ASCFG. And the year that I joined is the year that my business took off and like things clicked. And like, I credit a lot of it to learning from the ASCFG. So yeah, awesome. Well,
Thank you so much, Michelle, for being here and sharing all of your expertise. I know that there's going to be like a million golden nuggets that people will take from this conversation. So guys go check out Michelle's farm on Instagram and check out her website. She is someone to watch and definitely learn from like totally professional flower farmer. ⁓ I so honored to get to know you and just to call you a friend, Michelle. So thanks for being here and thanks for. Yeah. So.
Michelle Elston (59:28)
Yeah. So good. I really
appreciate you letting me come.
Jenny (59:36)
It's been awesome. So thanks again, everyone, for listening to another episode. And we'll see you next time. ⁓ Same day, same place. Bye for now.
Jenny (59:47)
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