Dear Customers, Subscribers, inquisitive Visitors, and Flower Lovers,
Wind Haven Farm began in a little place called Topping, in Middlesex County, Virginia. We have since moved our farm to King William County. In 2024 we are still a small sustainably grown cut flower farm now settled into our forever home and dream. But how did we end up here?
More than a few years ago now, I had just graduated from college, gotten married, and I wanted to find a way to be creative, make a living, and reside in the country. Should be easy to figure out right?
After working for some amazing artists and some other odd jobs, I was offered a position at my in-laws' farm, Dayspring. Dayspring Farm is primarily a vegetable CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm, but offered their subscribers a flower share where they could get a bouquet of flowers every week with their produce bags. The flowers were a magnet for me with all their beautiful shapes, colors, and textures. Here was where I could focus that creative energy and skills I had been taught! At Dayspring I learned how to truly grow flowers. I learned the basics of crop planning, seed starting, planting, cultivation, harvesting, and bouquet making. After a few years of working for them, Charlie and Miriam told me that they were not going to continue growing flowers at Dayspring. Their son, and my husband, Paul Maloney immediately offered to till up every inch of our small property and turn it into a flower farm! I had never thought of owning our own flower farm, but once I started thinking about it, a concrete plan began to form... then our farming endeavor went from a quarter acre to one and half to three, to seven within the first six years!
In our 4th season we were finally able to have Paul work full time on the farm, and there were other wonderful individuals who made up our first real flower team! These people allowed us to provide thousands of blooms to our customers all season, and changed us and our little farm business forever!
Now we are going into our 11th growing season! We can't believe we have been at this for over a decade now! I started this business when I was 26 years old and now I am 37! We have been welcomed into the cut flower market by local florists, businesses, and grocery stores. We are so incredibly grateful.
Last year, we continued to build out our infrastructure here at our new farm as well as build and add a heated greenhouse program to provide us with blooms in January and February. As I write this now mid-January 2024, this program is beginning to bloom! Of course, we always learn more and more each year, but so far, we are pleased to have blooms in the coldest weeks of the year. Every year we plant new crops, try new ideas, and add to our offerings, this is our favorite part! We would also be nowhere without our amazing team to maintain this farm and harvest all of those thousands of flowers! This year we will have 4 experienced team members returning, which for a small farm is a very big deal! Every season we get new wholesale clients that reach out to us as the demand for locally grown flowers increases. We are so beyond grateful to have all of our clients who send us orders week after week and season after season, we couldn't do any of this without you! All of you made 2023 a beautiful year!
We have said this before, and we will say it again, as a flower farmer, and farmers in general, we are an optimistic breed of people. We sow seeds, plant thousands of transplants every year on a wing and a prayer, with optimism for a future that doesn't exist yet. I personally am a believer that if you hold that future in your soul to guide you, that is exactly where you will be one day.
We are so excited to share all of the beauty of fresh blooms with you this upcoming season!
Thanks to everyone for choosing to support our dream by buying our flowers. You are making our dream a reality and making a difference in your community by buying locally and sustainably.
Your Local Flower Farmers,
Jenny and Paul Maloney
and the Wind Haven Farm team!