insider journal: the big plans and the big overwhelm

February is almost over! I am relieved and anxious about that and I’ll tell you why. This journal entry is going to be more extensive and more personal than you typically get from me, so forgive me. But I just have SO much on my mind and so much feels at stake. Writing is often a major therapy for me. I told you at the beginning of this whole thing that I’d be taking you through all the highs and all the lows, and boy am I about to do that.

This winter our to-do list has been LONG and extensive in preparation for the growing year ahead. And not only has it been extensive but its all kind of high-stakes, big deal stuff that we are weighing and deciding and planning. It sometimes can feel extremely overwhelming. I feel a ton of pressure to get it all right.

Things like - oh I don’t know, planning the entire future layout and function of the farm and where fence lines are going, plans for current and future livestock and the grazing plans for them, what buildings are staying and need to be updated, what their purpose will be, where the gaps are in our function and needs for the farm to be profitable, where parking is and how to facilitate and plan that, the flow of the flower farm layout and where we are planting what, where there will be a designated open space for picnic tables, events, etc., hundreds of pages of paperwork, grant applications, should we hire help, how much and when is that the right move, and navigating all this while there is currently a tenant on the property (in a tiny little house there) and trying to be respectful of him and his space.

(Also, I get asked this a surprising amount of times, so I’m going to answer here. No, the farm was not given to us, it is not ours. It is my father in law’s, and he and I are business partners in this whole thing).

Just SO much, all at once, and what feels like really important decisions that need to be made with so much to consider. And all of this on a farm that hasn’t changed in decades, not even much in a century. And all before summer starts.

The main thing we’ve been wrestling with is irrigation.

This farm has been flood irrigated since it’s been around for over a hundred years. It’s on a slight slope, and there are flood gates that open up on the top of the slope on the east side, and it trickles down to the bottom/west. My flower field is down on that west side. Where I grow the actual flowers they manage to just barely avoid the flood irrigating because of their position off to the side a bit (flood irrigating the flowers would wash them right out so that isn’t an option), but the entire rest of the pasture that they’re in is where all the flood water collects. It becomes more or less a swamp in the summer in the bottom half of the pasture I grow in making it unusable for things like U-pick events or any people to come at all, since you can’t really walk through it. Or at least, you wouldn’t want to.

So it’s been a big priority to get rid of the flood irrigation and switch to sprinklers so we can have dry ground for people to walk through and therefore open to the public, but that is a massive and expensive project for 6 acres.

the flood water collects here in the bottom half of this photo. you can see where I grow my flowers up on the right and the 300 ft long hose that water its all slowly on a timer each day in the summer in the foreground.

I’ve had endless meetings with the NRCS to switch our farm from flood irrigation to pressurized (sprinkler and drip) irrigation with it being such a huge piece of land. They have grants that can help with the exorbitant cost especially since it saves so much water. I have done hundreds of pages of paperwork and have spent over a year now going through this process.

I was just called last week and was told that our farm had been selected for funding (you may have seen my instagram story of ‘really exciting news’ that I’d share soon) - well this was it. I was on CLOUD 9. FINALLY. IT’S COMING TOGETHER. It was a huge deal and came from dozens of hours of meetings and paperwork. I was out of my mind excited.

Until a few days ago.

I got a call from the NRCS and was told that the agent who had been working on our case this whole time (knew it up from down and was so awesome in helping us push it through) had been unexpectedly fired by the government in the mass layoffs they’ve been doing. So he is no longer on our case let alone working at all anymore (which makes me extremely upset that thousands of government employees just got laid off at the drop of a hat, for no cause, with families and lives to support… but anyways)

So we now have a new agent who is not familiar with our case and is trying to get caught up on it all, and who seems great from what I can tell, and also at the same time is giving us some very different info than our previous agent. The biggest downer is that she said even if our project is selected for funding (yes, its now apparently an ‘if’) an NRCS engineer wouldn’t even be able to come do their final surveys etc for several months because so few now are employed at the NRCS thanks to the mass layoffs. Which means no sprinklers for months.

Which means flood irrigation remains throughout this summer.

My season starts in weeks.

Which has me in a cold sweat 24/7 now.

It just feels like another roadblock. Another thing to figure out and wait on and have so much hinged on.

No pressurized irrigation = no (or not very much of a) flower farm this year for public events, which is a main stream of revenue for a flower farm’s business model. And that is majorly stressing me out.

There’s some small chance they can push it through faster but she said it’s extremely unlikely.

We are just kind of at the mercy of their timeline and decisions so we will just have to wait and see what they come up with and say. Just sitting and waiting is how you torture me, Kailin Beck. I do not do well with that and get super antsy.

That’s that on irrigation, its a mess and its in the air and its so stressful to be dealing with. And next comes the barn reno.

You have probably seen snippets of this big clean out we have been doing on instagram. It’s been a huge deal. We opened the barn up for the first time in 20 years a few weeks ago and have been slowly chipping way and filling up dumpster after dumpster of so much stuff, mostly junk. There have been a handful of neat old things that we’ve kept but overall it’s just been a massive undertaking.

This was 1 dumpster in to the clean out, we are now 3 in and it’s almost done. I need to take a new pic of where it’s at now.

The barn will serve as a place to host workshops in the future. Seed starting, flower arranging, wreath making, all the things. Maybe even farm to table dinners in a few years.

Its current state is rough and its lived a long life so far. Here’s what it looks like now:

It’s begging for new life.

So here’s the tentative plan:

There is a ton of junk all along the outside perimeter (i.e., the old coop pictured) that needs to be hauled out. The commercial garage doors (manually operated) need to go. And the cinderblock really needs some love.

So the idea is we are going to replace the garage doors with motorized doors that are black steel and glass (as much glass as possible) so when we are in doing workshops we can a) have a bunch of natural light coming through and b) enjoy that view that looks out to the mountains over the entire farm.

The plan for the cinderblock is to stucco over it in a pretty, rustic greige.

The wood pictured will be sanded down to get the flaking paint off and sealed/stained as wood.

And the roof which is currently old, rusty metal is just going to be painted black for now.

These are all tentative plans that we have been getting tons of quotes for while we have been cleaning out the inside. Here’s a photo collage of our penciled-in plans:

It’s crazy to say I’ve now spent years visualizing this barn and what it can become. I think it really could be beautiful if done right. The little white house on the bottom there is my inspo for the tiny cottage that is currently at the farm that the tenant is in. (when I say tiny I mean one bedroom tiny. It’s also cinderblock and looks similar in aesthetic to the barn, and it is right next to it).

The idea is to updated it as much as possible for as little cost and as little demo as possible, and just make it look intentional and nice and usable.

I had AI attempt to make a barn with my descriptions. It did a decent job! This is the very general idea. It’ll be much more rickety and rustic than this but you get the idea.

All this to say, everything feels very expensive and very out of reach right now. There are lots of obstacles, it feels like. Everything feels scary and big and high stakes. But that’s part of chasing a dream.

Especially a big dream.

“Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome. And fear hates uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, however, something to be dealt with.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I had spent several days kind of reeling about all there is to do, all that is up in the air, and have felt total overwhelm. And then I remembered why I am doing this in the first place.

I’m doing this because I believe flowers change the world. I believe this little farm, itself, can one day change the world. It’s okay if it takes the farm a few years to be up and humming at full speed. I cannot control all of that.

Right now, I need to focus on flowers. They’re something I can control for.

The buildings will come.

The irrigation will work out eventually.

The parking lots will be graded.

The animals perfectly rotated on grazing pasture.

The fences mended and perfectly in place.

Maybe even with a shiny black ‘Beck Farms’ overhead ranch sign at the top of the driveway one day.

But right now what I know and what I can control is flowers. The rest I am going to be forced to be patient with, and WOW will I be grateful when it all starts coming together.

So when you pull up to pick up your bouquet subscription this spring, excuse the junk likely still laying around and the very worn barn that the bouquets are waiting for you in. When you come to a U-pick this summer, enjoy it, because there might only be a tiny handful of those events in between flood waterings when the field can dry out enough. When you park in the parking lot, just pretend it’s level and filled with fresh new pretty gravel. Pretend the berms on the sides of the driveway aren’t still straight sagebrush, and that the fences are uniform and beautiful.

The farm is going to be a real long work in progress, and I’m trying to become okay with that. I’m a send-it, full throttle kind of person and I think I might be supposed to learn patience from this one. I’m trying.

But for now, I’m going to grow the prettiest flowers in this valley, and I’m going to share them with you.

Come as you are, come visit us as we are, and enjoy the flowers that grew through it all.