Project Week 7

The many facets of being a farmer-florist

Things to think about:

-land: location, resources available, types of infrastructure possible, community.. etc.

-partner/s / co-owner

-employees/interns

– what do we grow? what works well in this area AND what will sell?

-who are our customers? community partners?

-what is your style?

-how can I use the platform of farmer/florist to actively participate in making positive change

Having a farm is having a business. One can grow the best food or flowers, and have their farming systems down but those things don’t matter a whole lot if there isn’t an exchange of goods for money making it possible.

In some ways my interest in growing flowers has come with a bit of guilt. Of all of the possible things to direct my energy towards, why flowers? The floral industry can be snobbish and extravagant. Things are either “in” or they’re not – and who decides?

From Favored Flowers:Culture and Economy in a Global System:

“Flowers are unlike other frequently studied commodities such as food and clothing, because they are not necessary to life: they have no utilitarian function. For those who consume them, the function of fresh-cut flower is always to express cultural or social meaning. Fresh flower laid on a grave, for example, demonstrate the cultural importance of honoring the dead. When people decorate spaces – whether church or ballroom-with extravagant displays of flowers, they signal aspects of identity and social status.” (Ziegler 2007:7)

“Consumption is simultaneously a social and cultural activity and an economic activity. In contemporary societies, goods, like clothes, cars and fresh flowers, help to make visible the intangible understandings of culture and help organize societies by classifying people into recognizable groups. In these processes special meaning become attached to consumer goods. Theorists debate whether consumers themselves are active in establishing the cultural meaning and value of the goods and commodities that populate their material worlds.” (Ziegler 2007:193)

“All these ever-changing cultural factors–meanings, distinctive desires, physical pleasure, identity, and relationships–interlace with the economic of flower production and trade. …Their actions–these tiny gestures of the self–shiver through the chain, shifting it once again.” (Ziegler 2007: 234)