For my internship with Thistlehook Farm, I was given the opportunity to attend a special Valentine’s Day event at the Seattle Wholesale Growers Market Cooperative. Doug, owner of Thistlehook Farm, is a full member of this coop and sells all of his product at their market. As Valentine’s Day is by far the most profitable day for flowers in the US (Mother’s Day is a distant second), this was a huge event for this market.

During peak season (May-October), they have normal markets on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 6AM-noon (10AM-noon the market is open to the public). During the off season (November-April), they have one market on Wednesdays, same hours. However, with it being Valentine’s Day this upcoming Wednesday, they had a special Sunday event for florists to stock up on flowers for their Valentine’s Day orders. During these off-season months, they bring in a lot of product from California and Hawaii to supplement the lack of product from local growers, but all of this product needs to be salmon-safe as a base requirement to be able to be sold at the market.

Sunday morning, I woke up at 3AM to be picked up at 4AM to be to Seattle by 5AM.  It was pretty insane when we got there, with people running around and trucks coming in and out of the loading docks. Immediately, we were given a tour of the new space by Diane and Denis, board members and owners of Jello Mold Farm in Mount Vernon (and my future bosses!). The space includes a storeroom, lobby, and meeting room, and is about double the size of their old space (moved locations in November 2017). They are also located a couple blocks from the other floral wholesaler of Seattle, which is good because it is now more convenient for their customers to be able to go to both in the same day.

After, we were put to work uploading trucks/vans, unpacking boxes, filling buckets, sorting flowers/greenery, and chopping stems before sending them out to the floor. We saw so many really cool and totally new to me plants. Some of these included Proteas and other Leucadendrons, Chamelaucium (wax flower), Claycina, and Moroccan Date Palm. It was really cool to see all of these unique and downright weird plants in conjunction with the more native things like English Ivy (yes someone was selling this noxious weed at the market), pussy willow, and cedar as well as the more familiar things like roses, ranunculus, and tulips.

Protea for sale

Doug was really excited by the variety of things the growers from Oregon were able to bring this early. He thinks this is good news for him as Washington will get an earlier spring too. They had a lot of Oregon-grown tulips, ranunculus, anemones, and heather.

In terms of product, they received 90 boxes worth of flowers and greenery this past Wednesday for this market and we received 150 boxes Sunday morning. All of these were unpacked and processed by us Sunday morning. All of this product came from California and Hawaii, thus not even including the actual grower-members’ product. Doug said he believes all of the California/Hawaii product will be sold Sunday or else on their normal Wednesday market on actual Valentine’s Day. The stuff that is less likely to sell is actually the grower-member stuff that’s not the tulips, ranunculus, etc.—the things like the pussy willow and cedar as it doesn’t really say “Valentine’s Day.”

It was a long day—we left Olympia at 4AM and got home at 2PM. But it was fun and I learned a lot. Plus it was really good to see Denis and Diane of Jello Mold Farm as well as the new space for the market.

Ranunculus to be unpacked and processed