Kim Howell finds flowers are a good crop

Little Island Farm has been an experimental ground for several kinds of farming for a little over a decade, but this year, after a bit of soul searching, Kim Howell decided to focus her love for gardening on a rarer crop, specialty cut flowers.

Mike and Kim Howell started building on their acreage about 13 years ago after relocating from the Seattle area. They built a house, a shop and barn, a greenhouse and put in garden infrastructure. Over the years they've grown vegetables, raised goats and poultry, sheep and cattle.

Ten years ago, with Rob and Diane Stockhouse, the couple started the Farmer's Market on Puget Island. They did all this and ran the farm while Kim Howell continued to work full time for Bonneville Power Administration as an operations and maintenance regional manager in Vancouver.

Kim retired in 2013, joining her husband who had retired in 2001. They decided to give up the farmer's market two years ago as well.

With as much energy as she has, she may not be going to the office, but she'll probably be just as busy.

"I didn't want to have any more commitments to anyone or anything," Howell said. "My husband and I took a year to figure out what we really wanted to do with our farm. We've got a well established orchard and we've got fruits and berries. We downsized and got rid of the bulk of our livestock.

"I decided that I wanted to have specialty cut flowers. It's my new farming adventure. I've been working hard on infrastructure, putting in water lines, hoop houses, and permanent beds for establishing perennials that will grow year after year. I also made sure my grow space is fenced because we have those beautiful white-tailed deer on the island and they love to graze.

"People are wanting to get in touch with where their food comes from. They want to know that the food that they are eating hasn't traveled thousands of miles to get to them, that they haven't been sprayed with chemicals or genetically modified in any way."

It's commonly referred to as Slow Food.

"I think what you see increasingly and what I'm trying to ride the wave of, is a growing movement towards Slow Flowers or American grown flowers," she said. "About 85 percent of the flowers sold in the United States in the floral business are imported from outside the US. A lot of them come from South America. There are huge farms in Ecuador and Chile."

The downside of that, according to Howell is that consumers don't know anything about these farmers' grow practices. The flowers have been hybridized so they will have a long vase life and unusual colors. They've been bred to be hardy in order to be shipped long distances, kept in storage and forced to bloom at times that are not natural to them.

"Those flowers have a pretty huge carbon footprint associated with them. You don't know if they've been fumigated or what kind of chemicals have been applied to the soil that they are growing in.

"When you start messing with hybridizing flowers,you sacrifice their fragrance."

It's just another reason she's digging this new adventure with specialty cut flowers. She's surrounded with scents.

"I think part of growing heirloom species of flowers is that they have scent," she said, "I'm trying to get back to the roots."

Howell tries to use organic grow practices, including using only natural fertilizers like composted manure.

"Standard off the shelf fertilizers have some kind of chemical composition that is not friendly to the natural bacterial microbes that are in the soil," she said.

This year Howell has been selling her flowers wholesale to florists, including Nicole Emery who owns Daisy Chain Floral in Cathlamet. It's her first year and she admits that her selection is limited. She's already planning to expand not only her selection and her garden, but her market as well. She hopes to work with DIY brides and event planners and is considering a CSA for flowers, where anyone can buy a subscription and receive a bouquet on a regular basis.

Like all her other adventures in farming, she's figuring it out as she goes along. She's done a lot of research and joined an association for specialty cut flower growers. The association has a website where the farmers can share information about what has worked or hasn't. Howell has become very literate in the matter and works her garden empirically like any scientist, starting small to see what grows well, and going so far as to monitor the wind in the afternoon to see how it affects her flowers.

"I used those resources to learn what flowers are in demand," Howell said. "I found out what flowers hold up in a vase and what flowers add fragrance to bouquets. Some flowers are not suited for floral arrangements. Some are not sturdy enough, some wilt really quickly."

It isn't just about growing the flowers. Knowing what makes up the structure of a bouquet has added to her vision of what her crop will include.

"Bouquets usually have foliage filler then smaller secondary flowers, followed by a primary flower," Howell said. "The younger generation really wants texture in their flowers. They don't want baby's breath, leather fern and carnations and roses anymore. They want things with seedpods and vines and again the fragrance.

"My goal ultimately is to establish the full spectrum of foliage and flowers so I can be kind of self contained. I want to grow the unique flowers. Next year I will have a whole lot more, a whole lot earlier."