OFP Farmer and Florist Amy Shum

Amy Shum is the owner and operator of Farmer and Florist in Home, Kansas. She is growing her own flowers something that is pretty rare in the state of Kansas. Now we've talked about a lot of things but one of the things that would send me over the edge is the weather in Kansas as far as any agriculture something that you've really had to struggle with as far as what grows, what's blown away different things like that.

- Yes, so it's definitely never in my hands. It's always in mother nature's hands for sure. Yeah, as a farmer, you just kinda have to roll with the punches and do what you can. And I mean, we definitely, we have the tunnel for that reason. You know, it protects it from excessive wind and temperature sling and it helps us kind of do season extensions and all of those things. So yeah, that's why we definitely grow in tunnels if we can. And we definitely put our most expensive crops in the tunnels just to keep them extra protected. And then we also net a lot of things which also helps with kind of wonky stems and keeping things upright especially if you've got a big wind storm that comes through I mean, I could just take out your whole crop, but if you have it netted, there's a much better chance of being saved essentially and not breaking.

- Now, and I was gonna ask that probably helps with animals too or anything like that because we do live in Kansas so deer and rabbits and everything else.

- Yes, so thankfully we haven't had too much pressure with deer or anything else because we are kind of on that mean, I guess, strip of Home cities. So we're kind of technically considered in town, but we have, you know, three acres. So, yeah, we haven't had too much deer pressure or other animals fingers crossed so far. So I've been kind of lucky with that.

- Now, have you had anybody approach you about putting beehives or anything like that in or around your flowers?

- So funny you asked that yes most flower farmers actually will have bees just because they kind of go hand in hand honestly but sadly my husband is like deathly allergic to bees, and doing bees and all that, they're heavy. So I just didn't wanna take on that task of trying to do it all myself. And so I've just kind of put that aside. So yes, I would love it if someone else could have bees for me, but yes, we've kind of just decided that he doesn't need to carry on an EpiPen all day long.

- But you'd be open to somebody else having bees on your property?

- Yes we love honey so yes, we would totally. I mean that's--

- Amy I was asking any other aspects that you have found difficult in this growing process.

- As a farmer, it's all a labor of love.

- Thanks for joining us today. That was our guest Amy Shum. She's the owner and operator of Farmer and Florist in Home, Kansas growing flowers for agriculture which is pretty rare in the state of Kansas.