"For us a big motivator is making an impact in the conventional floral industry. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry and most of the flowers we get in the United States are imported, coming from South America and Africa. The statistics vary depending upon the source that you research but it’s anywhere from 80 to 85% of U.S. Flowers are imported. So what you see in regular grocery stores or from a florist or when people plan flowers for a big event or for a wedding, all of those flowers, most likely, are coming from another location. Let’s say 15% aren’t imported - 85% of those are grown in California. So we’re really fulfilling what we consider a need to provide local flowers in this area and we’ve had people as far as Indiana and Chicago contact us and say, 'I can’t find any flower suppliers locally, you’re the closest thing.'
And I think the other thing that sets us apart aside from doing local cut flowers is that we are a sustainable farm. We use all organic methods. In fact, we don’t even spray organic sprays on our flowers. We do hand-picking of caterpillars, we bag our dahlias, we do all sorts of beneficial insect control, so ladybugs and praying mantis eat other bugs that would eat our flowers. And we have what I consider fair wages for our employees, even though the work environment is challenging because we’re out in the sun a lot, the days seem long, we’re lifting heavy buckets and swatting flies. The morale is pretty high in this work environment and we have a lot of fun and joke a lot, care about each other’s well-being, which I think is pretty unique in a workplace in general, but specifically for farming."