Flowers: Fresh & Dried

We have a shameless love of flowers here at Ostman Farm, and we indulge that love every year by growing as many colorful, beautiful and fragrant blossoms as we can.

FRESH

During the summer, many of our fresh cut flowers make their way into our popular Ball Jar Bouquets. Arranged by Head Farm Girl Teresa, these delightful little bouquets are as fresh as can be, and will last out most of the week, if not longer with proper care. Bring your jar back for a 25 cent deposit, or apply it to your next bouquet- these candy colored bouquets can become a weekly addiction. Be sure and get to the market early for your best choice, we are known to sell out before noon most weeks.

Sweet Pea bundles
Sweet peas love it here on the north Oregon coast, and we grow lots of them, as it is impossible to limit ourselves to just one or two colors. We seek out unusual and particularly beautiful varieties, focusing on ones that are the most fragrant, because scent is really the best part of sweet peas. These little beauties should last for several days at least if you keep them in fresh water and out of direct sunlight. These sell out fast, so get to the market early for the best color choice.

Fresh cut lavender
In July, the lavender explodes, and it’s all we can do to keep up with the harvest. We dry most of our lavender for use in sachets or wreaths, or we use it to make our lavender wands and baskets, but we save some to sell as fresh bundles, for those of you who want to enjoy it fresh, or use for your own craft projects.

DRIED

We grow a lot of wonderful, colorful flowers to dry so that we can use them to make our popular fall wreath and dried flower bundles. For us, dried flowers are a wonderful way to remember the abundance of summer even in the darkest months of a wet Northwestern winter.

Dried wreaths and flower bundles begin making their way to market in late summer, so start looking for them sometime in August or September.

PRESSED

Head Farm Girl Teresa just can’t get enough of flowers, and so each summer she loads up her flower presses with as much plant material as they will hold. Deep in the darkest part of winter, she unpacks these colorful little blossoms, leaves and vines and transforms them into pressed flower note cards (suitable for either old-fashioned correspondence or framing), pressed flower bookmarks, and flower collages.

A closet aspiring botanist, she also likes to assemble more formal ‘herbarium’ style pieces that remind one of the glorious hey day of Victorian plant collecting. However, unlike the Victorians, she is always scrupulously careful to only harvest plants she has either grown or gotten permission to harvest, and she harvests nothing that is threatened or endangered. Plus she refuses to wear a corset while working outdoors.