IT’S almost business as usual even as the big wet creates new challenges for an award-winning Swan Hill organic flower farm during its busiest time of the year.
Simply Roses co-founder and partner Sarah Bloom said the frequent rain had made it difficult to do “simple things” such as weeding and picking flowers each day.
There are 15,000 plants, including 6000 rose bushes, across the two farms on the Tyntynder flats.
“Normally we’re picking every day at this time of the year and our crop is in flush at the moment,” she said.
“But we can’t pick our flowers when they’re wet.”
After COVID-19 restrictions shut down the wedding industry, which accounted for 70 per cent of their rose petal sales, Ms Bloom said they began growing other types of flowers and began producing freeze-dried edible flowers year round.
“We now grow 52 different kinds of flowers,” she said.
“So that has really helped us in terms of the weather events that we’ve had, because some of those flowers grow really well in wetter climates and some prefer the hot. So we’ve got a bit of a balance at the moment.”
After learning of the potential for flooding, Ms Bloom said they ramped up production of the edible flowers and packed two months of orders for monthly subscription boxes in two weeks.
“With every dry spell we were just picking around the clock,” she said.
“I was even out in my head torch picking at night. The freezers are fully loaded and we’ll be able to get it out before we potentially have to evacuate.”
When their access to road freight was cut last week by road closures and flooding between Kerang and Melbourne, Ms Bloom had 300 air freight satchels flown to Swan Hill so they could continue delivering online orders to customers around the world.
Ms Bloom said they also had been pumping stormwater out of the fields and she was monitoring the 3km of levees separating the farms from the Murray River.
After identifying low spots and damage from rabbit burrows, Ms Bloom said they had obtained approval from authorities and paid for an excavator to do repairs.
She was a teenager living with her mother Jan Slater, who is also a co-founder and partner, during the 1993 flood.
“My main memory is we were trying to lift furniture on top of wardrobes,” she said.
“The water was lapping at the top of the levee bank but it didn’t breach.”
