Today we’d like to introduce you to Alison Bakke.
Hi Alison, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born and raised in Southern California, where I graduated from college with a fine art degree. After college, like many artists, I had big dreams and no income, so I began working in the marketing department of a large real estate company and lived in a studio apartment in Long Beach. I had no desire to marry, no intention of having children, and certainly no thoughts around leaving California. However, life had other plans for me.
I moved to Minnesota in 2007, a year after my daughter was born. In 2011, a coworker and friend of mine took me and my little family to her parents’ farm, located in Starbuck, MN. Her parents are salt of the earth farmers, with their production focused mostly on specialty flowers. They showed me their fields, their growing practices and asked me about my interest in flower farming and how soon until I started. At the time, we lived in an old house on a postage stamp of land in the middle of Stillwater. As much as I loved the idea, it wasn’t the right fit for our family’s needs. But the seed was planted….
In the late summer of 2018, we found our perfect home located on 8 acres of land, which was filled with an overabundance of trees, overgrown wild berry bushes, old twisted grapevines and buckthorn. There was nothing flat or farm-like about the land. But I saw it, I knew it and the seed began to root.
In the summer of 2019, I told my husband of my plans- that the next season I was going to start a flower farm. Mind you, I hadn’t mentioned it since meeting Sarah’s parents more than a decade before and I really hadn’t done any research or created any plans. But I just knew it was what I wanted to do. He laughed and asked me with what time. I shrugged and said, “I dunno but I really want to do this…” And because my husband is who he is, he smiled and said, “Okay, lets do this….”
I reached out again to Sarah’s dad, Doug, who graciously invited me back to his farm and went through his practices in more detail, explaining things with kindness and generosity, and provided me with a jump start to my learning curve. Notebook in hand and a list of distributors and endless possibilities, it was in the fall of 2018 when I bought and planted my first tulip bulbs (over 600 of them) and bought far too many flower seeds. We cleared out a large area of wild raspberries (around an acre) and I waited for spring.
This was the spring of Covid. For the record, I would not recommend starting a business during a pandemic.
My plan was to grow flowers to sell wholesale to florists and designers. However, due to the pandemic, this was no longer a possibility with all events canceled or postponed. So I donated everything that I grew to essential workers, senior centers, the George Floyd memorial site and anyone else that crossed my path. I had absolutely no idea how to design with flowers and thought it was too far out of my reach to even consider. So I would wrap my flowers in craft paper and hand them out, so that I could feel that all my hard work was going to make someone happy. It was a tough first season.
That fall, I decided to learn more about the elements of floral designing, to better understand what floral designers would look for and improve my cut flower selection. However, what happened instead was I found my art medium and my passion. I fell in love with creating art with flowers.
The last three years have been filled with experimentation and self-discovery. I have absolutely fallen in love with the art of growing my medium from seed and nurturing it through the process of planting, harvesting and designing. I have tried to find my niche and have done full-service weddings, a la carte weddings, special occasions and everyday arrangements. And while I have enjoyed them all, I have discovered my favorite thing is creating everlasting pieces from what I have grown.
It brings me the greatest joy to start a seed in the spring, fussing over the care of it, lovingly hand-planting it into my field, nurturing it throughout the spring and summer, carefully weeding, watering and nurturing it, harvesting it at its peak and hanging it to dry in my workshop. I love walking out into my prairie in search of unique seed heads, pods and grasses, harvesting the beauty of Minnesota’s natural landscape. I love harvesting the wild, tangled grapevines and working with their natural twists and curves to create a one of a kind bases. I love the process of taking all the dried bits I have fussed over since spring and creating a piece of art that I have nurtured from seed or grown in our prairie. And I love the living aspect of my art- it will continue to change and evolve with time, like all living things do. And I am continuing to experiment with ways to have my art to become more sustainable, so it can be completely compostable.
As I enter into my fourth growing season, if I have learned anything, it is that I need to put down the map and not worry about getting ‘there’. My business ideas and model has evolved and all my expectations along with it. In order to balance all parts of myself, in addition to my business and family, I have had to shift and remain flexible with the direction of my business. I don’t fit into any one bucket-I’m part flower farmer, part designer, part florist, and part artist. So I am constantly having to check my own expectations and not worry about how other farmers or designers do things. Never did I ever think I would find my source of joy and creative fulfillment in growing flowers and creating everlasting pieces. Yet when I shifted my thinking around my own expectations and allowed it to change organically, my business began to find its ‘voice’ and I found my happy place.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My biggest struggle? The business part of my business. I am a true creative through and through. I am driven by the joy I feel when I deliver a flower arrangement or a customer shares that their mother loved my everlasting wreath. I often wish I could find a band manager who would take care of all the logistics so that I can tour and be a rockstar! Balancing my books and showing up on social media are the bane of my existence. And both are very necessary for a successful business.
I also started my business the year of the pandemic. I would not recommend this timetable to begin your own small business journey! Because I started during Covid, every year has been so different and an absolute challenge to gauge. I found that my biggest sellers my first year haven’t moved for the last two. So for the four years, I have been doing this, I have not been able to establish a baseline to compare year-over-year product interest. In addition to this, the business model and products that other local flower farmers offer just don’t work for me. And neither do the services that are offered by local florists and wedding designers. My business is a little of all of it but is its own beast.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I went to college to be an artist and found my voice through installation and performance art. My passion lay in creating a sensory experience that brought the viewers into a shared moment in time. However, as life happened, creating those shared moments became fewer and further in-between until I stopped doing it altogether.
When I began my journey of flower farming, I had no idea that the voice and passion I had as a young artist would begin to take root again with my flowers. I found that working in my field began to shift my relationship with my arrangements. I began arranging my flowers to be both beautiful and aromatic. Yet the amount of work and how temporary a cut flower’s time is had me thinking more about ways to enjoy flowers longer. I have since shifted my focus on the farm to grow mostly flowers and greens that I dry and naturally preserved to use for everlasting wreaths and botanical installations. I also create these through the same lens- both beautiful and aromatic. It is about the sensory experience.
I also believe that part of my responsibility as a farmer and botanical artist is to create beauty that will not end up in a landfill. I have worked to make my everlasting wreaths 100% sustainable and only use sustainable mechanics for my installations. What this means is that when you are ready to be done with an everlasting wreath, you can throw it into your compost pile or into your green waste can and know that every part of it will break down. My installations are created without any floral foam and the mechanical rigs are created using a combination of sustainable options. Much of what I use is either grown on my farm or by other local flower farmers. It is a labor of love.
How do you think about happiness?
Honestly, my happy place is working with my hands. Whether it is starting seeds, planting bulbs or tying the bow that finishes off the wreath, it is the act of creating that makes me smile.
Other things that make me happy? A warm fire on a snowy night.; my dog’s wet nose; the smell of sweet annie; taking a nap; the end of a hard day of physical work; seeing live music; eating nachos; my husband’s laugh; lightening bugs in the prairie.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pink-moonfarm.com
- Instagram: pink_moonfarm
Image Credits
Zea Corrine
Naomi Liester
