A Wedding on the Farm.

Well good morning my friends. Today well is the day after a very large wedding that we've just had here on the farm and so we just have a little cleanup to do and yeah it was hosting on your farm sometimes can be quite the challenge. It's um we don't do this very often once a year we host a wedding and it went really really well but it's just a lot of work and I think you forget what that is every single time um how much work it actually is to put on a wedding. I'm feeling a little bit like um I was just rolled um ran over by a dump truck or something but everybody is moving a little bit slow this morning. So I'm just gonna take you along as we clean up a little bit and talk to you about what is all the details about what we do as far as hosting here on the farm. So uh let's go start by looking at Riley's Heart. One thing I did find is that when we're hosting and trying to film for YouTube it's incredibly hard. We had 32 people guests on the farm and it was just a family um and a few of their close close friends. We um did all the food and we did uh the like the setup, the rentals, the tear down, cocktail hour, small bites, all the things. That's a bit much. All the flowers. So thankfully they didn't want a lot of flowers but you know when you're trying to get the farm in shape so that somebody's not going to fall or trip over something and it doesn't look awful and I probably overthink it. My husband says I do all the time. I want things to be picture perfect and uh and then it's the amount of staff it takes to actually pull this off. So there's a reason that weddings are expensive especially when you do them all yourself and uh we tried to use as much as we could from the farm as far as the food goes. My husband did open fire cooking for them. We did chicken. We kept it really simple. We had three different salads. My sister Sarah graciously and her husband came and helped and they did all the hors d'oeuvres and she's of course a fabulous cook. They brought their own cake and dessert so that was nice. We provided most all the drinks. We provided the wine and iced tea and water and coffee tea afterwards and let's see what else did we do and the flowers but Riley did a really good job I think. So I was just going to kind of show you oh to top it all off my husband, love him, had to finish the greenhouse. My little cute greenhouse. You've seen it before. He had to semi finish it. It's not completed. You know how all those projects go but he had to get it somewhat to the point where it looked okay for the ceremony partly because of this. I'm going to show you. So this is where they wanted to get married. There is the greenhouse. We still didn't get the clothesline moved but nobody seemed to notice so those are the details that I'm like yes but I want to show you guys this. I mean of course this is absolutely stunning. Riley, my daughter, put this together but look at that. I mean it's been out of water for some time but little circle arch that went around. Some of these roses are from our farm. These here are from our farm. This sage is from Bend. My friend from Sweet Posy. She's a floral designer over in Bend. She was doing a wedding here as well this weekend just using our studio but she brought this over for me a super sweet of her and it smells just incredible. Really really nice. So it was really fun because I saw Brayden and Riley working together on that project and it just makes your, I don't know, mama's heart just like eat my kids. So they both worked on this big install together and this is they came up with some ideas and got it done. We kind of were on a time crunch but you know it was just fun to all work together as a family and provide such a beautiful space for folks to get married. Back to the greenhouse. So Jason finished this. We have just a little bit we're going to put some corbels up on the top here and I wanted a little bit of an overhang just because when it rains I want this area to kind of stay a little bit dry. I have my two olive trees there but I'll probably do something different and I'm hoping that something will kind of grow in between these bricks that I laid but I have just a touch of paint on it so it's not just stark white and yeah I'll show you inside. It's not done. This is the part that's not done. Sorry. So we still have some shelving to put up and paint. We got the big window in the back. This is all solar run so we're going to put fans in. My poor arrangement's dying. I had just a cute little arrangement in here just to kind of add a pop of color. Isn't that fun? Moved a few plants in but I have to style this whole little greenhouse just so that I can show you a true like a vision of what I have for it but so now all I have to do is just move that clothesline make it I'm just going to shrink it down a little bit. I don't it's only got two rungs on it and so I want to just make it smaller or shorter so that you can walk in between. I want to plant a rose there. Of course I've got this vision that just keeps going and going but it'll take years to get there but I want to move that clothesline in a little bit so and then add the other two lines just kind of finish that project as so that you can kind of walk between the greenhouse and the clothesline instead of walking underneath the clothesline which nobody cut their head off so that was great but I love how this turned out. We just have the three galvanized. This is like an herb container that just has lots of herbs. It's close to the kitchen and then two beds of strawberries. There's just a rogue kale plant and some asparagus coming up on one of the beds but I think it's going to turn out really good when it's complete and done so yep just have to move that one line in a little bit. Here I'll show you. So that just has to move in I think in line with that first galvanized tank so that you can walk through here and then I'm just going to do some sort of rose that's going to grow up and over so it's almost like you walk through to get to the back gardens. That'll be kind of fun. This is the other cool thing that I did. I haven't planted it yet but I finally got my Vigo garden put together and I'm just going to plant some more herbs in that and some flowers but yeah it's coming together you guys. I'll do a whole video on this maybe next week. I'm leaving on vacation next week so probably do a simple video for you guys while I'm gone and maybe then I'll do it after I get back from vacation. So here we go on cleanup. This is where we had our dinner for 32 people. My husband did a little bit of fire cooking. These are the borrowed plants from Wavre nursery which is my favorite nursery. They just loaned me the little stands and they look a little bit worn for wear but they need a little water this morning for sure and Jason did some cooking over here. Say hi Chris. Hi. So now we just have a little bit of cleanup to do and I've just got to get the table all the rentals. So we rented these beautiful chairs. We had cream linens just greenery down. It was super simple. Black plates. I think we got a photo of that. Anyways it turned out really really nice. We had a little corn hole back here as well people could toss. You know we're just not really set up to have weddings but these were good friends of mine and they asked nicely so we're like sure and you know it's not that bad once a year when you're flower farming and trying to host. It's a lot of work so we're gonna just minimize that one to only only friends and family and because then it just is meaningful as well that somebody that you know got married on your farm and they were able to be blessed by it and it's not so much work then. So we live on a gravel road and we're in harvest and the trucks and the tractors roll by our gravel road with like vigor and there is dust that will bellow all the way back to the greenhouse and so I kindly and nicely asked my sister to write out a little sign because she's got beautiful handwriting and put it on the road. Her husband also is a grass seed farmer so he totally understands but I am like I can't have this dust just bellowing back to where our guests are because they're not used to country life. I am. And so she put it out and thankfully everybody was so kind to just slow down the tractors, the combines, the everything just slowed down the semi trucks. We just didn't have time to like oil the road and I'm not really a big fan of that but anyways yeah this is so so it was super nice of everybody to just like take a day to just slowly come by our house and um yeah I was that that made me feel good like they're still good in the world that somebody would be just kind right? Okay so I'm off to make our stock get the stock going this morning and then um we're gonna start picking some of these elderberry flowers and get that going. We are you guys I didn't tell you this um we just got our publisher is asking for the rest of the photos so we did also a shoot of course it just landed on the week that we had this big wedding so we did a couple style shoots here at the farm we did a few others around and um today I'm gonna have to do a quick photo for the book for myself. I have to like get all gussied up. Anyways the book is coming out in the end of November I think so the mid fall right before Christmas which is really cool because I think it's going to make a great Christmas gift for folks and I can't believe how well this book is turning out you guys. I think it's going to just give a lot of folks just a warm fuzzy feeling and just a I don't know it's it's just coming out better than I thought. My sister Sarah who was helping me with this wedding as well she's she's the Martha Stewart on steroids gal she is actually doing some hand drawing doodles for the book um I kind of came up with that idea and I know she's just super talented with it so she loves doodling and so she's going to be doing some hand drawings we've got our recipes we're testing recipes Jason's actually testing one of the harassa pork meals and so I'm going to make some homemade tortillas. I know there's a lot on my list but you know it's just a big push to get it all done so I can go on vacation that's the plan it's as simple as it seems the twinkle in your eyes the way that time slows down when you kiss me as we fall asleep in a bed of butterflies just close your eyes and then you'll see it you don't ever have to look too far you don't have to cover up your scars you're perfect darling just the way you are so before you think to rip yourself apart open up my heart and you'll find love love love love love love love open up my heart and you'll find love it will never grow old it's up to us to stop and smell each rose they're the colors that we show it's the feeling that we trust and it's the brush that we both carry you don't ever have to look too far you don't have to cover up your scars you're perfect darling just the way you are so before you think to rip yourself apart open up my heart and you'll find love love love love love love love open up my heart and you'll find love when you're searching hard and it seems to lead to nowhere no matter where you are know i'll always be there you don't have to cover up your scars you're perfect darling just the way you are so before you think to rip yourself apart open up my heart and you'll find you don't ever have to look too far you don't have to cover up your scars you're perfect darling just the way you are so before you think to rip yourself apart open up my heart and you'll find love love love love so as you can see from the video the wedding turned out amazing the farm was as perfect as i could get it and i was really good with how it turned out um you know there's there's always things with uh doing events on your farm and your farm's not completely set up for it but every single time you do it it it shows you a little bit more of how you could do it better things that you could either plant or move and that kind of thing and so slowly growing your farm to be able to host events um has been really kind of good for us it's not that i want to do a lot of events on our farm but i do like sharing our farm with others and i do like um creating these beautiful moments and um but like i said there are a lot of work you can understand why event centers are so expensive and then to have an event center that's a working farm that's again a whole nother scale of work so um definitely gonna limit the the weddings or events that we have as far as like dinners and that kind of thing as far as our classes go on the farm we do those about once a month is what i like to do we used to do a lot more of those and i found that i kind of it was a little bit taxing on me um i love doing them i love having people at the farm but when you're doing them every single week on top of all of the other things that you're doing that's kind of what wore me down and then i thought you know i i love them so much i don't want them to get old and you know just be work i want them to be something enjoyable and so this year we've been doing one a month and that's working out really really well i hope you enjoyed this video and until next time much success in all you do and grow and we'll be seeing you shortly in the garden very soon back here at Crowley House. Buh-bye!