Folsom flower farmer Shirley Randon battles the elements each week to harvest and assemble gorgeous nose gays and full-on bouquets of flowers. Knowledge of these challenges makes me appreciate her delicate, hand-crafted, dried floral holiday wreaths.
Have you seen them? Whereas contemporary wreaths feature vivid synthetic colors, Shirley’s are beautifully faded by the sun. These are colors we rarely see any more in commerce. Imagine a ring of dried cosmos, bachelor's buttons, sunflowers and more.
I asked her, “How long do they take to manufacture?” She paused and then said, “If you were to include the time to plant and harvest the flowers… a year.”
Here’s another reason why farmers market matter: They preserve the patient and detailed crafts of old that are being left behind in this “lighter, quicker, cheaper” age.
