by Nikki Bartley Today is March 24th and I just returned home from a week-long writing retreat with 18 other wild and wonderful women in Yelapa, Mexico. My husband and boys are skiing in NH enjoying the best powder day of an otherwise lackluster ski season on the East Coast. This gives me a day to stretch out and consider the end of winter and the 2024 farming season ahead. Our 6 week Spring share starts this week as our first greenhouse tulips are blooming, and our Barn Shop opens for Easter weekend this Friday. This is the 10th season of Cross Street Flower Farm and our 9th year in business ..read more

Why is a flower share such a great holiday gift?  Most holiday gifts are forgotten once they are opened, but our flower shares give the gift of HOPE! They will look forward to their flower share all winter long!  It's the gift that keeps giving- they will think of you every time they pick up their flowers!  PLUS, you are helping our small flower farm keeps the lights on this winter!  Buying a flower share ahead of the season helps us pay our farm crew over the winter and allows us to purchase all the seeds, supplies and keeps our greenhouses heated all winter as we sta ..read more

A Sunset Celebration of Education Among the Dahlias Saturday, September 23rd 5-7PM   We are in the midst of our best Dahlia season since we began farming cut flowers in 2015. We have over 2 acres and approximately 15,000 dahlia plants currently in bloom, half of them in the field bordering Main Street and the other half in our farthest field on Jacobs Lane next to the Science Center.  We plant our dahlia tubers in May for their September blooms, and they are truly magnificent this year. Although we have certainly improved our growing techniques over the past 9 growing seaso ..read more

"Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light." - Theodore Roethke Where Cross Street Flower Farm began. I am not a typical farmer if there is such a thing. I did not grow up on a farm, and my earliest memories are not about riding on my grandfather’s tractor or picking flowers from my grandmother's garden. It is not about farming at all.  It is about a candy store. The year was 1978 and I was 4 years old. My family lived in a row home in Pennsauken, NJ, a lower-middle-class suburb of Philadelphia. My parents met as elementary school teachers at the local Catholic school. At ..read more

Last August, I hosted two award-winning authors, Marcia DeSanctis and Lavinia Spalding at the farm as a stop on Marcia's Book Tour for her memoir, A Hard Place to Leave. Our 40+ guests were treated to a fascinating discussion about travel writing, raising families, and leaning into your own creativity to pursue your dreams and design the life you want to lead. We then set our guests free into the flower fields to harvest their own bouquets. It was a magical evening for everyone. Although it was the first time I had met either Marcia and Lavinia in person, it felt more like ..read more

"Small opportunities are often the beginnings of great enterprises." -Demosthenes by Nikki Bartley   Today is March 15th, Beware the Ides of March.  I often feel the winds of change blowing strongly every year on the Ides, but for me those winds are simply the last gasps of Winter, heralding Spring's arrival.  Rather than foreboding, March 15th is an exciting day on the farm. It is the unofficial start of our growing season, and often the day our seasonal crew returns to the farm. We welcome our newest team members into the fold and I lead our first gath ..read more

"Often the most unlikely friendships are the best." - Charlie Mackesy -by Nikki Bartley Sunday, May 22, 2022  This past week we celebrated the life of someone very special to our flower farm, Mickey Fernandes. Sometimes people come into your life and leave a big mark. Mickey was one of those people. I only knew him for 3 years, but in that time, Mickey became a close friend, teacher, and mentor. Our meeting was serendipitous. Mickey came to our farm as a favor to a friend, to spec out an irrigation system for us. For reasons I will never be sure of, he agreed to do the job ..read more

    “The heart sees deeper than the eye.” - Unknown -by Nikki Bartley This is a love letter to flowers, which seems fitting for Valentine’s Day.  Over a decade growing flowers, what began as a love affair has matured into a long-term, committed relationship. In the early days, the flowers drew me in, welcomed me to the magical world of farming and nature that was always around me, I just never slowed down enough to notice it. At first, the excitement of growing and selling flowers was addicting. I call this the “puppy love” phase of farming. I discovered that I loved b ..read more

Saturday, January 8, 2022 -by Nikki Bartley Snow day. The first full snow day of the year is always a joy. An unexpected gift. To celebrate, I let Daisy off leash on our daily walk to the cranberry bog because the roads were completely still and empty. It felt as if the whole world was still asleep under the thick blanket of snow covering the trees and houses. As I walked the sunshine felt stronger than it had all week, almost blinding me as it bounced off the white snow. I could feel my spirits lifting as I watched Daisy leap from one snow pile to the next.  It was pure joy if only ..read more

“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” – Amelia Earhart Cross Street Flower Farm began on less than an acre in my front yard. I hired a friend with a tractor to plow up our lawn while my husband, Scott, looked on in shock. That was Spring 2015 and each year since then, I have steadily increased the footprint and reach of Cross Street Flower Farm. 6 years later, we have a flourishing 7-acre flower farm at the historic Jacobs Farm and over 700 flower share members each season. Looking back, there are so many lessons that I have learned from farming and running a small business. L ..read more