Bouquets in Bloom

A flower farm in the Lakes Region brings regenerative organic flowers to the community through a membership model

BY JESSICA SABA / PHOTOGRAPHY BY JENN BAKOS

Evans hopes that her slice of heaven can bring color and a taste of New Hampshire to your home or event.

Live Free Farm sits at the top of a dirt road that is rutted, sloping and beastly — named Disdam Road for a reason. Like many unpaved roads in New Hampshire, however, it leads to a special place hidden among the trees.

At Live Free Farm, owner Marianna Evans leases three acres on a 32-acre property in Holderness and operates a cut flower business through a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. Members sign up at the start of the season in May and make a pact with the farmer to take whatever comes of the season, whether abundant harvests or limited blooms. Members pay $240 for eight weekly bouquet pickups averaging $30 per bouquet. To bring more flowers to the community outside the CSA, she drops additional bouquets at the Squam Lake Marketplace and pop-ups at Boomerang in Plymouth.

This year’s CSA has begun with each session lasting eight weeks at $30 a week. Pick up is at the farm in Holderness on either Tuesdays or Fridays.

“Cut flower farming in general can be challenging in New Hampshire,” says Jonathan Ebba, extension field specialist at UNH Extension School. “From the standpoint of labor, energy and growing conditions, it can be much cheaper to grow cut flowers in other regions of the country and the world. The technology and systems to ship and distribute affordable fresh cut flowers from other places is excellent. When marketing their crop, New Hampshire growers need to leverage both the benefits of local production and the species grown, which may not be available through traditional mass-market channels.”

Local grocery stores make it easier to find fresh flowers for any occasion, but it comes with a price. Imported flowers, shipped thousands of miles overseas, are preserved and made perky with additives. They’re sometimes dyed in crayon-like yellows and oranges, or blues or greens to match the current holiday. Imported varieties can be expensive: Marianna recently saw one florist price a single ranunculus stems for $8 each.

Evans’ mission is to make fresh, locally grown flowers available to the community at a reasonable price. “Most people buy flowers from all over the world — they’ve lost the connection,” Evans says. “My flowers are for people who want a deeper connection to this area. They are for people who want flowers that grow and bloom in the same environment with an intimate relationship with this area.”

Live Free Farm flowers are always harvested the morning of pickup. Twice a week, between mid-May and the first week of November, Evans visits her fields before the flowers are wilted by the sun. Wearing knee-high muck boots, a pair of overalls and a handmade leather florist’s belt, she harvests blooms spread around the fields. She fills several buckets with biointensive flowers she has grown on no-till soil she has cultivated.

Evans carries them from the field to the flower room in the barn, where blooms are placed on a work table, stems are clipped, leaves are removed, and flowers are arranged in bundles prepared for CSA members who arrive to select their bouquet from options on the pickup table.

The self-serve nature of the pickup process lets CSA members admire the arrangements and pick their favorites to bring home. There might be one remarkable flower that draws them in — whether it’s a vibrant red, an ombre-colored pink-to-orange petal pattern, or a bouquet in yellow shades. Arrangements feature varieties like snapdragons, ageratum, sweet peas, zinnias, calendula, bells of Ireland, Queen Anne’s Lace, hydrangeas, cosmos, pincushions, bachelor buttons, sunflowers and the spectacular dahlias. Some weeks, there are playful ranunculus, classic lilacs and boppy zinnias.

Pickup days provide a special warm-weather ritual for the 35 or so CSA members who take their morning drive to collect the fresh-picked flowers; bring them home; admire the colors, textures, varieties and fragrances; then arrange them for display. In early spring, fresh flowers in a room that’s been dormant during the long colorless months of winter can feel enchanting.

In addition to providing flowers for seven weddings per season and other events, Evans prepares bouquets and guides members on floral arranging. Twice a week she creates an arrangement, placing the finished design next to a flower book from her library to help inspire others to think about how to arrange their flowers at home.

Building the flower farm

Marianna Evans grew up hiking the White Mountains and enjoying the forest. After living in Colorado, she found that she missed her family and the forests of the East, so she went back to her roots, and her little flower farm in Holderness was born.

Evans spent her early career as a farm manager at a nonprofit farm and education center in Westchester County, New York, that was dedicated to feeding the community and educating the public on sustainability. She gained skills as an organic and sustainable grower with experience in greenhouse management, irrigation, composting, weeding/pest management, farm equipment and soil health. Evans also runs Local Foods Plymouth, which encourages community members to source more local food. These skills carry into her farm today.

Evans had to learn quickly on her farm. She recalls having a lot of energy for farming, despite the daily challenges and chores. Evans often works alone, and finds immense joy and fulfillment in farming. She says she was called back to her home in New Hampshire “by the spirit of Squam Lake” after years of living in New York.

When Evans acquired the land in 2019 before opening the CSA in 2023, the growing area was a dense forest. She cut and chipped trees, removed roots and moved rocks to make beds. For a long stretch, she recalls feeling like a rock mover, not a farmer.

Once that was done, Evans found the soil was mostly dense, heavy clay. To make flower beds, she “fluffed it up” by adding 4 inches of compost, and dug trenches to route water flow on the sloped lot. It took a full year to build up the soil for the flower beds, but now they are ripe for planting and growing.

At the end of the day, these farming practices are designed to leave the land and soil better than Evans found it. “We believe in stewarding the land in order for our future generations to enjoy what is beautiful, our earth,” she says.

Evans works hard to create farming practices that are designed to leave the land and soil better than she found them, and to grow flowers that bring joy to everyone who beholds them.

Farm Season 2024:

After a year of abundant rain in 2023, the 2024 flower season began in April with the anticipation of extra vibrant colors.

“Every season consists of miniature farm battles, and mine have already begun. An unseasonably warm February into March, a cold spell and then a huge snowstorm caused issues in the low tunnels. Vole pressure is high this year and they ate 200 poppy plants after the snow drove them undercover,” Evans wrote to CSA subscribers in April. “What will the season bring? The ranunculus plants are already up and look great, tulips have buds and the greenhouse is completely full of seed trays.”

New Hampshire farmers are hearty, independent people who can overcome innumerable obstacles. With a can-do attitude, resilience and optimism, Evans is ready to face the challenges of the 2024 growing season on the flower farm.

“I’m so excited to have over 1,000 lisianthus in the ground this year, a new addition, and I have brand new varieties of zinnias that I can’t wait to grow,” she says.

Live Free Farm CSA

CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Sign-ups for the 2024 CSA opened in May. Weekly-pickups run from May 27 to July 15, July 22 to Sept. 9, and Sept. 16 to Nov. 4.

How to Sign Up: Sign up directly by emailing Live Free Farm with a preferred session, pickup day (Tuesday or Friday), and bouquet preference (prearranged or market bouquet).

Guide For Keeping Flowers Fresh:

1. Change the water daily; recut stems when doing so

2. Feed your flowers by adding a little sugar to the water

3. Keep blooms out of direct sunlight