Our Trip to Spain

We went to Spain in August, partly to chase an eclipse and partly because I needed some time away from the normal rhythm of work and the farm. I love traveling with a reason, and following an eclipse across southern Spain gave us one, but it also gave me time to explore some of the things I love most—art, architecture and food—and to spend time with friends and family while thinking about what I want the next few years to look like.

I've been doing a lot of that lately. BloomSky is still a young farm, and while I love what we've built, I've also been thinking about where it goes from here. What do I want to grow? What do I want to stop doing? What parts of the farm matter most to me, and what could it become if I gave myself permission to think a little bigger—or perhaps just differently?

Spain was a particularly good place to think about those things because so much of what I found interesting there wasn't new at all. We spent time in buildings that had been standing for hundreds of years, ate foods tied closely to particular places, wandered through neighborhoods where people still gathered in plazas in the evening, and saw beautiful things that existed because someone had cared enough to make them that way.

I took pictures constantly, but not necessarily of things I wanted to recreate. I photographed doors and tile and gardens, shop windows and plates of food, old stone and little details in buildings that would have been easier and cheaper to leave out. I found myself paying attention to how places made me feel and trying to understand why.

Some of that was simply the pleasure of traveling, and some of it came home with me. I've been thinking differently about the farm since we returned, not necessarily about what flowers we grow or how many bouquets we sell, but about the larger thing we're creating and what I want it to feel like.

For a few weeks in Spain, I had the space to wander around beautiful places, eat very well, look at art, chase the moon across the sun and talk about ideas with people I love. I came home with a camera roll full of things that caught my attention and quite a few thoughts I haven't figured out what to do with yet.

Some of those thoughts have stayed with me as we've started talking more seriously about the future of BloomSky. I've been thinking about the farm as it exists today, what I love about it, what I would change if I were starting again, and what we might create if we allowed ourselves to think beyond the flower field.

I don't know exactly where those conversations will lead yet, and I'm not quite ready to share all of them. There are practical questions to answer and plenty of ideas that may never make it beyond the notebook. But we're beginning to imagine a different future for BloomSky, and perhaps a different place for it, too, so I expect I'll have quite a bit to share over the next few months.