I had the delightful opportunity to speak with John Glick, a passionate member of Sunny Harvest Co-op. The Glick family grows stunning flowers for bouquets that grace our market from November to May, with their farm just 65 miles from our warehouse! Our conversation revealed John's journey into farming, his transition from produce to flower cultivation, and his heartfelt perspective on the significance of supporting local communities. It was truly an enlightening conversation!

How did you and your family get into flower farming?

I grew up on a dairy farm. It had many acres of corn and alfalfa. There is nothing exciting about growing corn and alfalfa. When Rachel, my wife, and I got married in 2000, I was working in gazebo manufacturing. Then, in the evenings and on Saturdays, we started a little produce and flower plot at our house.

We both love to grow things. I’m not sure what it is. We get something from the challenge of planting seeds and knowing we don’t have any power to make them grow. But we can do little things. We can start babysitting them. We can make sure they have the right temperature and moisture. We can’t make them grow, but we can give them the right conditions, and then, lo and behold, things start growing, and you keep nurturing them.

You don’t have to do much wrong to kill those plants when they are 1 -2 weeks old. That's the tricky part. But we know what to do. We have been doing it for a long time. Once they get a little bigger and you start transplanting them, it's good for them to go through some stress. Makes them healthier plants.

In 2005, we saw an ad in Lancaster Farming from Farm to City looking for farmers. We talked with Bob Pierson and started doing markets. But we had three little ones at home, and going to the markets was hard for us. So we gave our markets to Rachel's parents, and now Rachel's brother runs them. (One of the markets John is referring to is the famous flower stand at the Rittenhouse Farmers Market. You know the one, the trailer on the corner at the park entrance. John and Rachel still supply many of the flowers for that stand.)

Then, in 2009, we all started Sunny Harvest. We were supplying produce to Joe Stratton. He was an English person with a small farmers market and CSA next to Pete’s Produce. Joe was a little closer into the city on Route 926. In the winter of 2012, Joe didn’t have the best of health, and we decided to take on his CSA. Just all us plain farmers (“Plain” is another word the Amish use to refer to themselves, while “English” describes non-Amish members of the community.). Everyone had extra produce during the summer months, so we picked up Weavers Way, and then it just grew from there.

I was tired of gazebos. We bought some more land and went all in on farming.

Sounds like you were mostly doing produce. Why did you keep growing flowers?

We always had flowers, but produce was our main thing. I couldn’t tell you exactly why we didn’t quit flowers. From 2009 to 2017, we would put another acre into produce. Even in 2013 and 2014, when we had so much produce and were so busy, we were doing produce during the day. Before employees would leave, they would pick the flowers, and Rachel and I would make the bouquets.

We just couldn’t quite quit.

Do you love it?

Oh yeah, I mean we really enjoy it. Yeah… we love it.

In 2019, we decided we wanted to do more of this. Why don’t we do a little more flowers? That was when we took our red raspberries out and just focused on flowers. We were battling for space with our salad greens and cut flowers. Eventually, flowers won. Then, from 2019, we planted less produce and more flowers each year until 2021. In 2021, our whole 10 acres was all flowers. We started renting another three acres for delicata squash.

So that’s the story.

What does it mean to be a producer? Someone who makes something for others to sustain and enjoy.

That's a hard question. Why do we really farm? What is it about farming?

You can go out in the sunshine and in the fields all day and be tired—I mean, you are so tired—but you go to sleep, and you sleep well. And then you can enjoy the next day, too.

One thing that is interesting to me is that we should have a picnic for you guys in August or September. I mean, it's something—10 acres of flowers.

When people come to our farm, especially during August and September, they are like “you guys don’t have any problems. It's just you and flowers.”

He laughs and says, “I mean, we are just humans and life is life”.

Sometimes, when I am overwhelmed with stress, other people’s problems, I just walk the fields and absorb this beauty—I mean, what more could I ask for?

People ask us, “Why do you grow flowers? It's not food.” Well, your soul needs this. Flowers are food for the soul.

What kind of farming practices do you use?

We have an Agronomist. He comes every 2 weeks. He walks the fields. He sees the problem areas we have from insects or disease. He is the guy who steers us in the right direction. Don’t just dump chemicals. Here are the ways you can build the plants up. We don’t use any herbicides. For weed control, we seed grass between our rows and mow it every week. When we have a major insect flare-up, we take those out with a soft chemical. It's a chemical that has a one-day pre-harvest (safe to harvest one day after use). Then we come back with an organic solution that creates long-lasting health for the plant.

Why is it important for you to use mostly organic growing practices?

We have workers come in every day. Our own families are handling the flowers three times a day. I can’t have my family dealing with those chemicals. Plus, then they go to the grocery store and they go to people’s homes and their kitchens, and I think about them.

I know the USDA says these chemicals don’t hurt you, but I don’t know. I feel like if you were to handle this stuff constantly, which is loaded with chemicals, your body would absorb it.

Plus, when we have all those flowers blooming in late summer and early fall, all those pollinators are looking for food before winter. Can you imagine going out and spraying chemicals with all those bees and all those pollinators around? I mean, I couldn’t do that to them. We need those. In late summer, we have so many monarch butterflies here. It's just one after the next.

What are your biggest challenges?

We have been in this long enough that most diseases and most pests don’t pose a big challenge. Granted, go back to 2018 when we had all that rain, that is a different issue. We had too much moisture. Diseases rotted produce and plants in the fields. Except for really bad years, it isn’t a problem, especially since we started using the majority of organic practices. We just don’t have the disease pressure we used to have. People talk about that. When they stopped using herbicides, they have fewer major problems.

The biggest challenge we have is land. Access to land. Being able to afford land. On Tuesday, a very nice farm property was sold. It was in that family for 100 years. It was 64 acres. That was sold for $ 3.1 million. $50,000/acre. A businessman bought the farm. One of his brothers is going to move in, and they are going to rent the ground to a cash crop farmer (Someone who grows commodity crops, typically corn or soybeans). Why not get someone in there who cares about that land, who can make a living on that farm? I can’t swallow it.

A cash crop farmer is someone who rents as much farm as he can. I mean hundreds of acres. He plants corn, alfalfa, and soybeans. They come with big equipment. They use nitrogen fertilizers. They will come in there and use Roundup to kill the weeds. Grows round-up resistant crops. In the fall, he comes in and harvests everything and hopes he can make money.

Cash crop farming is a short-term game. He doesn’t care about long-term soil health. He might not farm there for more than 2 - 3 years because he might not get his lease renewed or the market shifts. Corn prices fall, so he can’t afford to rent that ground. His goal becomes, "How can I use the land to produce as much profit as possible in the shortest amount of time?" So, it's all synthetic fertilizers.

Someone who lives on the farm and makes a living on the farm puts a lot more care into the soil and farm ecosystems and has a lot more incentive to think about the long term.

Lancaster is the breadbasket, but land is getting so expensive that our people (The Amish community) are struggling to stay here, and many people have to leave if they want to keep farming. So, should some of our people move to a different place where the land is not in high demand? That thought has crossed my mind a number of times. I mean, we are Adams County and Gettysburg, Wayne County, Indiana. There was an Amish settlement that started in Kentucky 20 years ago. The ground is not as expensive.

Our family would love to have 50 acres. Our oldest are 11 and 15, and they would just love it. They would love to have more land so they could start their own farms and raise their families close to ours. However, with land prices being driven up by businessmen who can afford to pay more or turn it into subdivisions, I don’t know if that will be possible.

How would increasing sales from Philly Foodworks help?:

Well, we are not maxed out on our land. There are more opportunities to get in multiple rotations.

For example, we started planting in the fields last week (April 14th). We could grow a crop of lettuce before we grow our flowers. We could do another rotation of flowers when we pull out our spring/early summer flowers. We are already doing this, but we could be doing more if we had the demand. If we had more demand for wreaths, we could plant more flowers to dry and then use them in our wreaths.

If we sold 20% more flowers, our costs really don’t increase as much as you think. If we sold 20% more, the cost would probably increase by 4 - 6%.

This would then allow us to invest in more greenhouses so we could sell more flowers during the late fall/winter/early spring. At that time, we have a demand that we can’t fully meet because we don’t have the flowers, but another half acre of greenhouses is expensive.

If we were fully maxed out on our land, we could support our children so they could, too, keep living and farming in this area when it's time for them to start families of their own.