Aweside Farm

Aweside Farm Organic pressed edible flowers and dried edible flowers. A sustainable way to have flowers year round

14/06/2026

We're out picking this morning and the light is just absolutely stunning today. All the colours just feel so bright. The sky is so blue. The flowers are really poppin. The green from the tree leaves and the grass is so vibrant.

It's beautiful at this time of the morning because it's so silent and so quiet. Just the birds doing their thing.

What an absolute joy

Happy Sunday 🩷

12/06/2026

This is the first blend for 2026, what do you think we should call this one?

I'm calling on your naming services again after some of the knockout 10 out of 10 names that you came up with for 2025's blends.

Whoever's name is chosen, amma send you out one of the first tins when they're released in late July, as a thank you, for being a part of creating dried floral joy

11/06/2026

Okay, I'm going to try and do my best to actually show you more of the ins and outs of the farm instead of just spending all of my time crying about the weather 🤣🤣 cuz I do actually have a business here and not just a sea of tears 👀

We've just begun the first round of drying for the season and there's a few changes that I've been making as I've reflected on the direction of the business.

For the past couple of years, you've been able to buy the dried flowers from the website and they come in these cute little aluminium tins in several different sizes. After getting an idea of what does best, what blends do well, what sizes people like most, I've settled on one!

Four sizes was a lot to manage and meant packing to order and we've had to reflect on how we can streamline things as we scale up the drying side of the business and make it more efficient. I also now firmly believe, less is more.

Got these super slick screw lid, black tins and going to be offering two sizes going forward. One in the tin and then one in big bulk bags.

With much testing it's been great to find a nice screw lid tin because the slip lids have been great but I do think you end up getting a little bit of moisture in them over time whereas with the screw lids, you'll be able to keep these petals at home in prime condition.

As things come out of the dryers, we'll be boxing them straight up into the tins, getting the labels on and then getting them stored and then we can just pick them like a pic'n'mix when we're picking your orders

Last year I was thinking about scaling this side of the business down on the back on breaking my hand and not at that point knowing it would recover as it has. But I do really enjoy this side of the business and sharing beautiful edible flowers with you, but in a much much more sustainable way!

They're organic, recyclable aluminium tins - one day I'll do a geological talk on aluminium as it's amazing it's one of my top 5 metals (yes I have a top 5...) and everything is dried using solar power here, so it's good stuff! I'm glad I listened to my loved one about doubling down on this side of things!

10/06/2026

A rather majestic sunrise over the overhaul we've been working on the past few months.

This spot used to be 90+ woodchips paths and no dig beds. Classic market garden style.

Broke my hand last year, came out of surgery, on lots of codeine for weeks, and decided it was time to flip everything.

Let everything grow wild. Cut it all down using a flail mower one handed and a taped up contraption (don't do this it was daft 🫣...).

Robyn my friend helped move tarps around and working out the new layout on a whim - this was where the undiagnosed ADHD theory became strong. I remember Robyns wide eyes as I explained 37383 new ideas, chopped and changed things about 23 times and got distracted to do a different task every 15 minutes cause I was bored of this one. She is why this codeine induced vision actually came through and stuck 🤣🤷🏽‍♀️👀🫣

I remember hearing around the time I'd broken my hand, that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results. I had well and truly lost it at this point last year. I was angry, in emotional pain, up to my eyes in debt from the buy out, in the throws of PTSD and I just kept pushing myself to do more, be more, wasn't sleeping, wasn't eating, 18 hour days, necking pre work out drinks. And then I cracked, literally.

Breaking my own hand in a PTSD spiral and concussing myself isn't something I look back on lightly, but that explosion of finally feeling the anger at what I'd been living through and releasing it, needed to happen.

Its unfortunate I choose to do that on a wall and not on a therapy sofa. But alas. It changed me and set me on a course that in some way I am actually grateful for. I suppose I finally released what was inside me, the pain, what years of a grim emotionally abusive dynamic did to my mind, the stress of the farm, but also living my whole life with undiagnosed ADHD and autism for years and self medicating with binge drinking, partying, workaholism and masking so strong I do not recognise many of the various versions of me.

This 5 sec snip is the best reflection of my mind and state a year having got real help 🌷🙏🏽🧚🏽‍♀️✨🎉 jus

07/06/2026

A very very windy week last week, 40-50mph day in day out and flattening quite a few flowers outside, especially the cornflowers which have taken a serious beating!

This week the drama continues and we appear to be starting this week with the return of not being able to water! A couple of weeks ago the water went just before the heatwave for about 4 days and with it just trickling out makes it really hard to get things watered, especially in the polytunnels which are spaces which try out pretty quickly.

Plants drying out very fast in the tunnels, shriveled tagetes I've had to take off this week's pick lists for instance - and given we've ripped lots out and had to resow loads of stuff because of losing so much from the heatwave, my eye rolling is endless ATM!!! Having needy seedlings in the ground in the tunnels and not being able to water them appears to be the theme of the week ahead 🫪

I feel like it's the season where my patience is being endlessly tested and everything feels reactive - frustrating cause we're actually working really hard here outside of the usual work and have invested sooo much the past year, redesigning the site and building new systems, layouts, tools etc towards being more proactive and resilient to these swings and blows - I know the things we're putting in will help, but juggling the overhaul and then these weekly extremes is rooooough 😂

The loss I'm expecting from June I've tallied up to be about £3.5k and it's wild looking outside because it just feels like there really isn't very much out there.

It's just one of those things and bad timing - this year I decided to scale back so we could focus on rebuilding the farm, so i took quite a risk this year to pause parts of the business and the income with it - and then came a year with a lot of weather induced losses

😬😬😬😬 I grimace a lot 😂 but I believe in the plan and it's just going to be a tighter year!

I'm hoping the extra successions mean I can claw back some of the losses this spring in the autumn! Who knows at this point haha 😂🙏🏽🤷🏽‍♀️🫢🫣🌷❤️🙏🏽


06/06/2026

Currently my favourite part of the farm, the cornflowers 💙

First successions have begun - they came early because of the heat and now having to face heavy rain (we need rain I won't complain) and 40-50mph winds (I will complain about that as a fee have succumbed the swing into autumn we are now experiencing).

The first batch is to work on the individual colours of dried edible flowers and once the calendulas get fully going in about 2 weeks, then we'll begin on the blends and we have some nice new colour ideas on the cards for you!

The next succession is in the propagation tunnel and likely to go out and into the newly opened area in a couple weeks time! That'll see us through the rest of the season with a constant supply of flowers for til autumn for our fresh edible flower work 💃🏽🎉💙🥳

02/06/2026

Finally! We got rain 💃🏽 and some ground shaking thunder!

Needed to feel it on my skin, so I didn't mind it when it chuck d it down whilst picking tonight.

😊 I've been working on a big overhaul here, it looks very different and I've been meaning to tell you about it all for ages but it's a bit relentless time wise here!

But let's just say the 1000+ perennial plants that have gone in this week will be delighted about the rain! (As am I to have a few days not thinking about watering outside!)

30/05/2026

Erugh.... As the week goes on, the damage from the swings in the temperature becomes clearer. It's remained around 28-32 most of the week here. It often takes a few days for damage to settle in.

I've been trying my best to keep as optimistic as possible, but losing the alliums is a real kick and I'm absolutely gutted. Chive flowers have been tiny this year, and now mostly burned off. Pink alliums, all going over and then the yellow alliums are the biggest loss with 3 beds outside and most tunnel stuff burned - they got hit from the frost and then heat going up to 32 withing a few days has resulted in mushed and signed buds.

They're a one hit wonder. One stem a season. All 750+ bulbs bar 4 are gone.

It stinks cause these were bought in for this year to expand the area and to replace hundreds of bulbs that mistakenly got thrown away last season when I broke my hand and it all went to s**t last June.

It's usually one of my key plants for June, so couple that with the loss of the alyssum, sweet rocket, dianthus and nasturtium leaves, looking at a £2k gap in June's planned income.

Thankfully most of those can be resown which we've done today and I'll hopefully get them back on the order lists in July, but the alliums are a total loss - from the outlay of replacements, to what was forecast to come from them.

It's another blow in an already tight and rough year.

Then my car exhaust fell off costing me £280 quid today.

I am a weeeeee bit haggered to say the least 😭😵😘🤢🙄 tomorrow we go again 🙏🏽🌷🫪

29/05/2026

You win some, you lose some.

Certainly a tough spring for growers! Flowers are coming fast and leaving with the same pace.

I've written off things like forget me nots, bellis daisies, chives and now one of the top crops for this time of the year, the alyssum.

But as ever move, it is what it is and we sow again where we can, remove what's waved us goodbye, cut back anything I think we can save and we accept our fate on where it just wasn't meant to be this season.

I used to really beat myself up about things like this, tell myself I was a pants grower, I wasn't doing enough, work more, do more, be more, be better. I remember this time last year I was telling myself shifts from 4am to 9pm were totally normal. I've been doing it for years at the peak of the season, because it's normal. Then I hit a wall, quite literally....more on that another time 🙄🫪

Now, I break more, eat more, sleep more, have been out for dinner to get some space, yoga yoga yoga, and I know the power of hours, spend them intentionally and rest, truly rest. Cliché saying are clichés for a reason, what can you do from an empty cup?

Perfectionism has no place here and no grips on me anymore. Surprisingly there's something in letting go of all expectations, rules and unrealistic standards that leaves you freer to focus on what's important and see with clarity. Every bit of farm drama, is a bit of information and insight for the following season🌷🌸 xoxo

28/05/2026

So the heatwave has created a fair bit of chaos here. One of the patches that is far earlier than I was anticipating is the cornflower!

This here is just 1/3 of what's being grown, the Blue patch - with a few rouge pinks in there! And they've all come at once, aboy 3/4 weeks before expected and in the space of a week, we've gone full and rampant bloom.

Causing A LOT of processing chaos, as the farm overhaul is still underway taking up a lot of my capacity right now, as is all the changes in the processing space which are about 80% done! So this is a spanner in the works having ALL the cornflower patches coming into full flow - cutting a third back to buy time a few weeks ago did not stop the flush!!

And so now I've got to figure out how on earth we get this lot moving to where it needs to go and to get the dried portion for the farm processed, all whilst juggling the damage control of this week!

Across the farm, the swings in temps has meant lots of plants running to seed, total write offs, a lot of damage control, endless watering, getting in extra successions, planting up 1000s of plants in days and now this conundrum!

It's a pretty stunning place though, the cornflower patch is absolutely my favourite on the farm! Just seeing it this early is a slight shock to the system 🫣🤔

xoxo

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Aweside Farm, The Street, Arlington
Polegate
BN266RY

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+447540301996

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