Syme Family Farm

06/18/2026

On this gray morning, Benny is living his best life with his mom and herd mates. He’s been getting used to all the sights and sounds on the farm.

06/17/2026

🎃It’s Pumpkin planting time!

We do things a little differently on our farm.

✅Instead of planting seeds in the field, we get our seedlings started in the greenhouse, then transplant them out into the field. This allows us to be in control of germination.
Emily grows over 30 varieties of specialty pumpkins, carving pumpkins and gourds.

✅In the field we are using a zone-till method, minimally tilling the rows that will be planted and using a no-till method in between rows. There are many benefits to this, moisture and organic matter will be conserved as well as cleaner pumpkins from not growing on bare ground. In between the pumpkin rows is the rye cover crop.

06/16/2026

Our June feature specialty cut flower is Campanula (aka Bellflower)!

This unique flower has:
🌸Long Stems
🌸Magical colored blooms
🌸A long vase life

These beauties are thriving and are available all week in our Flower Barn. Our blooms are always kept cool in our coolers so you get them at their freshest even in extreme heat.

We are still a few weeks away from our popular mixed bouquets, but our wrapped Campanula bunches are a great way to kick off the summer season!

06/13/2026

🌲You’ve heard of a Birds Eye view, well this is Bill’s Eye view from his tractor seat as he mows the entire tree plantation.
🌲Mowing between the trees is never ending from May through October. You can see that he barely fits and that’s using our small Kubota tractor between rows.
🌲You can really see all the lush, new growth from this year’s bud break. Next month he will begin the huge task of shearing and topping over 7000 Christmas trees!
🎄Here, we think about Christmas year round!

06/12/2026

What a great experience for Emily to be a guest on the New England Holstein Association podcast. She and her co-worker discuss growing up in the agriculture industry and how it helped guide them to a career at Farm Credit East.
You can listen from the link below.

In this episode of the New England Holstein Association’s Podcast, Host Betsy Bullard of Brigeen Farms in T

06/11/2026

☀️Around here May and June are a mad dash to get every crop in the ground. We’ve been telling you all about the cantaloupe, watermelon, mum, pumpkin, Christmas tree, tomato and pumpkin plantings. Everything needs to get planted in a timely manner in hopes of a successful season.

🌸Quietly in the background there are numerous fields with tens of thousands of specialty cut flowers growing. They are just waiting for their turn to shine!
Next week we should begin harvesting our first early summer blooms.

💐Cut Flower Club is filling up with orders coming in nearly daily! There are still limited spots available! You can enjoy or share the bounty of our fields every week. For more info and to sign-up, visit our website.

06/10/2026

🌼Sunday FunDay, it was Mum planting day here!

This is Bill’s 4️⃣2️⃣nd year growing fall mums!
Bill began his mum journey back in high school as his Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) when he was an ag student back in the 80’s at Rockville High School. He paid his way through UCONN with this crop.
We had a great team helping us and filled the field in 4 hours!
Each pot is set up to receive both water and fertilizer through the irrigation system. These tiny rooted cuttings will grow into our big, beautiful mums for you to enjoy in September and October.

06/08/2026

💙It’s a Boy, Welcome to the world Benny!
On Sunday morning Bazinga had a very easy and smooth delivery. Both Mom and baby are doing well! We love his markings.
You can look forward to meeting Benny this summer when visiting the farm.

06/06/2026

This past week students from the Suffield High School Agriscience program visited the farm as a stop on their field trip. They are in the Sustainable Agriculture class and the Horticulture class.
We gave them a farm tour discussing the Christmas trees, High Tunnel and many field crops. We also discussed the ag business side of things including marketing and pivoting your business to meet a changing world.
We love hosting high school agriculture students, they are the future of Connecticut Agriculture!

06/04/2026

It’s just about time to plant our mums, but before we do that we need to assemble the mum field.
It is at the bottom of a hill so in years that we get heavy rains we have had field erosion under the landscape fabric.
To combat this we plant a cover crop in the field after mum season is over and after we fold up the fabric. In the spring we chop it but leave the root system in the field then relay the fabric. The root system helps hold the soil in place and minimizes erosion, washouts and gullies.