Sarah and Kenny Macalpine of Two Birds One Stone Farm are beginning to harvest fresh cut flowers near the shores of the Bay of Fundy. Now in their third year, the couple left careers in the fashion and steel industries in southern Ontario to take to the land in Nova Scotia.
They specialize in growing some of the most fragrant and beautiful blooms, seasonally, and organically for weddings, farmers’ markets, bouquet subscriptions, workshops, and wholesale.
Here is their story…
What is Two Birds One Stone Farm?
Two Birds One Stone Farm is a Specialty Cut Flower Farm in Hall’s Harbour, Nova Scotia. From April to December we attend the Wolfville Farmers Market, provide flowers for weddings and events, run a bouquet subscription, host floral design workshops, and sell our flowers wholesale to both florists and to shops.
Where are you located?
Hall’s Harbour, NS
How are you managing during the COVID19?
Our business model is adapting- We are part of WFM2Go, and online service provided by the Wolfville Farmers Markets that allows our customers to order online and pick up orders in and around Halifax and the Annapolis Valley.
We also have been offering free local delivery once a week, and we’re so grateful to live in a community that is passionate about local agriculture and seasonal flowers.
Briefly describe your day to day activities?
Our daily activities are always evolving with the seasons. In the spring we spend lots of time harvesting and processing tulips, sowing seeds, amending soil, tending and planting out transplants.
As the summer begins we start gathering buckets and buckets of flowers early in the morning before it gets too hot, and when the flowers are the most hydrated. We continue to plant flowers until about mid-July, which gives us an abundance until the first frost.
In the fall we start to put the farm to sleep, we dig up several hundred dahlia tubers for winter storage and plant thousands of spring bulbs like tulips, hyacinth, and daffodils.
For the holidays we transition to wreaths and seasonal arrangements.
Are you able to explain the flower season of your business, Spring, Summer, Fall & Winter?
We start off the season strong with tulips coming from our unheated greenhouse in late March, early April, from there we start harvesting ranunculus, and anemones also in the greenhouse. While this is happening, in the field the daffodils are coming into bloom. By early June we’re into columbine, lilac followed by peonies, sweet william, larkspur, snapdragons, sweet peas and poppies.
Summer brings a bounty of zinnias, cosmos, lisianthus, and so many other great annuals that we start from seed each year. Fall finishes off with a pretty big bang; Dahlias are some of the most beautiful flowers we grow, we have over 100 different varieties in production. We also grow interesting grains and seed pods for texture and interest in our bouquets, we grow lots of foliage too, like eucalyptus, fragrant mints, and basil.
How can we buy your flowers?!
Locally- On our website twobirdsonestonefarm.com In HRM- wfm2go.ca
What do you love about the Maritimes?
The people. We moved here from Ontario three years ago and everyone here has been so welcoming! It felt like home right away.
Leave us with a fun fact about your occupation?
I think most people think that our field is an explosion of colour and flowers, and sometimes it can be, but most of the time we pick flowers before they open up all the way so our customers get to enjoy them. They last the absolute longest this way.
How can we contact you?
twobirdsonestonefarm@gmail.com
902-385-8818