Howdy!

Thank you for visiting! I wanted to take a few minutes to introduce ourselves and give you a little of our background.

We are Rae and Taylor Goodhart, with two wonderful little ones and 5 acres to call our own.

Back in 2014, before kids, we were sitting on the couch watching a show about tiny homes and Taylor started musing about building one of his own. That lead to a conversation on where to build it, as we currently lived in a small house in Issaquah Highlands with a tiny garage, about 100 square feet of backyard and an HOA that would all never let that happen at home. We weren't sure a tiny home was actually the answer, but we were tired of sitting around on the couch in a dark home and wanted to get back to our roots a bit and have some space.

And so that turned into a quest for land which brought us out to Ellensburg, where we bought about 9 acres of former apple orchard and started to develop it. We put in thousands of feet of irrigation and a small vineyard. The land had productive, delicious raspberries already there which were great for the new bee hives, and we managed to sell a little honey and raspberries and were working toward an idea of a snow cone stand at farmers market with only fresh syrups made from locally grown fruits - sourcing as much as possible from our own land and then to local, small farmers in the area.

This is where we developed the name Gnome Hills, as our Ellensburg property was open but on rolling hills and we hid little gnome statues around the property.

By the end of the summer of 2017, we had 2 little ones and the smoke from the fires meant we couldn't let the kids out in and so one of was us stuck in a tiny RV with the kids, or unable to come out at all and stuck back where we started in a small home with no yard in Issaquah. We decided that living away from the land just wasn't working.

Eventually, in 2018 we found our place with 5 acres of unincorporated Snohomish country, where we could live and manage our farm dreams while still commuting to our day jobs. Only about 2 acres get good sun, the rest is mostly shaded or wooded, but for us it's about right for what we can manage - at least for now!

That first year we moved in early summer, and started with planting what we could that we knew would take a long time to mature and give harvest - fruit trees. That first winter we learned the hard way that the bottom section of our new orchard didn't drain and formed a bog in the winter which is less than idea for growing trees. The next year, we took a ripper to the ground to break up the compact top layer of clay and let the area drain, planting more trees in the upper section of the orchard.

In 2018 we got started on building the vineyard yet again, this being our (mostly Taylor's) third time building a vineyard but yet stay long enough to see any fruit. Late that winter, in early 2019, we planted around 200 bare root grapes in the not quite complete vineyard. Without many vineyards in the area, we decided on selecting a different variety for each of the 8 rows to see what works and what doesn't in the area. That winter, we lost most of about 3 varieties, and so replanted those 3 lines with new varieties in early 2020. We're hopeful to get our first modest crop in 2022.

We also transplanted raspberries from the Ellensburg property before we sold it, and are building up a nice consistent raspberry harvest from early August until the rains set in.

In 2019, I (Rae) grew a few gladioli and in the fall of 2019, my love of flowers turned into a plan to grow a cut flower garden. That winter I read and planned my plot, and as is our fashion, we don't go halfway on these things. Massive spreadsheets of varieties and staggered plantings with work back schedules for seed starting ensued. I ordered seed catalogs and got on mailing lists for seed sales. I had a plan to sow some 8.5k seeds, and I started my project in late winter of 2020. I ordered my seeds and started my first ones in January and early February. And then COVID-19 came, with the first major US cases in Kirkland just 15 miles from our home and farm.

We ended up staying with family in Texas for the first 6 weeks of the pandemic, staying out of the COVID hotbed that was the Seattle area, expecting things to blow over. We did our best to setup an automatic watering system in the greenhouse for the seedlings I had but without any time to measure and adjust things before we left and no one there to care for them for that long, only a small number of plants survived.

Weeks went by, and we finally decided we had to come home in late April. I started over with new seeds and preparing the land, but by then was no where near my original goal. That turned out for the best, since what I didn't plan was how to layout my beds - and I didn't have the space (or time!) to manage at my original planned scale. That summer was full of amazing learnings and beauty, and I was hooked. The flowers and gardening really helped get through that first year of the pandemic, and it was such a blessing to have that to focus on while we were in this new quarantined, virtual and remote world. I made my share of mistakes and I still had so much to learn, but I was eager and hooked on flower farming.

I had read Erin Benzakein's books and heard of the Floret Workshop, but never expected to be able to attend because I just didn't think I'd be able to take the time off from my day job, which is what was funding this whole farm journey. But then, the 2020 workshop was set to be all virtual - meaning I could watch the recordings and do the work on my own time in the evenings and weekends. I debated whether I would still get as much out of it, I wanted to meet other flower farms and make a connection with a community around me. But in the end, I decided it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up, and I signed up for the 2020 Floret Workshop.

Needless to say, I learned a ton from Erin, Jill, the forum moderators and my peers in the workshop. I set about build my plan for the 2021 season, this time incorporating the spacing and a little placement better.

I learned about soil blocking for better root development and went all in, where I thought I had this bright idea to put capillary mats under the soil blocks within a mesh tray over a solid tray to keep the blocks moist. At first, this seemed to work great - I could easily see when the blocks needed water and I didn't have to fight with trying out as much as I had heard from others. But then when I went to transplant, I found that my plants had grown massive networks of roots through the mats, and unfortunately I ended up tearing a ton of roots in order to dislodge them enough to separate them.

I bought an additional racks and actual lights for growing, instead of trying to put the racks in a window and getting leggy plants. I quickly ran out of space on the racks, and bought yet another rack which held me until I could transition some plants out to the greenhouse - but to maximize space I left many plants in the tiny 3/4" blocks too long before sizing them up to larger 2" blocks.

I learned from both the Floret Workshop and Santa Cruz Dahlia's Instagram about pre-starting and taking Dahlia cuttings, so I tried my hand at that too. I also learned about Dahlia seeds, and just had to try that too - I ended up with way more Dahlias than I had space for and had to come up with a new place to put them. This meant I didn't have the bed prepped as soon as I should have, and I left the Dahlias way too long in the greenhouse, some growing nearly 2' tall in tiny 4" pots before being transplanted.

I made lots of other mistakes - I mean I learned a lot - and in the end, I have a beautify and bountiful cut flower garden but am still working on how to market the flowers. This year, I did a few flower subscriptions that were given away as part of a charity auction but mostly used the year to learn what I can really do and build up a plan for how to move forward.

Thank you so much for sticking around and reading this lengthy introduction - I hope to see you soon! You can follow along with our journey on Instagram @gnomehills.

Rae & Taylor Goodhart

Gnome Hills