Strawflower Farm - AB

Join us for an afternoon of wreath making using a beautiful palette of locally grown dried blooms and wild harvested willow. 

Josephine, the farmer and artist behind Strawflower Farm, will lead you through the process from start to finish. She will demonstrate how to make a wreath base and then you’ll work with premade and dried bases to create your own long-lasting masterpiece. 

We’ll discuss arranging techniques, sustainable floristry and growing practices, and how to get the most out of your dried arrangements.

When: February 8, 2026 from 1PM to 4PM
Where: Maven and Grace, 9605 82 Ave NW, Edmonton, AB

All tools and materials will be provided, including shears, scissors, wire and a variety of twine or ribbon to finish your wreath with. If you would like garden gloves, please bring them with you.

Maven and Grace will be open during the workshop from 11AM to 5PM. We welcome you to pop in beforehand or stay afterwards for a Sunday browse

Sign up at www.strawflowerfarm.ca

Another weekend, another wonderful market! We will be at in Stony Plain at the Heritage Pavillion on Saturday and Sunday April 5-6. Stop by for lots of spring colours. We will even have a little sale going on strawflower bunches! 💐

We've been a little quiet on events recently, but we have something fun and new to us coming up on March 30th! is hosting a little spring market and celebrating the return of their delicious strawberry matcha 🍓🍵

We'll bring the spring colours with lots of hand-ties dried arrangements. If you want something custom made, send us a DM ahead of time, or just come shop what we've made up! Each design is always unique and 100% locally grown 🌼

is this weekend and they're turning 3! Their birthday bash is fairytale themed, so here are the most whimsical creations I have put together! There will also be a limited number of hair pins, combs and crowns at our booth.

See you at the for our first market as Strawflower Farm!

✨March 8-9 from 12-5 ✨

A West Coast wedding floral comb. Mossy greens and cool blues for the temperate rainforest with a pop of soft pink from the perfect strawflower 💚

Welcome to Strawflower Farm! 🏵️🌸💮

Not only did we decide to rebrand, but it felt like time for a new name too. Busy Bea has been with me not just through farming, but through other creative endeavors like clothes mending and pysanka writing (Ukrainian Easter eggs!) for years before that!

Now that we have a farm of our own it only seems right to give her a name of her own. Something to grow into that better represents the crunchy dried blooms we grow. Maybe taking busy out of our name will help encourage me to find a little more balance! It may seem like a small thing, but it is name of the endeavor I sink every day into. It is important that it feels good and reflects our values

Our username and FB page will stay the same for a couple of days so folks can still find us and hear the news, but those will change over soon too. The new website is live so check that out at strawflowerfarm.ca

Thanks for joining in on a week of looking back at our farming journey so far. It is still just the beginning!

1 day until our rebrand launches and you have until 5PM to enter the draw to win a custom hand tied bouquet! Check out the pinned post in our grid to enter 🏵️

Here's part 3 of our farming journey and a little look at what's in our future. Check out the previous two posts to read the rest of our story!

Last year was a year of getting settled in at the new farm. We planted a bunch of perennials in the front garden since it has relatively little w**d pressure. We also worked up a big garden in the back that was twice what we needed for the season.

One of the most important things we have learned about starting new gardens is that the more time you have, the better. Trying to till in the spring and then plant immediately is a recipe for a w**dy disaster! While we had planned ahead and prepped the new garden in the fall, we took the extra steps of solarizing and thoroughly w**ding the whole area we were planting. This knocked back the quackgrass but it did take about 3 weeks to accomplish.

In the end, the toil was worth it. Garden number 4 is the best one yet! (We started 1 at the Homestead, 1 at Good Note, and 2 at the new farm! Wild!) Productive, low w**d pressure, and generally easy to manage. This was made even easier with the help of my brother's wonderful work setting up an automated drip irrigation system.

Market gardening is always a lot of work, but our goal is to do less - making efficient systems so that there is more time for other things. Camping, canoeing, visiting with friends and enjoying the short, but beautiful summers!

So what's next?

Most things are the same. We are still growing lots o dried flowers for you to enjoy year round.

The plan is to make them easier to access. Bouquets will still be stocked at and we will still be doing lots of markets, but we will also be launching an online shop! At first this will just be for local pick up and delivery, but we plan to ship eventually too

We are also expanding our fresh flower offerings by joining the which is a great producers co-op of Edmonton area growers

Thanks for following our journey! I can't wait to share the rebrand with you tomorrow 🥰

2 days until our rebrand launch and 1 day to enter the draw to win a custom hand tied dried bouquet!🌻

I shared about the first 2 years of farming in the last post and I thought I'd continue the story here!

Collin and I (Josephine) are both from Edmonton and while we loved northern Alberta and the beautiful boreal forest we both missed our families and community and decided we wanted to settle down close to home. We were trying to figure out next steps when Collin had the idea to call up Maryann at who I had met a few years before. In our first ever conversation, she invited me to come live on their farm. Turns out she really meant it and they were just completing finishing touches on a garage loft suite, so we moved in and got to work in 2022!

Maryann and Kevin were so generous with their space and resources. They let us work up a new market garden in their pasture, use their tractor, and hang flowers to dry in their beautiful barn loft. I learned a lot about what it takes to build community from them.

While we could have stayed at Good Note forever, we came across the farm we now call home the next spring in 2023. It had everything we'd been looking for and we couldn't pass it up. It is 6 acres right on the boundary of Blackfoot Recreation area, south of Elk Island National Park. The soil is dark, and sandy and there was already a small, but significant garden and greenhouse to work with.

We gardened at both Good Note and the new farm that summer which was a lot of work only made possible thanks to our friend and farm apprentice, Jacob. He split his time between our garden and helping out with everything else going on at Good Note. We increased the size of our garden pretty organically and I really started to find my voice in dried flowers!

Every time we have moved it has been from places that were hard to say goodbye too. What a gift to be surrounded by people and places that feel like home wherever we go ❤️

3 days until our rebrand is launched and 2 days to enter the draw to win a custom dried flower bouquet! 🌻

The rebranding process feels like a great time to reflect on the how and why we ended up where we are! Many of you may also be new here, so it's a nice opportunity to do a little introduction.

Hi! I'm Josephine, artistic generalist and full time farmer. My partner, Collin, and mom, Susan, are also on the farm and a big part of making this whole thing work, but you'll mostly hear from me as I do a large share of the growing and arranging work.

I started out farming in 2020 through the Apprenticeship Program with my farm mentors at near Grande Prairie, Alberta. They have a big market garden and a whole array of livestock. It was such a great opportunity to learn about all kinds of farming work and get experience with producing at scale, fixing all kinds of farm problems, and sticking it out through any conditions

I enjoyed it so much that in 2021 Collin and I sold the house in Edmonton and moved into a skidshack at the Homestead for a second year of growing that we called "Apprenticeship 2.0". Collin worked off farm, while I worked at the Homestead, but with some extra time and space in their garden to grow crops of my own. That turned out to be flowers! Since we were so busy doing other farm work during the growing season I decided to dry them and the rest is history! Here we are heading into season 5 and we are growing more dried flowers than ever 🏵️🌸💮

They may have started out as a convenient, high value, storable crop, but I soon realized that dried flowers allowed me to have a creative outlet too! Coming from a background studying music at University and exploring a wide variety of pursuits such as writing, drawing, and fibre arts it was something I was missing while focusing on producing food alone. I would always make pretty bunches of kale and chard when prepping for the farmers market, so it was a small jump to arranging flowers.

Come back tomorrow for part 2 of the farming journey: moving home to Edmonton and finding a place of our own!

To celebrate our farm getting a whole new look we are doing a little giveaway! The winner will receive a custom hand tied dried bouquet. These arrangements need no water and can last a couple of years 🏵️💮🌸

You have until 5PM on February 24 to enter. A winner will be announced the next day, which just so happens to be the day we will launch the rebrand!

To enter, like this post and tag friends in the comments for additional entries. To be eligible to enter you must live in the Edmonton area for delivery, or be able to meet me in town or at an upcoming market. Unfortunately we don't ship this type of arrangement yet

Something new is blooming! 🌱

We've been planning a big rebrand for a while now. It's taken a little longer than expected (as good things often do) but we're finally ready to launch. Stay tuned this week for the transformation!

This big vase arrangement was put together for the album release show of the wonderful last fall. The album, Songs to a Wild God, was the soundtrack in the workshop while it was created. What a great way to get inspired ✨

It is nice to be back in the workshop with the wood stove going after some solid time off at the end of December. We will still be away on a little road trip adventure for the last couple weeks of January and then back to regular markets and some cool new things in February 👀 🌱

I had to take advantage of the warm winter light this afternoon to show off some dried bouquets that will be included in a restock for that I'll be dropping off tomorrow (Jan 7). If you could use some locally grown, everlasting blooms to brighten your space in the dark months, stop by their wonderful shop to browse. There will be large and small hand tied arrangements and an assortment of wholesale bunches 💮🌸🏵️