Meet OFN superuser and flower farmer Theresa Schumlias

In this issue, we have a quick chat with OFN superuser and flower farmer Theresa Schumlias about her passion for flowers, OFN and her latest ventures.

How did you get started in sustainable flower farming?

My partner, Peter and I grew organic vegetables for over 30 years. But then we started to learn about how unsustainable and unfair cut flowers can be.  Most of the flowers you see are grown and treated with harmful chemicals.  Often they are imported long distances from places with unfair labour practices.  We wanted to be a part of changing this so we have switched from vegetables to blooms.

So that’s how we got started and now we own a flower farm called Garden Party in St. Agatha, Ontario.

What brought you to Open Food Network?

In addition to being a farmer, I am also an academic researcher.  I did my doctoral research on the CSA model (comparing how it operates in Canada versus China).   As a retirement project, I came across this global platform the Open Food Network.  It caught my interest because the mission aligned with a lot of my personal values on food justice and equity. 

I launched the platform here in Canada in 2016 as a national not-for-profit.  I like to think that like the seed savers who came before us, we are code savers. OFN develops and protects digital tools that can help build more sustainable food systems. We don’t sell data.  We license everything we develop as open source (non proprietary).  We are owned by our users and their communities (not investors).  We believe in sharing markets among many,  not building market share for a few.

With covid-19 last year, it was really exciting to help many food producers and farmers markets get online.  I’m excited to continue to use the platform and help other farmers get online!

Tell us a little bit about the Garden Party?

Garden Party is a flower farm that follows organic standards and grows cut flowers for designers, DIY’ers and other flower lovers. We invite folks to pick-your-own flowers on our farm so they can experience the amazing diversity themselves. Here’s our website.

We’ve tried to retire from farming for several years — but we just can’t do it.  We are addicted to watching how Mother Nature works,  and we are addicted to the WOW factor.  Every year we say we are going to quit – but then we see our customers when they return to their car after picking flowers or when designers come to pick up a bulk flower order for a wedding.  They just look at us and say “WOW” –  we get a rush everytime. 

What are you working on now – we heard your leveraging OFN to do pop-up shops?

Yes, in addition to Garden Party and Open Food Network.  I’m also managing the Flower Farmer Plug & Bulb on-line shop.  This pop-up sprung out of The Local Flower Collective which is a group of flower farmers based in SW Ontario who sell to designers in the GTA using the OFN platform.  As flower farmers,  we realized we could get better prices if we pooled our plug (little tiny plants) orders.  That way we would have big enough orders to get better prices.   So we can sell products collectively on OFN,  AND source products collectively on OFN.

The first year we did this,  I had a call from one of our suppliers  in the US.  They are a BIG operation.  They were excited that there was a new large buyer in Canada, and asked if they could come see our operation.   I laughed and explained we were not a big greenhouse at all.  We were a group of 30 very small flower farms –  and some of us didn’t even have a greenhouse.   This is the power of pooling orders in a simple pop-up shop.  This year we purchased $50,000 worth of plugs collectively.  Now there are pop-up plug shops piggy backing on this idea across Canada.   OFN makes it so easy to do that.

So now that I have lots of little plants,  I am also opening a pop-up plant sale specializing in cut flower varieties for people who want to plant their own cutting garden.   You can check it out here (it will open in late April). 

I think we will be doing these pop-ups throughout the season.   It’s exciting for us to be able to create a buzz around specialty/seasonal items and our customers love it!

Next -> Check out our blog post on how you can open a pop up shop on Open Food Network.