We’re celebrating America’s Independence Day with a little flower show for you! Here are five composite images of flowers on our Renewable Farming family’s home base near Cedar Falls, Iowa.
And at the end of the flower show, there’s a very special Rain Lily flower with a story shared by one of our longtime farming clients.
July 3, 2020 By Jerry Carlson — Our entire family joins in growing flowers. As you’d expect, we have plenty of our own product, WakeUP, handy to enhance the mineralization and robust nutrition of flowers, as well as garden veggies and fruits.
Jeanene has a special gift for flowers, and keeps a sunroom filled with flowering plants all year. In summer, the 20-acre family campus blossoms with a wide array of color. Renewable Farming CEO, Erik, takes lots of photos and helps formulate the foliars.
The third generation — Blake, Terry and Lane — take part in planting and foliar feeding the outside flowers.
Grandpa Jerry and Grandma Jill receive patio plantings and frequent bouquets.
I recall a couple of decades ago, on visiting Alaska’s Delta region in summer, that flowers in that soil were especially brilliant. The local Alaskans attributed it to the abundant mineralization of soil deposited by glaciers. Grinding of glaciers over rock micronized minerals, which washed across the delta.
When we foliar-feed mineral blends enhanced with WakeUP, our campus flowers are also vivid.
Just scroll down to see all five composite images. After those photos, please see a special photo of Rain Lilies sent us by a farmer friend, along with a story of why this flower is so special to farmers.
E-mail us a comment to include with this story
Update July 4, 2020 — Hal Brown’s family farms several thousand acres, but flowers and garden veggies are important too. “I love flowers,” says Hal. “Especially Rain Lilies.” He sent us an example of the family’s Rain Lilies. Here’s the story as told by Hal:
The story of the Rain Lilies that was told to me by my parents is that the original founding father of this family, Christian Braun, came to this country and settled on the Cedar Creek in Lehigh County PA, where he warranted a tract of 200 acres on September 18, 1738.
He was of German origin and spelled his name Braun, which in a couple of generations was changed to Brown. Christian migrated to this country from Alsace (a province of the Holy Roman Empire into the 17th century which remained German in culture.)
One of his descendants in Lehigh County, Solomon Brown, came to our location in Indiana with his wife and younger children. The 160 acres which Solomon settled is now owned by me and my wife Sue.
The Rain Lilies were brought to this country by Christian Braun on the boat from Alsace to Pennsylvania, and then in a later generation, Solomon brought them to our location in 1864. They have been here since. We are now the keepers of them.
They outgrow their pots, so we have to divide them each spring into new pots.
In the picture at right, you can see many buds forming. That means you can expect rain in around 2 or 3 days. The lilies in this picture foretold our recent rain of 2 to 6 inches over a period of a few days.
The picture below shows blossoms that usually appear after a rain has passed. Then they dry up and the green foliage is just there in the pots. When we see new buds forming, the cycle of buds, rain and bloom starts all over again.
They are more accurate than today’s weathermen.
They do this till it gets freezing cold outside, and I bring them indoors to go to sleep and overwinter till next spring.
Ancient farmers had no weathermen except these Rain Lilies to know when to cut hay, etc. Here, we look at them every day to know how to make plans.
Over the years we’ve kept our children supplied with their own Rain Lilies, and they enjoy them also. We have also supplied various people with gifts of them if we think they would enjoy them. We have become the Johnny Appleseeds of Rain Lilies.
Years ago we were fortunate enough to have recovered our lilies after a Palm Sunday tornado completely destroyed all the homes and buildings here. They survived, along with me and my parents hiding in the basement of our home. So these plants are really special to me. Hal Brown
