Every November, Andrea O'Halloran gets to watch a field of fluffy, pink and white peonies explode from the red dirt of her family farm. It's a sight she'll never grow tired of. "It's lovely. I really look forward to November each year," she admitted.
"I find it so amazing. Would you believe this paddock was bare at the beginning of September?" That paddock has been nearly 20 years in the making after Ms. O'Halloran's family, the Craigies, decided to take a punt on the cut flower market.
"We planted our first plants about 17 years ago, and it took about three years to get the entire 8,000 plants in," she said, walking around a flower-filled paddock at Heathermoor, her family farm near Devonport, Tasmania. "We've probably been picking for about 14 years."
She said the farm successfully entered the commercial cut flower market once the plants were established, shipping pallets filled with thousands of blooms over to the mainland each year.
But, due in part to the flower's notoriously "short and sweet" season, Ms. O'Halloran said the family had found the market increasingly stressful. "We ended up stepping away from the commercial sales — we found them just a little bit too intensive," she said.
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