Monday, February 29, 2016

sitting down with us to support our educational initiative...




As we head into our tenth year -- the biggest piece of SAIPUA news is the construction of our new giant floriculture studio and the launch next week of our educational initiative...

Workshops, programs, lectures and events will be held at the farm and in the city. Next Wednesday morning a new section of our website will launch introducing the first round of these programs (some of which are free!) Weekend classes at the farm on nettle foraging and tincture making, tomato canning, wild elderberries...and evening classes in the city starting with a host of plant activities in conjunction with the upcoming PLANTLAB! weekend ...


In conjunction with each class, we will be producing an audio segment that will be available to listen to afterwards. So if you live in Ohio or Norway you can still participate by listening to a podcast on the same topic. There are a lot of people out there without access to SAIPUA by virtue of location or money and I want to change that.


Our mission at Saipua has two parts; to effect positive environmental change through our work with flowers and to build community while doing that work...

To raise funds for producing this programming (we need audio equipment, web development, a new teepee for people to stay in on the farm, staffing, lecture fees - etc.) we're designing a series of dinners that will take place at our new warehouse. The first dinner happens this Saturday night amidst PLANTLAB!

Meet Nahvae; one of the best people on the planet, and an incredible chef...


Nahvae has a little coffee window in Crown Heights called Eleventhirtysix. If you ever want to eat the best buckwheat blackberry scone with a strong pour over, stop there. I really can't recommend it enough. Nahvae's approach to food mirrors our work with flowers -- and this Saturday our arts combine to make a plant-astic four course vegetarian sensory experience ... the menu is laced with winter root vegetables, fermented foods, a myriad of mushrooms and micro greens...


I begged Nahvae for a giant dirt cake with gummy worms as the final course, and she was like how about a gastrique braised dehydrated beet with dark chocolate ganache and edible flowers?

I really hope you'll consider eating with us and supporting our vision in this way.

Tickets are $150 and you can reserve your seat at the table by emailing genevieve@saipua.com

(Added allure to entice you to come: a silent auction with some incredible stock plants from Peace Tree Farm...)








Thursday, February 25, 2016

on biorhythms, black mountain college and climate change






I looked at a biorhythm calculator online. I did this because I notice some days I just cannot write or function well and I want an answer as to why this might be. Why I can't be perfectly focused every day. Which is stupid, now that I'm writing it.

Biorhythms supposedly track your intellectual, physical and emotional energies from the moment of your birth.

And lo and behold, ye olde biorhythms are dipping low, all from -50 to -99. Relieved but still restless and unable to focus - and having already been on too many walks outside in the sleet I decide to check the biorhythms of everyone I know.

Eric is in the basement building a new seed-starting shelf. He's expressed that nothing is going right in this project.
So yeah,  I check his rhythms.

I yell down through the laundry shoot: Yep, you're fucked today!

February. The latent period where everything is standing too still before the landslide of spring. Before lambing, before seedlings and the frenetic energy I want always.

Also, I don't understand GoogleDocs.




I've been reading about Black Mountain College, the alternative art project/school that rose out of the ashes of the Bauhaus and the Great Depression and attracted some of the great modernist artists in their youth; DeKooning, Albers, Twombly, John Cage, Merce Cunningham. It's intoxicating to read about the interdisciplinary, holistic, open way that the college approached the creative learning process. 

Anni Albers said the following which resonates with me:

"Wholeness is not a Utopian dream. It is something that we once possessed and now seem largely to have lost, or to say it less pessimistically, seem to have lost were it not for our inner sense of direction which still reminds us that something is wrong here because we know of something that is right.”


Anni and Joseph Albers fled nazi Germany to come teach art at Black Mountain; and this quote is colored with that haunting fact…

But the sentiment of rebelling against institutionalized learning and reinventing how the creative process is drawn out and shared  could not be more relevant today.


I see a lot of people flailing for authentic connection and looking for an opportunity to revisit the uncensored, runaway creativity that we knew as children but are often taught to put away in order to chase successful adult lives. 

I had a visit with Stacy and John from Broadturn Farm last week. They are some of the smartest people I know, and what they do at the farm with education, mentorship and community is really inspiring to me.


(Other business people I look up to are Alice Waters and Andrew Tarlow & Kate Huling -- all businesses grounded in community with THE MOST thoughtful attention to process and quality…  ) 

Anyway, after dinner talking with John about how people can make real environmental impact, things got a bit dark; in a way someone clever might zoom out to look realistically at the history of the planet, and consider it's future. John talked about connectivity. That the way to make a difference now is to really strive for  person to person connection. I'm not sure I understood fully what he meant by this - like when you go see an oracle in a cave you may walk out bewildered and feeling sort of dumb - but with some sentiment that resonates over you. The path you take out of the forest is just slightly different than the path you took in.

Simply put; I wake up every morning and I'm like what can I do different, how can I do more? A few weeks ago I got to my desk and saw the news; it was all about the hottest year on record and donald trump. And I thought what the hell am I going to do today??

I was supposed to be writing my second post on the wedding industry, and I will. And these things are, can be related. There's more here to write, but I have to run out the door to the city today to teach our Hellebore Class on Sunday and work on some Saipua stuff in the flesh…I am very excited for PLANTLAB! next weekend and if you get our newsletter you've started to see some of that programming leak out…Will share full details soon, mark your calendar - it opens in our new space on Friday night March 4th and continues through Sunday the 6th.








Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Wedding Thoughts Part 1

all photos by Cappy Hotchkiss

 In February once we get through fashion week and valentines day; two traditionally difficult money losing business endeavors - we focus on spring wedding season.

We've been talking internally about the wedding industry and what we like about it and what we'd rather see fade into the sunset...

What I love about weddings is the momentum - the process of building a big celebration from ideas, images, ephemeral feelings -- to then the muscle and grit of actually creating it all on the day.

You can imagine that on our team theres a lot of us that are good at the dreaming and scheming, and then a lot of us that are good at the grit. (Imagine Deanna, all dressed up inside the belly of a giant box truck lifting cast iron urns on the day of the wedding...)

I also am - and you may find this hard to believe - a complete sucker for ceremonies. As someone who used to vow against the 'institution' of marriage, I now am the person that purposely avoids mascara on wedding days; and makes sure none of my staff are near me through the ceremony. People change, sometimes for the better.

Obviously I love the flowers at weddings. The big, over the top-ness that we get to create for weddings -- the way flowers become this momentous visual marker for the celebration and remind us of brief, ephemeral quality of life. For most people, a wedding is a once in a lifetime opportunity to engage with flowers in this way.

I love the opportunity to give clients an education on the flower world - and nature by extrapolation. Often times brides are eager to know the names of all the varieties of flowers we design with and now grow ourselves (!) and they are hungry to know why certain things grow in certain places or certain seasons.



Some of my brides over the years have needed explanation on why they can't have flowering branches in Autumn. This provides us an opportunity to explain the sexual processes of trees to them! Next time they are walking through central park and see crabapples or other fruiting branches, they feel excited and educated about WHY...remembering that trees flower in spring, leaf out (to collect energy) photosynthesis in summer and then make fruit in the fall.

So working so intimately with our clients gives me great pleasure to have that dialog about nature and the process of flowers.




I also really love my crew. At my research residency in Mexcio last week with a bunch of strangers (now friends) we talked a lot about our lives, our jobs. Towards the end of the week someone commented; 'you really love your staff, you talk about them constantly!' I do. In so many ways they are like the big family that I don't have; and when we produce events I get to have them all together in one place. 

I have more to write about the wedding thoughts we've been mulling over, including the things I want to change about the wedding industry (bet you can't wait for that) and how brides can feel better about the whole process. The funny thing is that I never thought I'd be in the wedding business, and yet here we are, and now I realize instead of being always critical about the industry, we can make it BETTER.

I also need to fill you in on the rest of my PLANTLAB! research from Oaxaca...


[PHOTOS by Cappy Hotchkiss from Jess and Adam's October wedding at a private estate in Husdon, NY with AAB CREATES, who are some of my favorite people in the wedding industry.]




Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Oaxaca update


In between my reading and note taking on plants and the paranormal; which has morphed now into a general investigation of the sensitivities and communicative properties of plants starting with Goeth and continuing through Jagadis Chandra Bose, Vogel, Backster and Masanobu Fukuoko; I walk around a lot. Mostly looking into peoples gardens and visiting taco and quesadilla street stalls. I embarrassingly don't speak a lick of spanish, but have gotten rather succinct with miming. You should see me try to order an ice cream cone.








This group has become like a my little surrogate family; one without judgement or presupposed notions of creative 'success' ...we're all here to research different topics and be outside of our daily routines in order to expand somehow creatively. It's indulgent in all the right ways, and I've never felt more productive or free.


We did visit the famous Ethnobotanical Garden yesterday; a required tour to get inside was incredibly crowded; if I had more time here I would apply for a special permit to work inside, which apparently is obtainable if you contact the garden a few days prior with a specific project/request.  (Soon, visitors will be able to download an app that leads them through the garden on their own; but there was no definitive timeframe for this.)




The garden was designed by Francisco Toledo; a Oaxacan artist whose work is often politically and socially charged and whose influence is evidenced all over this city and across Mexico. He really affects change, it's awe-inspiring.  When McDonalds tried to move into the Zocolo Square in Oaxaca Toledo campaigned against it...and won. The garden is riddled with beautiful references to the history and often unfortunate exploitation of Mexican people...from the harvesting of cochineal beetles to create the rich red farbric dyes prized by Spanish royalty to the imposition of Catholicism.


This is a geo-thermal greenhouse being built for the orchid collection....


Agave, the plant famously responsible for Mezcal abounds here. It's flowers stand 3-5 meters tall. The Agave is semelparous; it has a single reproductive episode before death. It expounds all its energies and sugars to this giant stalk which can grow up to 10 cm a day.  

This reminded me of a quote I just read by Steiner comrade Ernst Lehrs: "While progressing from leaf to flower the plant undergoes a decisive ebb in its vitality. Compared with the leaf, the flower is a dying organ. This dying, however, is of a kind we may aptly call a 'dying into being.' Life in its mere vegetative form is here seen withdrawing in order that a higher manifestation of the spirit may take place."









Monday, February 8, 2016

beginning thoughts on plants, sensitivity to nature and the occult



I am in Oaxaca for a week participating in this trial run of my friends new residency program ...there are 9 or so of us, artists and craftspeople who are using the time to pursue research project outside of normal their normal environmental constraints - for me thats a busy studio amidst a relocation and renovation, sheep and farm chores, teaching, etc. Its surprising what focus you can have when normal life falls away. And with Mexican coffee, which I am hotly pursuing here.

I have always been interested in the occult from a safe distance. Unfortunately it attracts - by it's nature - a host of unsavory woo-woo types who are eager to latch on to stupid ideas without serious thought or consideration, booking ayahuasca retreats upstate or in Bushwick basements. Zooming out, we can see a wave of 70's era influence in fashion and culture swirling around us. To each, his own; it's not my intention to pass judgement here; it takes all sorts to form a sea change in thought -- and that's what we're after here. (Let the record show: I'm too chicken for hallucinogens.)

A shift in thought patterns, a coaxing to personal responsibility to care for our environment and each other BETTER. That's what I'm interested in, and that I feel has to be explored outside of science. Because science is limited. Historically religion fills in the gaps. But what if instead we loosened our grips on what we know as our human reality and let ourselves fall a little more under the spell of the plant world?

In my reading these first two days I've stumbled upon a quote from Karl Pearson from his 1892 text The Grammar of Science:

"The Laws of nature are relative to the perceptive ability of the observer.."

It's the edge of the cliff, where the laws of science end. This is where things become interesting.
___

HOW DO YOU PARTICIPATE?
Mark your calendar for March 6th - 13th -- we'll be hosting PLANT LAB; a visual plant paradise where you can find your own specimens to nurture at home, AND where you can sign up for some workshops we'll be hosting about plant propagation,  city kitchen gardening, and more. Info on classes coming next week...
___

And to my devotee Lisa, I know this stuff causes you great concern. Imagine us sitting once again in a downtown San Francisco coffee shop. It's still the same me; down to earth, quantitative. But curious. Go with me on this for a while...

Saturday, February 6, 2016

beet yogurt



This is a post about beet yogurt. It's sort of taken my winter by storm.

Theres a lot I don't share with you here because I don't have time, or because it doesn't fit into the context of a larger metaphor-driven chapter laced with melancholy and sarcasm. Don't want to get your hopes up, this is just about yogurt with beets grated into it. But it occurs to me that I could start to share more of the little riches that we enjoy here at Saipua. That I could post more frequently the snapshots of beauty or delicious lunches that happen between the Brooklyn studio and Worlds End. That the blog can serve as an archive; and that I could spend a little more time pulling down all those clippings and debris of life that are caught in the tornado that is saipua.

Ideally this looser, shorter format will help me focus on finishing the saipua book which so many of you loving people are cheering for; thank you for that.



So onward to lunch;

Since I met her, every food idea I have stems from Samin. So let the record show, this was her doing. She was at the farm, and in her way of avoiding her own book project, decided to make use of every last old and moldy vegetable in my larder. [Larder, in this instance referring to the hand-me-down refridgerator that exists down in the basement next to a rack of salted sheep pelts buzzing with the occasional fat cluster fly.]



She procured a few wrinkled red beets. Beets are for childen; they seem always too sweet for me. I prefer bitter vegetables. This might not surprise you. So the beet yogurt she manifested that day was not of particular interest to me. Until I tried it on roasted squash with black tahini dressing. And then on practically everything else I've eaten since.

I especially like it with roasted cauliflower which I did with cumin seeds and chili flakes in cast iron on the grill. Fresh majoram on top with nigella seeds. Also really good with roasted carrots and onions. I make a kale salad with black tahini dressing, put those carrots on top with some sesame oil fried eggs. Beet yogurt.


BEET YOGURT FOR ALL OCCASIONS
1 cup full fat greek yogurt like FAGE or whatever brand you like
1 tsp salt
2 tablespoons of cider vinegar or lemon juice
1 small grated beet
1 clove of grated garlic (optional)

Mix together.
Keep for up to 1 week.


 I'm in George Bush International airport in Houston typing this right now. Feeling really far away from the farm and missing my border collie Ziggy. Spent last week working with her everyday, tied her to my waste with a rope. It takes a while to train a sheep dog.

Where I am going there are a lot of sheep, a lot of wool: Oaxaca for a week long creative research residency called Pocoapoco. I am focusing on plant intelligence and the zodiac.

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

year in review




Try to recall a year chronologically and you may get caught up in the nostaligia of minute details and the proper sequencing of it all. It's taken me weeks and I've not enjoyed the process, and yet I feel it's important to recall certain things of 2015, to etch them into the internet and protect them from the distorting haze of time. Memories are unreliable. Studies show that the more we recall a memory the more we reshape it, adding bits, layering experiences. They call this memory reconsolidation. 


Think of when you've taken long trips away from home; say more than 2 weeks... when you return everything inside your house feels a bit different. It lasts only a few seconds usually; but the feeling is distinct as your brain re-recognizes it surroundings. The interior dimensions of rooms, the layout of all your things on tables and walls -- having not changed at all, having merely sat in the silence and dark of your absense, is mysteriously and minutely different.  


What follows are photos; a non-sequencial recap of what was a very full and productive year for us at Saipua. The photos are real, and I guarantee you that I took them all, was in that place in that moment behind the camera. What I cannot guarantee is the accuracy of all the stories I am about tell. Believe it or not, my chickens, I am an embellisher; and though I pride myself on honesty and describing this life the way it really is, remember that I come from an industry of dreamweavers...so here we go...


2015 started off with my discovery of whipped cream in a can. I used it as an easy snack in-between farm chores (true) but I also told people that I carried it in my jacket pocket and traveled with it, and that I could not leave home without it (false; I often did in fact leave home without a can of whipped cream). Recently, while moving out of our city apartment, I discovered a dozen (actually 3) cans of whipped cream in the refrigerator and was thankful that this trend was over (mostly) because whipped cream in a can is actually not cheap and not particularly good for you. 



It is true that we relinquished our apartment this year, after 8 years at 168 Coffey Street, arguably the most beautiful block in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The top floor of a row house built for sailors in the 1860's (true), it was a bit shabby with its decades-old cheap linoleum kitchen floor and peeling ceiling paint throughout. The plumbing never drained, and when you took a shower you were often standing in 4 inches of water by the time you finished (true). Raccoons often nested in the walls (true). Downstairs there were a handful of tenants (actually only one) who found ways to passive aggressively complain about the thin floors and my very early morning schedule.


I emptied it out a few days after christmas, amidst a whirlwind of Saipua events. With an event company, moving becomes just another task on a todo list. U-Hauls and hands were sent over to handle the load out of almost a decade worth of carefully collected junk. Junk that now sits in various boxes and garbage bags alongside tarps of compost in our new studio. I will miss those mixed up wall colors, and the privacy the apartment afforded me; a sanctuary in what is often a storm of saipua meetings and events when I am in the city. My evenings spent dancing alone or sitting in the window smoking. I was on the phone with my accountant discussing the reality of Saipua's first profitable year (true) when the boys came up for the last load and looked at me and then the bench I was sitting on. When I stood up they carried out the last things from under me. I stayed there two more nights with just a mattress, a coffee set up, my laptop, a burner phone,  and some files on the tremendous wedding we were in the midst of producing. It was two days after Christmas in NYC. I joked with staff that I was living like Peter Quinn, a lone assassin in an empty apartment, but no one got it because none of them watch TV.

I drove home for a quick christmas before the big event and managed to loose my grocery bag somewhere along the way. Down in the kitchen garden I pulled the last carrots and clipped some miraculously unfrozen arugula. We roasted some lamb and made an aioli from our hens eggs. (Let the record state that the picture of carrots is from Thanksgiving, but is generally representative of WorldsEnd-Christmas-Miracle-Carrots...)

2015 was a year where we really started eating off the farm. Where we could create whole meals with farm food - save for olive oil, lemons and wine. And coffee. I've always fantasized about a closed system farm - impossible to achieve but not impossible to strive for.  There is a distinct difference there. 


2015 saw the completion of half of our giant barn. The half on the left there; the half for teaching and events. This mammoth project took so much time and money to complete and I'm still in awe when I go inside and can flip a light switch that is powered by our solar rig. The next phase is to complete the second half; the ground floor will be a giant cheese and teaching kitchen (for our sheeps milk ricotta!) and the upstairs will be lofts for visitors. Currently I am doing everything in my power to raise the money we need for this project; including finishing my book proposal and planning more plant sales. 

We cooked outside a lot. Or I should say Samin cooked outside a lot. We cooked our first lambs for a massive feast in October, and we cooked a small Thanksgiving dinner. Samin says that cooking at Worlds End is her favorite place to cook (true, Samin?) and one day we're going to build the best kitchen together here. When that happens it will be an equation with equal parts; something lost and something gained. I will miss cooking outside, even in the depths of winter. 


We had our first lambing season at Worlds End. Four weeks of checking the pens every four hours through the night sometimes in sleet with headlamps and a toolkit full of pseudo-medical supplies. No lube? You can use dish soap (true). As someone who is thoroughly appalled by anything having to do with birth, I did alright. Animals make it look easy and then you get baby lambs to play with.

I've written this before, but there is nothing in the world to me like snuggling with baby lambs. It is just beyond great. For someone like me who struggles with softness and gentleness it's probably the best therapy for me. I would, not often enough, spend extra time in the pen at morning or afternoon chores sitting against the fence becoming a human mountian for lambs to climb. 



And then some die. Every shepherd tells you this, right from the beginning: that you can expect to loose 10% of your lambs. It doesn't make it easier when it happens. A little black lamb named 'Vitamin B' was that lesson for us. She struggled for weeks and then succumbed to pnemonia and probably a weak heart or a genetic defect. I screamed out loud on this particular sunny May day - the sort of day that looks like baby lambs should not be able to die. Eric carried her little body out into the field and sat with her while I paced back and forth not knowing how to cope. But we did cope. We put her body away in the freezer, we'd harvest her pelt another day. We drank a beer together on the back porch - I think it was 11 in the morning; there were no rules that day. Then we went back to chores. Gwen came to shear the ewes in the afternoon, arriving just as it started to storm. When everything was done we drove to Germantown to a birthday party and danced till we sweat through our clothes. Life went for us, and all around us.


It was definitely a year of a lot of sheep selfies. I can't lie about this because I recently discovered that all the photos I take on my phone are somehow automatically uploaded to the Saipua corporate dropbox. It's a lot of sheep selfies. 


The flower field was in a lot of a ways a complete failure this year, except for the lessons we learned about the importance of a reliable irrigation system. Weather was weird and awful (I think I'm understanding now that farmers will say this about every year) and the pond we pumped water from dried up after a beaver dam that was holding it, broke, and for the first time we missed our beavers. Remember when we were cursing and trapping beaver? The karmic connection there was palpable. Without a water source to irrigate; the field became seriously stunted and between the intensity of our first year with lambs and all the wedding work in the city, the field was all but abandoned by June... left to its own devices. 



Bearded Iris, however, we did see -- it's the perennials that really kept on giving this year; their roots well enough established to handle the lack of drip irrigation and weeding. It was our first year with blooms on the iris and I hoarded nearly every stem for myself. Next year I hope for more stems to sell and we'll add another 200 foot bed of them if we can afford to in the fall. I believe in them like gods.



In 2015 we rebranded or, I should say, branded officially for the first time. Saipua has always been a mash up of hand-drawn logos or someone's (mine) mediocre photoshop skills. This year we went out on a limb and hired Vanessa and Lisa of Ensemble to give us a proper graphic representation. It was really such and exciting, indulgent, and at times painful process, but in the end we have gorgeous new packaging which does justice to my mothers soap-making process and the quality of the ingredients she uses. And we have a website which elegantly honors the hard work of our entire team and community. It still makes my stomach drop every time I open it.










We made a lot of weddings and events all around the world; big and small - from Detroit to France. Even after 10 years of making events, each one brings its own distinct set of lessons. The unusual May heat wave in Detroit reminded me that refrigeration can never be over-planned; the wedding in France continued my education in ordering flowers direct from Alsmeer.

We did lots swimming this year; in oceans, creeks, hot tubs and water parks. I have to remember to cool down all the Saipua fire signs...


We also composted a lot in 2015. Tarps and tarps and tarps of spent floral material and branches were hauled around, stashed in parking lots, storage units, moved to box trucks and eventually deposited at the farm at Worlds End. Collecting compost from our own events and from our colleagues events in the city can be a real exercise in logistics. There were, many times when I felt crazy. When we were storing compost in a storage unit in Brooklyn for a short period (Sadly, true); it felt a little like we were hoarding trash. Which people actually do, and that is a sickness. I don't want to be sick, and I don't want to be stupid; but I still really believe that our compost program is going to work and going to help revolutionize waste in our industry. 




We expanded our core staff in 2015; adding Dan as a full time Operations Manager. Dan is the sort of special, well-adjusted person that makes you believe that, in fact, there may be some people out there who do not have 'issues.' As I've gotten to know him better I'm often surprised by his thoughtfulness and sensitivity. (I can see him cringing now.) Dan is credited with running our new event breakdown/compost initiative - and equally importantly - inventing the peanut butter/blueberry sandwich combination while on assignment in Detroit this summer.



We also snagged this girl - Jessie May Booth - from the UK. First thing we had her do was record our answering machine message so we sound more sophisticated. Jessie has produced events around the world, and lived in Saudi Arabia working for Sheik Mohammed for a year. She led me on a hike in the hills of Scotland; I thought we'd never get back; I snapped that photo before things got weird. Her ruggedness and willingness to dig into any task is balanced with perfect manners and elegant poise. Crazy about her.



We drank a lot of LaCroix in 2015 and joked too frequently about possible sponsorship. (Other sponsors could have been: Ezekial Bread, The Peanut Butter Commission of America, Carhartt, Weleda Skin Food, American Spirits and Miguel [the singer.])

 We played a lot of spades.



The dogs and I took a lot of walks in the woods.
We lit a lot of fires.



We made a plan to pay off our Saipua credit card and travel to Scotland as a reward. We didn't pay off our credit card, but we went anyway.

We stayed in a remote 15th century castle on the ocean. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. One night we walked in the pouring rain down the beach to a deserted cabin where Paul and Linda McCartney once stayed. We lit a fire and sat in the haunted room. It occurred to me sitting there that we needed to do the trip regardless of finances... we need to take the time for ourselves to experience the most beautiful, haunting things. Because it is what our clients expect us to create for them, and you can't give it unless you get it first.


This year was about so much progression for us as a team and as a business. Painful at times, at least for me it has been. It's been a lot of letting go of the old habits of working, sometimes before I know what the new habits are. At many points this year I found myself in a limbo of indecision, and yet big things were happening around me...



Just a few days ago we cleared out our old studio at 147 Van Brunt Street. Our new studio is 4 blocks away in Red Hook. It's five times as big. It's going to allow us to push further in the realm of making the most gorgeous weddings; it will allow us to educate more people about flowers, plants and the occult... It has a proper kitchen and a fireplace. 




We're building a ceramic studio which be home to a rotating artist residency program where ceramists can work for free in exchange for making all the vessels Saipua needs for events and deliveries. Because I'm tired of buying shit made overseas, and we don't have to.

We're building a walk in cooler at which will allow us to store product from our farm and from neighboring Hudson Valley Farms. We have plans to partner with Nobel Tree Coffee (located here in Red Hook) and put in a top notch espresso situation, so when Taylor or Britney or Amy or Mikey come over to buy flowers out of our cooler I can convince them to stay a little while and have a coffee with me.

That's all I really ever want to do. Have coffee with friends and talk about nature. And as big and as crazy as Saipua gets, I have to remember that at its core is a very simple desire to connect and make something beautiful.




In August of 2006 we opened the first saipua shop.
There is a lot to do to finish our new space and realize all the above; but come hell or high water we'll be throwing a giant party in August of 2016 ... though it may be in a construction zone.
That would be very saipua.
Whatever it looks like, I hope you'll join us then.