Chatfield Flower Shop News
Flowers are abloom for this week's celebrants - The Durango Herald
Tuesday, March 28, 2017Toledo, Glenn Rodey, Mary Brown and Buff Rogers. HHHThe daffodil blossoms are dancing in the spring breezes for the anniversaries of Paul and Jigger Staby, Tim and Dianne Williams, Blake and Pat Chatfield, Bill and Pam Brown, Vi and John Kessell and Gordon and Diane Calfas Cheesewright. HHHCheck back at durangoherald.com for more Neighbors stories and photos. Click on the word “Neighbors” to make sure you haven’t missed any stories. Neighbors runs in the Sunday print edition of The Durango Herald.Here’s how to reach me: neighbors@durangoherald.com; phone 375-4584; mail items to the Herald; or drop them off at the front desk. Please include contact names and phone numbers for all items. Follow me on Twitter @Ann_Neighbors.I need photos for all Neighbors items, but they must be high-quality, high-resolution photos (at least 1 MB of memory) and include no more than three to five people. I need to know who’s who, left to right, and who to credit with the photo. Candid photos are better than posed, and photos should be submitted as JPG or TIF attachments.
Stretching your dollar on Mother's Day flowers - WTNH Connecticut News (press release)
Wednesday, May 11, 2016Flower food, sugar, aspirin, everyone has their preference to maintain the life of flowers but what actually works?Fleur De lys florist Jennifer Ford-Chatfield helped us put it to the test. We picked out 4 sets of the same flower with plans to treat them differently.“Really what stunts the growth of the flower is the bacteria builds up in the water and essentially seals the pores at the bottom of the flower so they can not effectively drink,” Ford-Chatfield said.Since bacteria is enemy number 1, for the first set we changed the water everyday, the second got the flower food packet, the third we didn’t do anything to and just for fun the last one gets aspirin tablets.We gave them a week, away from sunlight in the newsroom. After just a few days, the results started to show. The aspirin seemed to actually kill our flowers faster, the water turned purple. The “set it and forget it” flowers weren’t far behind. We had arguably two winners, flower food and the flowers for which we changed the water everyday.Ford-Chatfield says changing the water is the key to success, the flower food essentially works to keep your water clean.“It’s a perishable product, the flowers themselves start a decomposition process,” she said. “The idea of the flower food is to keep the water clearer and slow that decomposition down.”So, after our experiment we found stretching your flower dollar further may mean changing the water daily. If that’s too time consuming, the flower food is a go... http://wtnh.com/2016/05/05/stretching-your-dollar-on-mothers-day-flowers/
South Jeffco Crime Blotter: Floral funny business - The Denver Post
Friday, March 18, 2016Boulevard and West Bowles Avenue in the Littleton area. Deputies were unable to find the man.4 Guest punches window.On March 5, deputies responded to a disturbance at a home in the 9000 block of West Chatfield Avenue in the Ken-Caryl area. The homeowners had gotten into an argument with a troublesome guest who left, but returned looking for a ride. Hearing that his friends had left, he became angry and punched a window, causing it to break. He offered to pay for the damage.Advertisement5 Magazine fraud reported. On March 2, a man called deputies from the 6000 block of South Estes Street in the Littleton area to report that his information had been stolen to obtain a magazine subscription. http://www.denverpost.com/blotter/ci_29642120/south-jeffco-crime-blotter-floral-funny-business.html
Upended by COVID-19, a Wayzata florist landed a federal loan. And then the wait started. - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Sunday, January 17, 2021Mattingly started her business nine years ago, and it was coming off its best year — posting $500,000 in sales — when COVID-19 reached Minnesota. Though her shop was allowed to remain open, Mattingly said her event business plummeted as couples postponed weddings and restaurants closed across the state. She applied for a PPP loan in April. “We’ve lost about 50% of our income because of weddings,” said Mattingly, whose shop usually does $150,000 in wedding arrangements each summer. “People aren’t canceling on us, but they are rescheduling, and a lot of that work won’t happen until 2021.” Mattingly’s small shop has just two full-time employees, and she sent them home in late March, shortly after the governor issued his first stay-home order. Flower shops were allowed to remain open for delivery business because they were deemed “critical” to the economy. She expected her retail business to collapse, but the shop stayed surprisingly busy. Mattingly said her online sales tripled as customers called in large orders for birthdays and anniversaries as a substitute for taking a loved one to dinner. But with her employees at home, Mattingly, who is pregnant, and her husband, Julian, had to do all the work. “It’s been a really crazy two months,” said Mattingly, who is due to deliver her first baby in July. “We have been working 12- and 14-hour days every week.” Mattingly wanted to rehire her workers shortly after Mother’s Day, but her PPP application was put on hold when the program ran out of money in mid-April. On April 25, after Congress agreed to make another $310 billion available to small-business owners, Wells Fargo sent her an e-mail telling her the bank would soon submit her paperwork. “These are truly unprecedented times that we know are impacting both you and your business, and we will continue to partner and communicate with you throughout this crisis,” Wells Fargo said in the e-mail. ... https://www.startribune.com/upended-by-covid-19-a-wayzata-florist-landed-a-federal-loan-and-then-the-wait-started/571366132/
Getting married? Designers make case for 'unusual and beautiful' Minnesota-grown flowers - Minneapolis Star Tribune
Monday, August 24, 2020And that doesn’t have to mean settling for common garden-variety blooms picked in someone’s backyard. Minnesota flower farmers are growing increasingly varied and distinctive options for bouquets, boutonnieres and centerpieces. “I make the case for local with every bride, and I include local product in every wedding I do,” said Ashley Fox, Ashley Fox Designs, Woodbury. “As a designer and somebody who cares about the planet, it just feels good to do this.” There’s a misperception that local means rustic, she said. “We want brides to know that local flowers can look modern and innovative — not just a Mason jar full of daisies. We want to show people these flowers are cool.” It’s a message that Debra Prinzing, the Seattle-based author and founder of the “slow flowers” movement, has been spreading for more than a decade. Her books, “Slow Flowers” and “The 50-Mile Bouquet,” celebrate small flower farmers who are struggling to compete as big chain stores buy in bulk from growers all over the globe, driving prices down. ... https://www.startribune.com/getting-married-designers-make-case-for-unusual-and-beautiful-minnesota-grown-flowers/561464922/
Ham Lake couple trust God as they grow family flower farm business - The Catholic Spirit
Monday, August 24, 2020And I had so much energy with thinking of doing really hard stuff to make it happen.”She and Jonah took Benzakein’s online course on flower farming, and dove into researching what would grow well in Minnesota’s climate. “Before we knew it, we’re like, we’re really doing it,” she said.Jonah gives Kristen all the credit for the flower focus. “I never thought I would be a flower farmer — I don’t think many men do think of that,” Jonah said, sitting near the field. He agreed to the online course, “and I was just sort of open with the Lord; ‘Wherever you lead us.’”“Ever since leaving school, I wanted to do something in nature. I love working outside. I’ve been praying along the way” for God’s guidance, he said. “Basically, I want to come home and I want to work from home.”The Carlstroms don’t know any other young farmers, but they’re not alone among Catholic millennials. Jim Ennis, executive director of St. Paul-based Catholic Rural Life, said there are like-minded young Catholics across the United States who are exploring and adopting a rural lifestyle, including small-scale farming. Many are drawn to a slower, family-focused pace of life away from the demands of city living and corporate work.Like the Carlstroms, many don’t have farming backgrounds, Ennis said, and it’s hard work without the guarantee of financial sustainability. But it’s rewarding, he said. Farming is creative work, where people can work in nature, with their hands, alongside family members, for the benefit of their own tables and their community. And even young children can see, understand and participate in their parents’ work, he said.“There’s something very innate in many people’s DNA to connect with God’s creation in a closer way,” he said, “and I think that’s very Catholic and very Christian.”Kristen admits that sometimes she’s thought the idea of turning stay-at-home mom to cut-flower florist is “crazy.” But, “there was a lot of discouragement that came whenever I tried to let it (the idea) go, and a lot of joy that was there when we kept pursuing it,” she said, so they forged ahead.The field is easily accessible from the Carlstroms’ house through a path in the woods. Kristen spends patches of time throughout the day tending its 20, 100-foot rows as she learns to orchestrate timing their harvesting with flowers’ longevity onc... https://thecatholicspirit.com/news/local-news/ham-lake-couple-trust-god-as-they-grow-family-flower-farm-business/
Rosemary-Duff Florist: a landmark business - times-advocate.com
Thursday, March 12, 2020South Broadway and was sold to Bob Socin in 1956.Mr. Socin sold Duff Gardens to Pete, Dolly and Rosemary in 1976. Pete & Dolly Santrach and their two children moved from Minnesota to California in 1956. Pete was a Marine at Camp Lejeune until sent to Camp Pendleton. Pete left the service and over the years worked as an administrator for the Escondido school districts, for groups of doctors and for Baker Enterprises. Pete & Dolly had six more children in California. Four boys and four girls and now 16 grandchildren and one great grandchild.Dolly’s sister Rosemary Gornick learned the techniques of the floral business from a school in Cleveland, Ohio and opened her floral business in her hometown of Chisholm, Minnesota. In 1957 she moved to California (following her sister) and worked for Casa De Las Florist in Del Mar for many years and for Bob Socin and Duff Gardens before starting Rosemary’s Floral on Grand Avenue in downtown Escondido in 1974.Duff Gardens and Rosemary’s Floral merged in 1982 and built the Spanish style building where the business resides today.Aunt Rosemary passed away in 2015. Dolly Santrach passed in 2018.Today the business has four partners: Mary Ann Santrach, Rozanne Reguly, Luanne Csonka and Joanne Santrach. The sisters/nieces bought the business from their parents, Pete and Dolly and aunt, Rosemary in 1988.Mary Ann’s specialty is floral design. She says planning is important. “Ordering for a holiday like Valentine’s Day requires placing an order for roses by mid-January if not earlier to reserve the product desired. That can be up to 2,500 red roses alone!” she said.Rozanne Reguly is the primary decorator for the window displays and a floral designer.The interior of Rosemary-Duff Florist.Luanne Csonka is the managing partner. She says, “It has been said that floral arrangements were the only gift item besides pizza that you could have made and delivered – all in the same day! Our business is unique, sending floral gifts to express one’s emotions from happy occasions like birthdays to condolences for the loss of loved ones.”The sisters credit much of their success to Aunt Rosemary for sharing with them the techniques she leaned from floral school and her years of experience. Remember Bob Socin? I can think of no greater testimony than praise from the former business owner. Mary Ann says that nearly every day Bob will stop by the shop to say hello. Rosemary Duff Florist has designed florals for many weddings, events and special occasions throughout San Diego and designed florals for celebrities Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Streisand and Martha Stewart. “But we most appreciate our lon... https://www.times-advocate.com/articles/rosemary-duff-florist-a-landmark-business/