Small business spotlight: Chisholm Creek Flowers continues century-old tradition

Black-and-white barred rock hens peck around a century-old peony field in rural Kechi, clucking softly as they pick at weeds and bugs. Not far away, bright beds of yellow sunflowers, purple zinnias and red celosias sway in a gentle breeze. A cat jumps onto a bird bath, lapping up the morning’s shower.

Debbie Jackson reaches into the henhouse and plucks out four brown eggs. “They’re still warm,” she says.

Welcome to Chisholm Creek Flowers and its sister operation, Sunnydale Spring and Peony Farm. It’s a perfectly bucolic scene – if you ignore the hot, back-bending labor that Jackson and her husband, Randy, put into making it so.

Randy grew up here. The property was bought by his grandfather in 1954, but its association with commercial flower growing goes back more than 100 years. The Jacksons have talked to a woman whose family lived on the property in the late 1880s and early 1990s.

“We know the peonies have been here that long,” Randy said. At one time, he noted, water from several springs on the property was bottled and sold in Wichita.

Randy’s grandfather, an executive with the Coleman Cos., bought the property mainly for hunting and fishing. The land holds a couple of lakes, and Chisholm Creek runs through it. But he kept the peony operation going. As a boy, Randy picked and wrapped the buds in parchment paper for storage in a root cellar, until they were ready for market.

Randy said his grandfather eventually “got tired of bending over” and offered it to his daughter and grandchildren. Randy and Debbie moved a trailer home to the property in 1980 and built their log cabin home four years later. They operate Sunnydale Peony Farm in partnership with Randy’s family while running Chisholm Creek Flowers on their own.

They grow and sell more than 30 varieties of flowers on three acres, with a season stretching “frost to frost,” Randy said.

Their property is a mixture of old and new. There’s a redwood barn whose age Randy doesn’t know and 26 solar panels mounted on the couple’s house that power two walk-in coolers for storage. The Jacksons grow some flowers in well-tended, fenced-in fields and others under plastic-covered “high tunnels.”

Randy is a retired credit officer with the Farm Credit Bank; Debbie works part time as a tax preparer. During the busy season, they generally work on their flowers from 6 a.m. to noon, take a break from the heat, then finish up whatever needs to be done in the evening.

They take orders for flowers by e-mail and telephone and sell them at the Old Town Farmers Market on Saturdays.

“The biggest reaction we get (from customers) is ‘They last all week,’ ” Debbie said.

“That’s because they’re not being cut and shipped from halfway around the world,” Randy added. “We’ve got some very devoted customers – they even come out when it’s raining – and we appreciate that.”

Another outlet for bouquets are the produce baskets sold by their neighbors at Elderslie Farms.

For several years, the Jacksons also sold fresh vegetables. They’ve cut back on that but still sell dozens of eggs each week from Rhode Island red, buff Orpington and other colorful breeds of chickens.

But they’re probably best-known for peonies, a perennial with huge pink, white and red blooms that Randy calls “kind of unique.”

“People like them for weddings,” Debbie said.

The flowers are picked in bud stage, dry wrapped and stored in a cooler. They bloom after their stems are trimmed and placed in water. The season is a short one – lasting from about the last week in April through May – and fans want all they can get.

“The average order is probably six to eight (bouquets of 10),” Randy said.

It’s tough work, and the Jacksons give much credit to their 55 chickens, who not only weed and produce eggs but also fertilize the fields.

“Anytime I can find an animal to do my job, that’s great,” Randy said with a grin.

Still, there’s plenty of work for him and Debbie.

“It helps,” she said, “to like doing it.”

This story was originally published July 9, 2015 at 11:20 AM with the headline "Small business spotlight: Chisholm Creek Flowers continues century-old tradition."