Rose Story Farm blooming in a new direction following back-to-back disasters

So many local businesses are still struggling to come back from our back-to-back disasters more than a year ago, including a longtime favorite in the Carpinteria foothills.

Mother Nature put a bull’s-eye on Rose Story Farm over and over, and over again. The owners could have gone to pot. Instead, they kept their garden boots on the ground and rose from the challenges.

If you have the opportunity for the rare visit these days to this local treasure, you’ll see that the meandering paths slicing through the rose farm give up secrets from the past year and a half.

“This is all mud from the mudflow,” said co-owner Danielle Dall’Armi

Layers of mud still cake the shanks of some of the roses. And below that, ash.

“The fire burned directly right down to the back of our property and actually burned part of the property,” Dallarmi said.

Dall’Armi is the first to admit, she’s no shrinking violet — not this farmer — especially after enduring fire and mud on a historic scale.

“It’s been quite an ordeal. Farming is not for sissies.”

Dall’Armi and her husband and business partner, Bill Hahn, have cultivated the 15 acre garden farm for more than 20 years, growing over 120 varieties of beautiful, fragrant roses that are shipped all over the world.

The bloom was off the rose, thousands of them, shortly after the Thomas Fire broke out. For nine straight days, massive flames threatened to wipe out the entire farm.

“We had a female convict crew that came out here and actually saved the farm,” Dall’Armi explained to reporter Beth Farnsworth. “50 women carrying unbelievable … they each had 50 pounds of water and equipment on their backs and they trudged through here and cut a fire line and literally saved the farm.”

Dall’Armi had no way of knowing that days later another, bigger disaster would strike.

“On January 9 (2018) we had our first mudflow. The mud just came down, washed all of the burned debris, everything, down through the property … it took out about half the roses.”

Nearly every inch of the farm was coated in a blanket of thick mud.

Two and a half months later, another microburst dumped a disastrous amount of rain over the farm.

“And we lost the other half of the farm,” Dall’Armi said. “So, we lost I think about 8,000 roses, had mud all through the buildings and you know, the roads were covered in mud. Most of the gardens had 12″ to 14″ of mud everywhere. We lost a lot of specimen roses, our specimen gardens, where we have roses that are sort of antique and not replaceable. Those are gone.”

The river of mud flowed all the way to Casitas Pass. 18 months later, Mother Nature threw yet another curve ball at them.

Dall’Armi took Farnsworth down a row of rose bushes with petals glistening with dew drops.

“Look at this one! And what time is it? 2:00 in the afternoon?!” Dall’Armi exclaims.

“It’s still wet,” Farnsworth said.

Record rainfall and persistent June gloom have taken a toll on the farm’s rose crop.

“This is the first year in about seven years that we’ve seen this kind of weather,” Dall’Armi explained.

Gray, soggy days off and on for months have delivered an army of snails, fast-growing weeds and a constant state of dampness that, together, are doing a number on the roses.

“It just rots,” Dall’Armi said, as a rose fell apart in her hand.

“How many do you estimate you’re losing, percentage-wise?” Farnsworth asked.

“Oh gosh, 20 percent,” Dall’Armi estimated.

Back at the workshop, the whir of a rotating fan and the snapping of a stapler welcome you inside as three employees wrap and box shipments of roses. The fan is used to dry the wet roses before they can be mailed off.

“Any moisture at all in the bunches of roses will create mildew. They have to be absolutely bone dry before they go in the box,” Dall’Armi explained, adding that there is no problem for local deliveries.

“It can’t affect the price because we have competitors across the country and our price is pretty much standard.”

Arrangements and bouquets are stored inside a walk-in cooler just inches away from the workshop.

Dall’Armi said, overall, the cooler and drying process have added another four hours in labor to flower shipments but no additional costs to customers.

She explained that fire, rain, mud, and June gloom are all part of farming.

“I have a wonderful person that I work with here and she, Patti Keck, said to me, ‘You cannot let this be the end of your story. You cannot let this be the end of Rose Story. You need to write the last chapter of your book and you can’t let the flood, you know, just close you down!’ That was pretty amazing. I have to say thanks to her, we’re still here.”

The popular rose farm is now blooming in a new direction. While the business is closed to the public, Dall’Armi and Hughes decided as a way of giving back, they’re offering special workshops on farming and rose designing. They received more than 1,000 applications from around the country for their inaugural Spring event and hope to offer another this year.

For more information about Rose Story Farm, click here: http://rosestoryfarm.com/