State of the Farm 2026
"Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be." - James Baldwin
How do you hold grief? Let it flower like a swan? - Mary Oliver
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Remember to be happy. Seek out adventure. Be more flexible. Don’t be afraid to let go and dream again. These are the takeaways from my trip to Bali a few months ago. It is the third retreat in three years to far flung places with groups of women most of whom I meet for the first time on the trip. I time these trips either right before the start of, or at the end of the farming season.
First, was Katmandu, Nepal in November 2022, then Yelapa, Mexico in March 2024 and most recently the magical island of Bali, Indonesia, in November 2025. The other women I met surely also return home re-evaluating something deep and profound in their lives. These are brave women, who gift themselves the rare pleasure of stepping away from the lives they love, usually at a moment when something big is about to shift for them- their career, their marriage, perhaps an empty nest, the loss of a loved one or recovery from a serious illness. Of course, women take these trips just for adventure or relaxation, but even then, I suspect they get more than they bargained for. Travel has always given me the gift of perspective.
And this year I needed it. 2025 was a doozy both personally and at the farm. It saw the passage of two seismic events. It was the 10th anniversary of Cross Street Flower Farm, the biggest professional accomplishment of my life to date. But it was a bittersweet season, because we lost my father on April 9th, just as the first field tulips began to bloom.
My Dad, Jack LaVee, was not a farmer, he was a teacher, a salesman, a scratch golfer, a world traveler, a dreamer. He was a commanding presence. He towered over us at six foot one, broad shoulders, strong handshake and a wide smile. You knew if my dad was in the room. He was the life of the party, had a great sense of humor, and a long line of friends throughout his life. He was engaging and down to earth, both smart and silly. He was the guy that could made you feel comfortable at a party or family gathering, unless he didn’t want to, of course, and then you were in trouble.
My parents met in their early twenties when they both teachers at a Catholic school in South Jersey. My mom was raised in Camden, NJ to second generation southern Italians and my dad’s family, French and English roots, was blue collar from neighboring Medford Lakes. My dad learned to golf young, his mom worked at the local country club, he got free lessons and became a caddy as a teenager. Both my parents were the first in their families to finish college, which they did together after they were married.
Lois, my mom, remembers my dad as a tall, skinny, goofy guy with tape holding his glasses together on his nose. He had a very silly sense of humor, and she fell in love with him because he made her laugh.
(lt to rt, Jack and Lois wedding 1970, Jack and Lois in early 1980s, LaVee family in NJ 1982, Nikki at bottom)
They were married at their school’s church with their students in attendance. My Dad loved teaching, but got laid off and was lucky to land a job as a truck dispatcher at the port in Philadelphia to support us.
Jack worked his way up from truck dispatcher and found his true calling as a salesman at Sea-land, and he spent 30 years working there. Interestingly, Sea-Land Services was founded in 1960 by Malcolm McLean, who invented the modern shipping container in the 1950s and revolutionized international cargo shipping, and global trade as we know it today.
With my dad’s outgoing personality and love of people and travel, he excelled at selling space on these shipping boxes and we moved up and down the East Coast each time he was promoted. He had a fraternity of Sea-Land brothers across the globe. Every city we moved to, or visited, he always had at least one Sea Land buddy who welcomed us.
In 1995, when I decided to study abroad in Russia as a junior in college, I remember my dad did not even blink and immediately picked up the phone to call up his Sea-Land friend, Don, based in Moscow. Don picked me up at the Sheremetova airport and welcomed me to his home while I got my bearings in a strange country. That trip to Russia opened the world to me and changed the direction of my life, including catalyzing my interest in farming. But that is another story.
My parents continued their travels after my sister and I left home- their biggest adventure when he took a job as country manager for Maersk Sealand in El Salvador in the late 1990s. I remember they had a driver and guards with machine guns posted at their villa. But they were never scared or intimidated by the country- they loved it and the adventure of living abroad. My mom, as she did in every new place we moved, was quickly hired as a 4th grade teacher at the International School. Scott, my husband, remembers calling my dad on a golf course in San Salvador to ask his permission to marry me. To which my dad quipped, “Good luck to you, Scott, you’ll need it.”
My dad was an endless jokester and teased my sister and I and everyone he loved mercilessly. But I also remember him beaming with pride as he walked me down the aisle on my wedding day, as he leaned in and whispered, “Nikster, you and Scott are going to have a great life together.”
(Dad walking me down the aisle at my wedding 2003)
My Dad was my biggest champion and earliest supporter of Cross Street Flower Farm. He pushed me to scale the farm operations fast, to hire farm labor early, and to move quickly toward mechanical cultivation. He also constantly reminded me to enjoy myself and not to take things so seriously, for which I have a knack.
For the first 5 years of Cross Street, I reinvested all the meager profits back into the farm business, and did not pay myself. My dad knew this, and on my 44th birthday, he gave me a check to buy the old blue 1971 Ford Ranger, because he knew I loved it and wanted to reward my hard work. It was a great investment into the farm business, it turns out. That blue truck is one of the best marketing tools we have on the farm.
(Dad and I at Cross Street Flower Farm in 2019 just after we expanded to 7 acres at Jacobs Farm, and the old blue truck he bought me.)
We almost lost my dad when he was hospitalized in November 2022, a week before my planned trip to Nepal. Beside his hospital bed, I told him I was going to cancel my trip to stay with him as it felt like we might lose him. After several days of being either unconscious or delirious, he sat straight up in that hospital bed and said, “Nikki, do not cancel this trip, I want you to go to Nepal.”
So I went, and joined the flow of Buddhist monks, pilgrims and locals circling the Kora around the Boudanath Stupa, one of the most holy Buddhist temple sites in the world. We lit 108 yak butter candles and hung prayer flags in honor of my dad.
(108 yak candles lit for my dad in Kathmandu, Boudanath Stupa 20220)
After my trip to Nepal, my dad recovered and he lived at home with my mom for his final years. My dad died from an undiagnosed form of dementia, but he never forgot who we were and never lost his sense of humor. I was lucky enough to be there by his side on the day he passed last April.
April is peak tulip season, so I returned to the farm several days later and dove back into the busy Spring season. There was Pick Your Own Tulips and Mother’s Day, followed by peony season, dahlia planting time, and of course, the end of school year rituals for the boys. Truly I didn’t even have a moment to stop until very late one evening in mid-June when I tripped on my front step and face planted onto our front porch. I woke up the next morning with a nasty black eye.
Grief shows up in the oddest of ways, for me that black eye last June was it. As I lay on the ground in the dark, I swear I felt my dad had pushed me, as if to say, “No, Nikster, things are not okay, stop pretending, it’s time to slow down.”
That’s when the wheels fell off, and my team at the farm, Rebecca, my farm manager, Kristen my close friend and Barn Shop manager, and the rest of the crew who had already been carrying the literal weight of the season gently told me to take the week off. I was so embarrassed by my black eye that I barely left the house for a week.
During that week, grief consumed me. I laid on the couch and cried. I also realized that I had spent most of the past two farming seasons with teeth clenched, shoulders up around my ears, with a restlessness and angst that permeated my pores like bad body odor. I had been waiting for some terrible thing to happen, and of course that was not the business, but losing my dad.
The 10th year of Cross Street Flower Farm turned out to be one of our most challenging years on the farm. Tulip prices more than doubled due to weak crops in the Netherlands the past 3 seasons. Despite this, our tulips crop grew strong, but it rained every weekend of scheduled Pick Your Own Tulips reducing our sales by 30% year on year. Our ranunculus crop was just MEH compared to 2024 but thankfully we had a bumper peony crop due to all that Spring rain and cold weather.
The super wet spring, however, led to late planting for our summer annuals and our seedlings were stressed even before getting into the ground. The weather turned HOT and MUGGY and DRY. July and August brought a drought, which led to late and shorter stems on our annual field crops (our zinnias, sunflowers, celosia, etc.) and much higher than normal weed and insect pressure.
Our dahlia crop yielded less than half of what it had in 2024. The trick to growing great dahlias is to get them to grow to a certain size (just about shin high) before they shut down in the mid-July heat waves. Last summer, our dahlias shut down in July smaller than we like, and the weeds took over. It was a major battle against weed and insect pressure for most of July and August.
The high heat did a number on our field crew as well, and we had more early end days last summer due to high temps over 90 than I can ever remember.
But the silver lining of the season, is that even with all those day-to-day farming challenges, I was able to take significant time away from the farm for the first time in 10 years. I went to Norway and Italy with Scott and our 3 teenage boys and booked that solo trip to Bali. And much to my surprise, but really no one else’s- the farm continued on without ME!
Rebecca and the crew finished our dahlia season strong, the drought bringing cloudless fall weekend weather that drove Cut Your Own Dahlias ticket sales way up. Then they planted 100,000 tulips and dug up our 60,000 dahlias – all mostly while I was in Bali.
As I was in sipping a Bintang beer with my new friends on the remote Atuh Beach in Nusa Pedina, one of Bali’s last hidden paradises- enjoying the towering limestone cliffs and dramatic rock formations from a spot on the small, crescent shaped beach. One friend turned and asked me what I would be my greatest takeaway from Bali.
Without skipping a beat, I answered FREEDOM. And that’s when I realized the true medicine of my dad’s passing, and his final gift to me.
Over the last 10 years, I had built the flower farm of my dreams, a paradise that I got to work in and share with my community every day. But somehow over the last few years, I became a prisoner to what I built. Constantly working, micromanaging, worrying, fighting to protect it. I suddenly realized that I now need to loosen my grip and enjoy what I have built. I need to let my incredibly talented team run it so I can step back and lead them.
I am slowly and quite awkwardly beginning to allow myself the grace to embrace the role of managing my team and guiding Cross Street’s path without feeling guilty that I am no longer the one responsible for the day-to-day work. This will free me up to lead our talented team through whatever big challenge I dream up next. I am finally ready to make way for bigger and brighter days ahead in 2026. Thanks, Dad.