A local flower farm is left reeling after a set of storms swept through the area over the weekend and brought there dreams of a bountiful flower harvest in the spring crashing down in a pile of twisted metal and plastic.
Jordon Davis, who owns and runs Jordon’s Flower Farm with her husband Derek, was understandably choked up as she explained the situation to Sapulpa Times on Monday morning.
“It’s been a rough couple of days,” she said.
The Davises had just finished planting their spring crop of flowers in their new “high tunnel”—a tall 120-feet-by-30-feet protective tunnel made of steel with a sturdy plastic tarp covering it.
“In Oklahoma, you plant all the crops in the fall,” Jordon said. “The high tunnel protects from wind, snow, and ice, so your flowers take root during the fall and winter and bloom in time for the spring.”
After finishing the planting on Saturday afternoon, the Davises spent the remainder of the evening with family, relaxing after a hard-working number of weeks getting the tunnel erected and the crops planted.
That night, a round of severe weather made it’s way through Oklahoma, wreaking havoc on the towns in the Oklahoma City Metro area. Residents of Creek County thought they remained largely unscathed, though a power outage did affect a large portion of the area.
The next morning, Jordon got a text from a neighbor that the tunnel had taken some damage, so they came to the farm to investigate. She said she wasn’t prepared for what she found. “It’s a total loss,” she said. The posts at the ends of the tunnels were cemented into the ground, and the manufacturers of the tunnels said it would withstand 60-mph winds.
“Unfortunately, we think had winds of around 80 miles per hour,” Jordon said. “We got here and found it was a total loss. It’s devastating.” The ground was so saturated with the recent rains, that even the cemented posts were uprooted, bringing the entire structure crashing down.
As if the prospect of a destroyed crop wasn’t enough, they still had to figure out how to get the mangled wreckage of a tunnel off of their crops. That’s where the community came in.
The community steps in
Jordon put out an SOS on Facebook. “We are needing strong men to help get the tunnel off our crop!” Members of the Sapulpa Elks, Young Minds, Big Ideas, and the Sapulpa Chamber stepped in to help.
“About 14 people showed up,” Jordon said. “We were not making progress at all, trying to figure out how we were even going to do this, and then they all just showed up and we got the whole thing down and moved in under an hour.”
Jordon said the fact that the community volunteered their time in the rain and mud to help them in a time of need was a welcome respite from the devastating loss the past few hours had been. “The community was a huge help. Such a big help, could not have done it if people hadn’t shown up for us,” she said.
A ray of hope
As we were preparing this story, we got a text message from Jordon Davis, who said “Just checked on the farm! The plants seem to be holding strong, maybe a 50% loss and not a total crop loss,” she said. “It’s a small win, but I’ll take it! Now if we can just get some sunshine to dry things back out and get that new tunnel here quickly!”
If you’re interested in helping Jordon’s Flower Farm recuperate their losses and starting next year strong, you can contribute via the following:
CashApp: $jordonsflowerfarm
Venmo: https://venmo.com/u/JordonsFlowerFarm
PayPal: @jordonsflowerfarm
