Not three weeks ago, workers at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm were getting ready for the 36th annual tulip festival held at the Woodburn property.
And then came COVID-19.
To ensure the safety of family, friends and visitors, the Iverson family, which owns the farm, decided to cancel the festival and shut down the tulip fields.
Not only is the festival the farm’s biggest money maker, but the farm was now stuck with 9,000 pots of tulips that no one would buy. Family members set up a farm stand, sold a few flowers, and figured they’d be forced to let the rest rot.
The family then received an email from a West Virginia nursery owner who had an idea and wanted to pass it along to nurseries across the country. The idea: Take flowers in the fields to assisted living centers where residents were living in isolation.
Emily Iverson, 21, a family member and Wooden Shoe’s social media coordinator, teamed up with Lexie Criscola, 22, the tulip farm’s marketing coordinator, to make it happen.
They created a ticket order on the farm’s web page where, for $15, people could pay for a pot of tulips to be delivered anonymously to an assisted living center.
So far, the farm has delivered 6,000 pots of tulips to assisted living centers in Mount Angel, Molalla, Canby, Albany and Eugene.
“The farm will never see back the lost revenue from the festival,” said Iverson. “The $15 covers just a bit of the costs it takes to do this delivery. But this is not about money, this is about goodwill.”
Criscola said a person can request tulips be delivered to a specific assisted living center or let farm officials figure out where the tulips would bring a bit of joy.
“We reach out to a center and figure out the protocol for a delivery,” she said. “We make sure everyone in the center gets a pot. We deliver them to the front door, and then step back.”
Iverson estimates all the tulips will be given away within the next couple weeks.
“It makes us feel like we are doing something for the community,” she said.
-- Tom Hallman Jr; thallman@oregonian.com; 503-221-8224; @thallmanjr
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