Couple Grows Flower Enterprise in Two States

Des Keller
Progressive Farmer Editor

Arnosky Family Farms may only occupy 80 acres of Texas Hill Country near Blanco, but that doesn't make it any easier to find the two principals, Pam and Frank Arnosky, in the same place at the same time. The couple have only 11 full- and part-time employees despite being well-known growers in Texas' cut-flower industry, and the Arnoskys aren't office chair jockeys.

On a recent dry spring morning, Pam is busy arranging cut flowers in the farm's iconic blue barn, and Frank is moving between watering plants in the greenhouses to mulching field beds in preparation to plant the next crop of marigolds, sunflowers or snapdragons. In all, they grow more than 60 types of flowers.

"I'm the most reluctant retailer you ever met," says Pam, who met Frank when both were graduate students (plant geography and horticulture, respectively) at Texas A&M University more than 30 years ago. Their retail reticence may be one of the reasons that much of the on-farm business is self-pay.

That's right, most customers pick out bouquets or baskets displayed in and around the barn, then leave a check or cash in a locked box on the wall of the barn. "By and large, the system has worked well," Pam says. That's not surprising given that hundreds of area people showed up to help with the "raising" of the blue barn. Since then, it has become something of a cherished community symbol.

BACKING INTO BUSINESS

The couple's business didn't begin this way. Frank had a vision (and previous experience with another company) they would run their own bedding plant operation and sell to wholesalers. After getting married, they moved to the Blanco area, bought 12 acres and went to work. They put up their first greenhouse in 1991.

By the next year, Pam began growing flowers in front of their house -- just for fun. "Pam wanted to do something outside with our young kids at the time," Frank explains. Her efforts proved fruitful. He took some of her cut flowers while making a sales call to an Austin grocery store.

"Where'd you get these?" Frank recalls the store manager asking when he saw the bunches of larkspurs, statice, zinnias, snapdragons and sunflowers, among others. "These are fabulous. I want all of these you can grow," he said.

Within three years, the Arnoskys were providing all the cut flowers for every Central Market grocery store in the Austin area. They created their company labels by 1993 -- Arnosky Family Farms for the retail operation and Texas Specialty Cut Flowers for wholesale.

"We fell backwards into all of this," Frank says. "We started with just bedding plants then added cut flowers, and discontinued bedding plants for a decade."

During that decade, 90% of their business consisted of selling cut flowers to grocery stores and other wholesale buyers. The other 10% of business was from people who simply wanted to buy the flowers they saw at their farm.

"For years, we didn't make that much money," Pam says. "People would trickle into the farm." The steady flow, though, and the possibility of slightly higher margins for flowers sold retail, prompted the Arnoskys to get serious about a full-fledged on-farm store.

SUCCESS FOSTERS EXPANSION

In 2006, more than 200 people showed up to help the family "raise" the blue barn that's become symbolic of the business and this rural area. The Arnoskys added bedding plants back into the farm, along with hanging baskets. They now sell both, along with cut flowers, to retail customers and grocery stores.

Getting flowers to customers at times that are advantageous pricewise is the main reason the Arnoskys grow peonies (a hearty perennial) in far West Texas and on land they own in far-north Minnesota. Between those two locations, they have some of the earliest-blooming peonies, as well as some of the latest available in the season.

In 2023, they harvested their first crop of peonies off the 10 acres in the Davis Mountains of West Texas. Originally, the 57 acres was destined to be their personal getaway. They soon realized those arid, high-altitude soils, coupled with drip irrigation, could produce great peonies.

The couple relies on part-time employees to watch their crops. However, Pam and Frank still travel to both locations for harvest, which involves significant hand labor and the loading of refrigerated trucks.

"The joke," says Pam, "is that we work from the North Star State to the Lone Star State to provide flowers fresh in the Texas Hill Country."

While peonies are popular, they aren't the farm's biggest crop. That title belongs to marigolds, which are immensely popular for use in the Day of The Dead festival, a multiday Hispanic-originated holiday in early November to pay respects to and remember friends and family members who have died.

A TOUGH BUSINESS

The challenges to farming flowers are similar to any other "crop," Frank explains. "We live and die by hailstorms and heat waves. We just happen to farm high-density small acreages with lots of hand labor." Half their workforce consists of longtime H2A workers from Mexico. As with any farm operation, finding labor is a challenge, and this being Texas, water availability is key.

All their flower beds use drip irrigation to minimize water use, one reason the Arnoskys don't try to grow cold-season flowers in the Texas heat. Some crops, such as peonies, are long-lived perennials, but it may take a few years before they are blooming at full capacity. A peony plant can continue producing blooms for more than 15 years.

The Arnoskys would like to hire a full-time farm manager for the Blanco location, but that has been a yearslong search. Their idea of "retirement" is to spend more time in West Texas and northern Minnesota watching over their flower crops. The couple have four "very successful" adult children working nonfarm jobs.

"All worked with us the first 20 years of their lives," Frank says, "but eventually had interests elsewhere. I can't argue with that, but we're still a little sad."

Pam credits their flower business success to Frank for having horticultural expertise and experience. As for what they would grow or how they'd go about marketing it, they learned on the fly.

"We had no money," Pam says, "but we were strong and educated. We'd figure it out. Hold hands and jump, trusting it would all work out."

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