New flower business blooming in Coeymans

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A new flower business is blooming in Coeymans. Owner Caelin Gordon-Stacey has years of agricultural and business expertise she’s applying at Flax Hollow Farm, which opened in 2023. The farm sells wholesale to florists in the region and Gordon-Stacey has plans for a retail presence in the community too.

“Flowers found me, not the other way around. I’ve always grown flowers in our family garden just as something pretty and beautiful,” said Gordon-Stacey in a recent Community Conversations video interview with Ravena News Herald’s Publisher, Warren Dues. “Then in the beginning of 2023 I started playing around with starting more and more seeds and I thought, you know, I really like flowers. Why don’t I just dive into this?”

Flax Hollow Farm offers a $150 CSA program that allows customers to select up to 6 bouquets a year. The CSA is already sold out for 2024, but Gordon-Stacey also plans to offer pop up flower markets two Fridays a month throughout the growing season beginning in April.

Gordon-Stacey grew up on a farm and actively helped her father grow vegetable crops. She represented the family business at area farmers’ markets. She’s also worked as a fishmonger and in other small organic agriculture businesses.

Trying her hand at something different, she put her experience to work in the plant propagation department at Curaleaf, a medical marijuana production company, with a manufacturing facility in Coeymans. Gordon-Stacey learned corporate work wasn’t for her and left in 2022 to begin her own business.

“I knew I wanted to do something that I could have more control over and that would directly impact my community and felt like I was giving back into that,” said Gordon-Stacey.

Flax Hollow Farm is scaling up quickly. In 2023 Gordon-Stacey grew 43 varieties of flowers. Last year’s CSA funds helped her buy new equipment needed to expand the business. Her long-term vision continues to include being an economic driver for southern Albany County.

“I have a lot of things that are working in the back of my head,” she said. “I would love to continue to see our little Town of Coeymans flourish and become a destination, a place people want to visit. That’s something I really hope I can help bring over the next five years.”

Learn more about Flax Hollow Farm on their website https://www.flaxhollowfarm.com/ or follow them on Facebook or Instagram.

Rebecca Flach
Author: Rebecca Flach

I'm passionate about Ravena Coeymans Selkirk and believe these communities are poised for great things. I'm a founding member of the RCS Community Business Association. I also manage Hope Full Life Center Inc., a local charity. I'm a mom, avid gardener and audiobook fanatic.