On this episode, I sit down with Ron and Margi Illingworth of Noth Pole Peonies, a commercial peony farm that has been successfully growing and exporting peonies for twenty years.
Their story is one that starts by the couple retiring and moving to a property where they wanted to grow vegetables. Soon, a friend and colleague inspired them to plant peonies. After a couple years they changed their focus and invested their time, resources and energy into growing peonies. Why? Why Peonies? Because it turns out Alaska can grow peonies during June July and August when the rest of the world cannot. There are no peonies to be found in the world except in Alaska. This presented a huge opportunity for Illingworths to grow and export peonies to lower 48 states and overseas.
The rest as they say is history! They still grow vegetables but for their own consumption. But all the fields and acreage is planted with peony plants with annual demand for their stems in 45-55 thousand stems. They plant by color and the vision of fields of peonies all in grouped by colors is a sight to behold.
This is a family business, Ron and Margi’s daughter, son-in-law and grandkids are all engaged in this enterprise. It’s a wonderful story of focused farming, niche marketing and perfecting distribution and shipments of a very perishable commodity. Thousands of peony stems are harvested at a bud stage, so they can get to their destination and still have a vase life of 10-14 days. It’s a marvel! Join me as I have this very engaging conversation with Ron and Margi. Oh! Did I mentions they are in their 80’s? They are energetic, gregarious, love hanging around their grandkids and young people because as Ron says’ ” they make him feel young”. They have built a community of supporters, and enjoy giving back to the area residents, especially doing something special for the Eielson AFB personnel and their families.
Join me as we sit and chat about their journey, their challenges, and how the next generation is bringing modern systems into the peony farming.