Flowers add charm to Modesto farmers market, opening Thursday

The 39th season of the Modesto Certified Farmers Market starts Thursday, and Kelley Flower Farm stands ready with its first blooms of spring.

The farm southwest of Salida provides color and fragrance at a market that’s mostly about tasty food. Second cousins Sharon Kelley and Kelley Bowman started the business in 2015 and joined the 16th Street venue the same year.

“We were so well-received at the Modesto farmers market,” Bowman said during a Monday visit by the Modesto Bee. “People like locally grown things, and they’re fresh.”

The market will run from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursdays and Saturdays into late fall. It had long started at 7 a.m., but vendors with longer drives asked for the change, Manager Marie Uber said.

Opening day will bring asparagus, leafy greens, strawberries and other winter-grown produce, along with nuts and dried fruit from the 2016 harvest. Other booths will offer cheese, olive oil, eggs, hot foods, crafts and more.

The cut flowers will start with ranunculus, anemones and peonies, followed by snapdragons, dahlias and other later-season types. Live dahlia plants will be on sale starting in April. Heirloom chrysanthemums await in late fall.

“They sell every single flower they bring,” Uber said.

The flowers grow on half an acre at Beckwith and Jackson roads, amid almond trees owned by the family of Clinton Bowman, who is married to Kelley Bowman.

“Sharon had the idea and I had the dirt,” Bowman said of how the business came about.

The other Kelley — it’s both a first name and a surname in this extended family — lives in Modesto but works full-time on the flowers. Drip lines deliver well water across the beds. The site lacks a greenhouse, so it does not produce during part of winter.

The farm sells single sunflowers for $2 and bunches of various flowers for $5 and up. Customers can arrange purchases via phone or Facebook — or leave money on the honor system at the roadside stand. The partners also do weddings.

They are part of the Modesto area’s German Baptist community, which explains the white bonnets and long dresses they wear on the farm and at the market.

Cut flowers are a tiny part of Northern San Joaquin Valley agriculture, but they do stand out. The Bee this month featured tulips from Dutch Hollow Farms near Riverbank. Last year, it was ranunculus and other types at Wild Blooms Flower Farm in Ripon. The partners at Kelley said all three businesses have worked together to promote this niche.

For more information on Kelley Flower Farm, call or text 209-484-9185 or visit www.facebook.com/kelleyflowerfarm.

This story was originally published March 28, 2017 at 3:14 PM with the headline "Flowers add charm to Modesto farmers market, opening Thursday."