Best Buds Club FAQ

Welcome to Best Buds Club! A flexible bouquet subscription from your buds at Cassiopeia Farm!

Shop here: https://cassiopeiafarmatx.com/shop/

How does it work?

It’s easy! After signing up, we will email you a gift certificate and mail you an info card (for your fridge!) and a punch card for the number of bouquets that you bought. When you are ready for one of your bouquets, visit our Shop, click on Best Buds Club Pre-Order, and order your bouquet/s for our Saturday farm stand pick up (9 am – 2 pm) using your gift certificate number. Pre-orders open on Thursday at 12 noon for the following Saturday pick-up (one week later). Pre-orders close once sold out or once the next round of pre-orders go live. Don’t forget to swing by the farm stand on Saturday to pick up your bouquet. And don’t forget to stamp your cute punch card!

Farm stand address?

9112 Thaxton Rd Austin, TX 78747

Pick up hours?

Saturday, 9 am – 2 pm

Note: it’s possible that the farm stand will be open other days as well, but Best Buds pre-orders/pick ups are only available on Saturdays.

How big are the bouquets?

They will vary in size week to week depending on the flowers that are in season! For example, a bouquet containing ranunculus will be smaller than a bouquet full of zinnias because it costs us more to grow ranunculus than it does zinnias. But, the bouquets will average between 15-20 stems of flowers and foliage and will be ‘medium’ in size.

How long do the flowers typically last?

Again, that varies depending on what flowers are in season. Some blooms have an incredible vase life (ranunculus, sunflowers, marigolds, etc), and some flowers just don’t (dahlias, cosmos, etc). We pride ourselves on our quality and always ensure that our practices allow you to have flowers in your home for as a long as possible. We harvest to order in the cool of the morning and hydrate your flowers in our cooler before we design with them.

What flowers typically align with the seasons? When is your typical season?

While no specific flowers are ever guaranteed, in the Spring we tend to have really ephemeral flowers like anemones, stock, calendula, foxglove and more! Summer is dominated by heat lovers like zinnias, celosia, coreopsis and cosmos in bright and cheerful colors. Fall (our final season) is a celebration of sunflowers, marigolds and dahlias in beautiful golds, rusts, plum and other colors that align with the seasonal shift.

Our typical season is mid-March through late October, with lulls in production in August. As you know, August is incredibly hot so we tend to have few flowers that month. Also, our season starts and ends when the weather decides! So, please be sure to check your email for monthly announcements and reminders throughout the year!

Why did you create BBC?

Sam discovered she really loves designing bouquets and wants to create unique, incredibly seasonal bouquets that won’t ever be replicated again! This is a bouquet subscription for true flower lovers that appreciate and love leaning into seasonality. Some weeks the bouquets might have 10+ varieties of flowers and some weeks might be a celebration of one type of flower! It really will just depend on what looks incredible in the field! Rest assured that each and every bouquet will be designed by Sam with love and intention.

What are your farming practices and sustainability values?

We are so proud to farm as gently as possible! We limit disturbing the soil and thus soil life, we don’t spray anything on our flowers other than fish fertilizer, powdered seaweed, garlic oil and Lactobacillus bacteria (a solution that we make ourselves), and we never use insecticides, fungicides or herbicides (even those approved for organics).

Plastics are ubiquitous in the horticulture world, but we limit our usage as much as possible. All of our bouquet wrapping materials are home compostable-even the paper stickers.

Why is Best Buds structured this way? With advance payment and weekly pre-order?

Best Buds Club is our version of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). A CSA box is usually a weekly order of vegetables/fruit that you typically buy in the off season so that the farm can have money to pay for supplies or labor when they don’t have any goods to sell. By purchasing Best Buds Club in the winter when we don’t have flowers blooming, you are allowing us to keep our amazing employee, Jake, staffed and well paid. THANK YOU!

Once you’ve signed up for Best Buds, we ask for pre-orders because we have technically sold more Best Buds bouquets than we can fulfill in any given week (depending on the flow of the flowers in the field), but it’s less than what we can sell in an entire season. So, if we limited ourselves to what we could provide in a slower week, then most weeks we’d have left over flowers! We appreciate your willingness to pre-order and your understanding that some weeks we may be a bit light on pre-order availability.

Do you deliver Best Buds?

No, Best Buds is only offered for farm stand pick up.

What if I pre-order my bouquet and then forget to pick it up?

I’m so sorry, but if you forget to pick up your bouquet, we will not credit you. We’ve designed Best Buds to be super flexible for you so please only order when you know you have the ability to swing by the farm on Saturday (from 9 am – 2 pm).

Any limitations?

The week of Mother’s Day is typically incredibly busy for us and we likely won’t have the capacity to give as much attention as we’d like to our Best Buds and the mamas (of all types!). So, we won’t be posting any Best Buds bouquets that week. You’re more than welcome to order yourself or a loved one flowers that week, but not through Best Buds. THANK YOU FOR UNDERSTANDING!

Are there any perks to being a Best Bud?

Yes! Best Buds gets the best of the best! All our flowers are great (promise!), but Sam tries to reserve really special flowers for Best Buds-the first cuts, limited stems, etc. Also, all Best Buds can join any of our Field Walks as our guest (with a friend!)-pre-register online with the code on your info card.

Does Best Buds expire?

Yes, you cannot roll your bouquets over into the 2024 season. Best Buds is only for flowers grown in 2023!! You will be notified of seasonal updates, but please be sure to order flowers when the feeling strikes! Don’t save them up!

Do you anticipate selling out of Best Buds subscriptions?

We hope to! Eventually! But since the size of our subscription is on the small side (3, 5, or 10 bouquets) it means we have more subscriptions to sell! Thus, more opportunities for you to join us in the 2023 season as a Best Bud member! We wanted to operate Best Buds from a place of abundance rather than trying to make it feel exclusive! We imagine we’ll still have plenty of room for you to join last minute once the season gets going. 🙂

What happens in the event of a severe weather issue? Or pest/disease problems?

If we are dealing with a severe weather event or pest/disease problem that prevents us from harvesting and selling bouquets we will adjust based on the situation. If it’s just a short lapse in production, we will let you know and resume sales ASAP. If we are dealing with something more serious, then we’ll send you some options via email.

Thanks, bud!