🌸 Welcome to Amethyst Creek Farm

Thank you for visiting our farm!
AUGUST 21, 2026 - **SHIPPING UPDATE — STILL DIGGING, STILL PACKING & STILL SHIPPING!**
I know many of you are watching the calendar and getting anxious about your orders, so I wanted to give everyone a more detailed update about where we are and how our harvest and shipping process works.
First and most importantly:
**We are still digging. We are still packing. And we are still shipping orders every week.**
I know the season is moving along. I know many of you are anxious to get your irises planted. And I sincerely apologize that fulfillment is taking longer than any of us would like.
Please know that **your order has not been forgotten.**
### What we're doing right now
I am working as quickly as I possibly can to get everyone's irises out the door.
During the week, I work an 8-hour-a-day non-farm job, and then spend another 10+ hours each day working here at Amethyst Creek Farm — digging, cleaning, sorting, labeling, filling orders, packing, and shipping.
Most days right now are **18-hour workdays**, and **every weekend is completely devoted to harvest and fulfillment.**
And we're increasing our harvesting capacity!
**We've hired new seasonal weekend employees to help with harvest, starting this weekend.**
They'll be working with us on weekends, when I can devote my full attention to running a crew and keeping everyone moving efficiently through the fields. During the work week, trying to manage a harvest crew while also working my regular job simply isn't practical.
So **weekends are now our big team harvest push.** The additional crew gives us significantly more digging capacity, and during the week I'll continue working through cleaning, sorting, fulfillment, packing, and shipping.
Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out how to make thousands of irises magically jump out of the ground, clean themselves, find their customer, and climb into a Priority Mail box.
But until I do, **more hands in the field means more irises harvested and more orders moving toward shipping.**
### One important thing about how we harvest
**We do NOT dig one customer's order at a time.**
With thousands of irises growing throughout our fields, it would be incredibly inefficient to walk the farm and dig one complete order, then start over and do the same thing for the next customer.
Instead, **we harvest in batches.**
We move through sections of the fields and dig cultivars needed across many different customer orders at the same time. Those irises are then cleaned, sorted, labeled, and matched to the orders waiting for them.
Right now, we are prioritizing customers in Zones 4, 5, and 6 because their planting windows close earlier as colder weather approaches — but that does NOT mean we aren't harvesting or shipping orders for everyone else.
Remember, we harvest in batches. We take a group of orders we're working to complete, create a combined pull list, and when we dig a cultivar, we pull what is needed for those orders plus other open orders that need that same iris. Those additional rhizomes are cleaned, labeled, and prepped for their other orders as we go.
And if what we've harvested happens to complete an order for someone in Zone 7, 8, or anywhere else, that order is going out the door too! We're not going to leave your irises sitting here simply because another zone currently has a higher priority. Once we have what we need to fulfill your order, we want those rhizomes packed, shipped, and headed to your garden rather than hanging around the farm any longer than necessary.
The zone priority helps us decide where to focus our efforts — it doesn't put everyone else on hold.
I have built a very robust database and system behind the irises that support our online store, but also harvest location, chain of custody from who source stock comes from, inventory counts, and where stock is going to. Which supports these efforts.
This is also why there isn't really a simple answer to:
**"When is my order next?"**
Your order isn't sitting in a numbered line waiting for us to finish the order in front of it.
One order may be almost complete but waiting for a single cultivar we haven't reached in the field yet. Another may become complete because everything it needed happened to be part of the batch we just harvested — and that order can then move forward to packing and shipping.
**Orders become ready as the pieces come together.**
And when I say “we”...
Amethyst Creek Farm truly is a family farm — but I also want to be transparent about what “we” actually looks like.
The day-to-day farm operation here in Idaho is primarily me, with a tremendous amount of support from my parents, who are in their late 70s and 80s. They do countless things that help keep the farm running, but understandably, they are not spending their days in the fields harvesting thousands of irises.
Mark is also part of everything that makes Amethyst Creek Farm possible, but right now he is more than 1,000 miles away running his own business out of state — so there isn't another full-time person here quietly running the other half of the operation.
We are working to grow and scale the farm, and hiring seasonal weekend employees to help with harvest is an important step forward. But I also want to be realistic about where we are today.
There isn't a hidden crew of 20, 30, or 50 employees behind the scenes.
Maybe someday! But 2026 isn't going to be the year we suddenly have a 50-person harvest and fulfillment team.
Right now, we're still a very small family farm that has grown tremendously, and we're working hard to build the people, processes, and infrastructure needed to support that growth.
So when you hear me say “we're still digging, we're still packing, and we're still shipping,” please know that there are real people — and not very many of us — working very long days behind those words. We're adding help, we're getting better, and we're going to keep working our way through this harvest, one batch and one box at a time.
### About your messages AND your phone calls...
I want to say this part carefully, because **I LOVE hearing from you.**
One of my favorite things about Amethyst Creek Farm has always been getting to know our customers. Many of you have been with us for years. I genuinely enjoy your messages, the long emails, hearing what's happening in your gardens and your lives, catching up with you, and those wonderful phone conversations that somehow turn into an hour before either of us realizes it.
**I don't want that to change.**
But right now, during the height of harvest and shipping season, **I simply can't afford the time that kind of engagement takes.**
Between emails, Facebook messages, texts, voicemails, and phone calls, **I AM spending hours every day responding to messages and talking with customers.**
As much as I genuinely enjoy those conversations, right now those hours have to go toward getting your irises out of the ground and into your hands.
So please don't read this as **"Don't contact me."**
It's really:
**"I love hearing from you. I just need you to give me a little grace if I'm quieter than usual right now — and help me protect the hours I need to get everyone's orders shipped."**
If you're checking in specifically to ask **"Where is my order?" or "When will mine ship?"**, please know that because we harvest in batches, I often don't have a more specific answer beyond:
**We're still digging. Your order is still active. And we're working our way to you.**
**You also don't need to worry that you'll miss your shipment.** Once your package has been prepared for shipping, **you will automatically receive an email from our system with your tracking number.** That's your signal that your order has reached the shipping stage and is getting ready to make its way to you.
### There IS something I absolutely want you to tell me!
**Please contact me if there is a time when your order CANNOT arrive.**
If you're going on vacation, will be out of town, have a weather concern, or have another reason we need to avoid a particular shipping week, **I absolutely want to know that.** Those messages help me plan and prevent your beautiful irises from sitting somewhere waiting for you.
Otherwise, if you can hold your general order-status questions — and maybe save those long catch-up messages and phone conversations for me until we get through the thick of shipping season — **that would be an enormous gift to me right now.**
Because every hour I can reclaim from my inbox **and my phone** is another hour I can put toward harvesting, filling orders, packing boxes, and getting your irises on their way.
### And we ARE making progress.
Every single day.
**Irises are being dug.
Orders are becoming complete.
Boxes are leaving the farm.
And we're not stopping.**
With our new weekend harvest crew starting this weekend, I'm hopeful you'll begin seeing that progress accelerate even more.
Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for giving me a little grace when I can't be as responsive as I normally am. And most of all, **thank you for supporting our little farm.**
I know waiting is hard, especially as summer starts slipping away. I genuinely appreciate you hanging in there with us while we work our tails off to get these beautiful irises from our fields to your gardens.
And when shipping season is over, **I absolutely want to hear how your garden is doing.**
**Still digging. Still packing. Still shipping. Still working our way to you.**
— Dr. Laura Reinhold
Amethyst Creek Farm