🌸 Welcome to Amethyst Creek Farm

Thank you for visiting our farm!
9/12/26 - A Saturday Morning Update from Amethyst Creek Farm

I want to take a few minutes this morning to provide a clear update about where we are, what is happening here at the farm, and how to reach me if you have a question or concern about your order.

First and most importantly: we are actively harvesting, processing, packing, and shipping orders every single day. I am shipping six days a week, and today I once again have a crew here helping me harvest and process orders.

We are not closed. We have not stopped working. Orders have not been abandoned. We are working through them every day.

My goal is to have fulfillment substantially COMPLETE by the end of September. There may be a limited number of orders that extend into the first week or so of October, specifically where customers have already communicated with me and have the flexibility in their planting window to allow their orders to come later in the process.

As orders process, you will receive an email from the website regarding your order fulfillment. A second email will follow within approximately 24–48 hours from USPS and will include your tracking information.

We have had some varieties become unavailable. Unfortunately, we were not immune to the VERY same weather-related challenges many of you experienced in your own gardens this year. If an item is unavailable and you requested a refund, refunds are currently taking approximately 7–10 business days to process through our payment processor.

If you accepted substitutions, those substitutions are being provided at double OR MORE of the value of what you originally ordered as a thank you for your flexibility — and this is true for EVERY order.

I also need to clarify something about our Facebook group because there appears to be some confusion.

Amethyst Creek Farm - Irises, Daylilies, and More is ABSOLUTELY my group and is affiliated with Amethyst Creek Farm.

Lee has very graciously been helping me manage activity in the group because I simply cannot be everywhere at once right now. She is doing that out of the kindness of her heart. She is NOT an employee of Amethyst Creek Farm. She does not work on the farm. She is not responsible for harvesting, inventory, order fulfillment, shipping, customer service, or decisions regarding anyone's order.

Please do not put Lee in the position of being expected to answer for me or the farm. She is helping me, and I am extraordinarily grateful to her for doing so.

I also want to be very clear: right now, I am NOT actively on Facebook. I am not regularly monitoring the group, checking comments, reading every post, or keeping up with Facebook messages. I simply do not have the time to do that while we are in active harvest and fulfillment.

So, if you tag me in a post, leave a comment for me, or post a question about your order in the group, please do not assume that I have seen it. Guaranteed — I have not.

Facebook is not the appropriate place to contact me regarding an individual order right now.

If you have a question about YOUR ORDER, please email me directly at Laura@AmethystCreekFarm.com.

Please also understand that right now, a response may take 24–72 hours.

That is not because I am ignoring you.

It is because there is one of me.

Every hour I spend sitting at my desk answering email, responding to Facebook posts and comments, tracking conversations across multiple places, and trying to manage misinformation online is an hour I am not outside harvesting your irises, processing orders, packing boxes, or getting shipments out the door.

At this point in the season, I quite literally have to make that choice every day.

Today, for example, I have a crew here again. My priority while they are here is to work beside them, answer their questions, locate and harvest plants, process what comes out of the field, and keep orders moving. I cannot simultaneously spend hours at my computer monitoring Facebook and responding immediately to every message.

I understand that many of you are anxious about your planting windows. I hear you.

But please don't panic simply because we are now in September.

Bearded iris rhizomes are remarkably resilient. They do not suddenly become unusable because they were not planted by a particular date, and they can be held for extended periods when properly stored in cool, dry, well-ventilated conditions. If weather or circumstances prevent immediate planting when your order arrives, storage is an option rather than assuming the plants are automatically lost.

And I want to reiterate something that has been communicated throughout this season:

Our published shipping season is July through September. We are still within that shipping window.

And I want to be especially clear about this:

At no point have I reneged on my commitment to fulfill these orders.

I have not announced that we are stopping fulfillment. I have not walked away from our obligations. I have not stopped harvesting. I have not stopped packing. I have not stopped shipping.

Quite the opposite. We are actively working every single day to complete these orders.

There was one week during this entire process when I was away from the farm because my husband, Mark, had surgery. That was the week we lost. I came home, and we went right back to work.

Yes, since then I also fell and injured myself. Yes, I hurt. And yes, I am still here.

I am still getting up every morning. I am still working alongside the crew. I am still digging, processing, solving inventory issues, answering customer emails, packing, shipping, and doing everything else required to move these orders through fulfillment.

Most days right now are 16–18 hour workdays.

I am not saying that for sympathy. I am saying it because I want there to be absolutely no misunderstanding about whether I have somehow stopped working on these orders or walked away from what I promised my customers.

I have not.

There is an important difference between an order taking longer than either you or I would have preferred and a business refusing to fulfill an order.

We are behind where I wanted us to be. We are not abandoning our commitments.

I know some people would have preferred their orders earlier. Believe me, I would have preferred that too. There is nothing enjoyable about being behind, and nobody wants these orders completed more than I do.

But a delay is not a refusal to fulfill.

We are fulfilling orders.

Every. Single. Day.

I also want to acknowledge something important: this is our first year selling. Period.

This is the first season Amethyst Creek Farm has ever opened its doors to customers, taken orders, harvested for those orders, packed them, and shipped them across the country. We have never done this before.

And we are learning.

We are learning A LOT.

Some things have gone beautifully. Some things have absolutely not gone according to plan. There are processes that looked great on paper and did not work nearly as well once we were actually in the middle of harvest and fulfillment. There are things I already know I will never do the same way again.

Weather affected us. Inventory losses affected us. And, frankly, there were places where I simply underestimated how much time and physical work it would take to accomplish what we set out to do.

I own that.

There will be a LOT of changes next season based on everything we have learned this year — changes to our processes, our systems, our policies, how we manage orders, how we communicate, and how we structure the season itself.

We will take what worked and build on it. We will take what didn't work and change it.

To those of you who have supported this farm during our very first season — thank you. Thank you for trusting a brand-new little farm with your gardens. Thank you for the kind emails, encouragement, patience, flexibility and grace. Some of you have been unbelievably kind to me and my family through a season that has been much harder than I ever anticipated, and I will remember that.

And for those of you who are dissatisfied with your experience this year: I am sorry.

I am not going to tell you that everything went perfectly, because it didn't. I am not going to pretend that we haven't made mistakes, because we have.

What I can tell you is that none of those mistakes came from a lack of caring, a lack of effort, or an intention not to fulfill what we promised.

We are doing our best. We are learning. And we are going to finish this season.

So, please, if you have a legitimate concern about your order, email me. Give me 24–72 hours to respond. Please do not ask Lee to resolve an order issue, and please do not rely on Facebook speculation or another person's order experience to determine what is happening with yours.

I will answer you.

But I also need the time and space to actually do the physical work required to get thousands of rhizomes out of the ground, processed, packed, and onto trucks.

Right now, getting your orders out the door has to be my priority.

Thank you to everyone who has continued to show patience, kindness, encouragement, and grace while we finish this enormous harvest. It means more than you probably realize.

We are learning. We are improving. We are fulfilling our commitments. And most importantly right now — we are still working.

💜 8/28/26- WEEKLY SHIPPING UPDATE — BIG PROGRESS & LOTS OF BOXES HEADED OUT! 💜
It has been another incredibly busy week at Amethyst Creek Farm, but we are making BIG progress!
📦 Approximately 75 orders are being packed and prepared for shipment this weekend, with lots more right behind them.
Shipping and tracking emails will begin going out this weekend as labels are created. These packages are being prepared for a MONDAY shipping date, so if you receive a tracking email over the weekend and don't immediately see movement, that is completely normal. Your package will enter the mail stream Monday.
🌱 WHERE WE ARE RIGHT NOW
We continue to prioritize our colder growing zones, where planting windows are closing sooner. Harvesting happens in batches across the fields — we dig cultivars needed for many customers at once rather than completing one customer's order at a time.
That process allows us to work efficiently through the fields and continue moving orders through harvest and fulfillment as quickly as possible.
📦 A NOTE ABOUT MULTIPLE ORDERS & COMBINED SHIPPING
We are still making every reasonable effort to combine multiple orders for the same customer when it makes sense and the orders are ready at the same time.
However, at this point in the season, getting completed orders shipped has to take priority over waiting to combine orders.
With planting windows getting shorter, I do not want harvested plants or a completed shipment sitting here unnecessarily while we wait for additional items from another order to become ready.
So, if you placed multiple orders this season, you may receive them in more than one shipment. One order arriving without another does not mean we've overlooked anything — it simply means those items were ready to go.
At this point, as boxes are filled and orders are ready, they're going out the door. We're still combining where we reasonably can, but we're no longer going to delay a ready shipment solely for the purpose of combining it with another order.
💜 A REMINDER ABOUT THIS YEAR'S DELAYS
I want to reiterate that this was not an expected or planned delay.
Amethyst Creek Farm is a very small family farm. On a daily basis, our crew is primarily me and my two elderly parents, and I am also continuing to work my regular job throughout harvest and shipping season.
This year, we were hit with circumstances we simply could not have anticipated, including unexpected surgery needs and a major water/irrigation issue that effectively set our harvest schedule back by weeks.
We have since hired additional weekend help, and it has already made a HUGE difference. We're gaining momentum, and we expect that progress to continue.
🌱 I KNOW YOU'RE WATCHING THE WEATHER — SO AM I
I know it's cooling down. I know some of you are looking at the calendar, watching your planting window and getting genuinely worried.
I understand, and I'm watching it too.
That is exactly why we continue to prioritize our colder growing zones first and why virtually every available hour right now is going toward harvesting and fulfillment.
📣 WEEKLY SHIPPING UPDATES EVERY FRIDAY
To make it easier for everyone to know where we stand, I will post a shipping update every Friday until our shipping season is complete.
You'll be able to find the weekly update in all three places:
💜 The Amethyst Creek Farm Facebook business page
💜 The Amethyst Creek Farm Facebook group
💜 The Amethyst Creek Farm website
If you're wondering how shipping is progressing, please check the Friday update first. I'll keep everyone informed about where we are and our overall progress until the last orders are out the door.
💜 PLEASE HELP ME KEEP SHIPPING
Unless you have a specific circumstance that I need to know about — such as upcoming travel when you will not be home to receive your package — please try to hold off on calling, emailing or Facebook messaging simply to ask when your order will ship.
Returning individual phone calls, emails and Facebook messages can consume hours of administrative time. Right now, those are hours I desperately need to spend harvesting, cleaning, sorting, packing, labeling and shipping.
I am quite literally doing all of those things while also working my regular job.
I'm not sharing that as a complaint. I love this farm and what we're building here. I'm simply asking for a little patience and grace while our very small crew works through an extraordinarily challenging harvest season.
If you do send a message, please understand that my ability to respond right now is extremely limited. A delayed response does not mean your order or your message has been forgotten.
📦 A NOTE ABOUT PREFERRED SHIPPING WINDOWS
When you placed your order, you may have selected a Preferred Shipping Window. The word preferred is intentional.
Your selection helps us understand your desired timing and assists us in planning the harvest and shipping season, but a preferred shipping window is not a guaranteed ship date or guaranteed delivery window.
Our schedule is affected by growing conditions, harvest readiness, weather, inventory availability and the other operational realities that come with harvesting and shipping live plant material. This year's unexpected circumstances have unfortunately pushed us significantly beyond some preferred windows.
A delayed shipment — including an order that has moved beyond its preferred shipping window — does not mean that we are unable to fulfill your order. Your order remains active and in our fulfillment process unless you have been specifically contacted by Amethyst Creek Farm regarding an issue with your order.
If you haven't heard from us about a problem, please assume we're still actively working to fulfill it.
🌱 IF WAITING NO LONGER WORKS FOR YOU
I completely understand that everyone's circumstances are different, and you do have options if the timing no longer works for you.
We can cancel your order and issue an account/store credit, or we can hold your order for spring shipment.
As outlined in our cancellation policy and prominently disclosed during checkout, customer-requested cancellations are not eligible for a monetary refund. Account/store credit will be provided in accordance with our posted policy.
📬 WATCH YOUR EMAIL
Once your shipping label is created, you'll automatically receive an email with your tracking information. There is no need to contact me separately for a tracking number.
If you haven't received a shipping email yet, it simply means we're still working on your order.
💜 AND FINALLY — THANK YOU
I know how excited everyone is to get their irises in the ground, and I know that excitement can turn into anxiety as the temperatures start dropping.
I genuinely appreciate the patience, encouragement and grace so many of you have shown my family and me while we work through this enormous harvest.
Approximately 75 orders headed out Monday is a pretty exciting milestone — and we're nowhere near finished yet. There are LOTS more to follow! 🌱📦💜
Every box out the door gets us closer.
Now, back to digging, cleaning, packing and shipping!
Dr. Laura Reinhold
Amethyst Creek Farm
Take a Little Beauty Home


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