‘It’s like a Dr. Seuss book’: How Drew Harrell finds relief from his physician day job in dahlia farming

It’s a sign of the summer season: lime green tents that pop up along a stretch of Rio Grande Boulevard, signaling that Drew Harrell and his three partners are ready to sell their dahlias.

Burque Bee Farms, which they started six years ago, will produce about 2,000 flowers this summer at its North Valley operation, including almost 70 varieties and so many colors that “it’s like a Dr. Seuss book, just every color of the rainbow,” Harrell says.

Harrell, a full-time emergency medicine physician and University of New Mexico professor, is a die-hard dahlia devotee. And he’s not the only one.

“The folks that we see that show up at our stand … are just either coming back all the time and saying ‘I love your flowers,’ or they stop as they’re driving by and go, ‘Oh, my God, what are these?’ Seeing that kind of happiness and cheer in somebody from something that you did, in this day and age, is wonderful.”

The six-year-old operation, which also grows some peonies and sunflowers, is clearly a labor of love for Harrell and his wife, Andrea Breznay Harrell, and John and Lorie Bigelow. They all work in health care, with high-stress jobs that keep them indoors most of the day. Harrell also serves as medical director for the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office, the State Police and New Mexico State Search and Rescue.

In contrast, the flower farm is fairly low-key.

You won’t find Harrell and his partners at farmers markets, nor do they have a website. Marketing for Burque Bee Farms is through word of mouth, an Instagram account that tells fans when a certain dahlia variety is ready for sale and the aforementioned lime tents that attract passing motorists — along with Harrell who calls himself “the hand-waving guy, like that inflatable thing at the store.”

“It’s been a great way to meet people, make something beautiful and put a light, bright spot in the world,” Harrell says.

Why do this when you already have a full-time job?

For all four of us, in the work that we do, it’s inside, climate-controlled, 72 degrees, artificial light. So this is a bookend to what all of our jobs are … high-stress in challenging environments. The flowers are just very restorative. At the end of the day, it’s like, “Wow. We can grow stuff.” It’s a little bit like magic.

Why dahlias?

We tried some cover crops and some row crops, so tomatoes and cucumbers, the normal stuff. Between the vagaries of bindweed, which is evil, and just the inefficiency and inconsistent nature depending on the water year, it’s hard to do row crops if you’re not doing alfalfa or timothy where you’re going to harvest hay. Dahlias grow from tubers. They grow well in nice arid areas. When it’s all in bloom and the field’s got whites and pinks and orange and deep violet, almost black — they are just overwhelmingly pretty.

Tell me about a mistake you’ve made.

We always have some (dahlias) that don’t come up. Two seasons ago, we had a spot in the bed and thought we should put something in there. We got the great idea that we’re going to put in pumpkins and squash after the Fourth of July, past the squash bug worries. Well, they did great, but they took over and, retrospectively, that was really predictable. They went crazy and just grew over everything. We couldn’t get down the rows. We were like dancing through the pumpkin patch.

What has surprised you in your six years of farming?

The most recent past president of the New Mexico Dahlia Society stopped by one day and … he goes, “Oh, my God, you should enter the flower competition at the State Fair.” John and I said, “OK, what do we do?” We were completely clueless. But we cleaned up (on awards), including a best of show. These two guys who just showed up with their bucket of dahlias. We were just tickled to death.

What keeps you up at night?

The world is unsettled right now. That for sure bothers me on multiple different levels. Health care — we have never really recovered from the pandemic. It’s still difficult — patients, available resources. There’s a striking lack of grace in the world that we could try and maybe recover. That keeps me up.

What’s been a difficulty for Burque Bee Farms?

I think the most difficult thing about agriculture in the Southwest, and I know this will not come as a shock, is water. The scarcity of that resource and being good stewards was the hardest thing. We did flood irrigation for the first couple of years, but weed control is really hard. You’re not just watering where your plants grow, you’re watering everything. So we put in a well, and we went to a very controlled drip irrigation system. And we use a no-till system. We never go through and deeply destroy the soil architecture. We just … disturb the top inch or two. I think learning about and making sure that we were thinking about what worked well and what didn’t, looking for new ways to do it better, has been the biggest learning curve.

What has made you successful?

Not taking it too seriously. And I don’t mean that you don’t want to do well. It’s agriculture, and it’s farming on a moderate-size scale. I think being flexible, having a little grace and being comfortable with failure sometimes. Be ready for things to not work out like you expected.