A Flower Farm!
My granny lived on a farm in Georgia when I was growing up, and I spent many summers there learning about her farm. She had every farm animal you could think of at one point or another. I learned so much about caring for and loving animals, as well as hard work. Her love of animals has been instilled in me and my family, and continuing her legacy of love and care for the animals that are providing for us will forever be something that I promote. Animals, however, are not the only love that she instilled in me…
My granny was an organic gardener. In addition to all of her animals, she owned a business that sold her produce. Although I never paid any mind to the business side of things, I watched and learned when it came to gardening. My absolute favorite place on her property was her wildflower patch. I would spend my hours there with a pair of scissors, only to use every cup in her kitchen to fill the house with arrangements I had made from the garden. I remember zinnias and baby’s breath…
My home vegetable gardens at our farm have made quite the evolution. My first “garden” here was a small 10x10 patch that I hand dug and fenced with 3 foot tall chicken wire. While everything got off to a great start, our sheep decided it looked too delicious, and not our sheep fencing nor my chicken wire could keep them out. I replanted that garden three times before giving it up to them. The next year I had adequate fencing, and it was a luscious green (albeit small) garden! Every year the garden has grown and improved, but not without setbacks. In the time since we’ve moved to our farm I’ve had three pregnancies, one of which was twins! An addition to our home meant physically moving the garden. This means some summers have been more prevalent than others in regard to growing. Two steps forward, one step back.
One thing, however, has remained constant in the garden. That constant is flowers. Every year when plotting out what to grow and where to fit everything in, I am constantly finding ways to sneak as many flowers as possible in with our fruits and veggies. My “companion” flowers tend to take over the show! As my husband and I would sit and ponder where to go next with our farm, I’m sometimes surprised that flower farming didn’t jump out and hit us in the head- it seems so obvious. Yet once we came to that conclusion, it was like there was no going back. Our next step in expanding the farm was going to be our flower farming business!
