Meet your farmer

Dirt between my toes just feels right.

Hi, I’m Laura. I have a crazy dream to not just grow all the beautiful flowers, but to sell them. Because one day I thought to myself, I love growing stuff so much and I wish I could do it all the time. What if I could turn this passion into more than a hobby?

How we got here

My husband and I both grew up in agriculture, and when we got the chance to buy acreage with a home site we jumped at it. We want our kids to grow up with the freedom to get a little lost in the woods like we did. We intend to fence the property and raise a few cows (maybe a horse or two, too) once we finish building our house. We did not intend to be crop farmers, but that changed in the summer of 2022 when we got a rototiller implement for the tractor and I tilled up a patch of fallow grass seed field for a giant vegetable garden. Blame it on my roots, but something broke loose in me looking at that beautiful bare dirt full of possibilities, and I was immediately scheming on what I could grow in volume. I started researching vegetable CSAs and started so many vegetables from seed in 2023. Then I stumbled onto flower farming. I didn’t know there were locally grown flowers! I hadn’t really thought about it before. I’ve always wanted to grow my own bouquets, not buy them. Given my lifelong love affair with growing flowers, it felt like the perfect fit. 2024 was spent learning how to grow and harvest cut flowers, and expanding the flower field. The focus of 2025 will be marketing, and learning how to grow cut flowers in bulk. There is a lot to learn!

Farming Practices

  • I think sustainable agriculture is the way to go. I firmly believe family farmers are some of the best stewards of the earth. They are invested in making sure the land will continue to be productive for generations to come.
  • The ground I farm is heavy clay. That means it holds water and nutrients well, but I have to be careful with compaction and drainage. I currently till for weed management and to incorporate compost and organic matter for drainage and soil health. The goal is to eventually move to low or no-till.
  • For pest and disease management, I take a multi-faceted approach. I rely on beneficial insects, hand picking (cucumber beetles!), and keeping plants healthy to begin with.
  • Spray: I imagine I will need to use occasional appropriately-timed applications of chemicals. If I do, I will choose and time them so that you can feel as safe about burrowing your face in the flowers as I feel about my kids doing the same. So far this year, I have applied copper and sulfur fungicides to my roses and fruit trees while they were dormant. Flowers are meant for smelling. It’s a little scary to think about what might be on the flowers in the grocery store flown in from other countries.  

Slow Flower Movement

That brings me to the next reason I’m excited to farm flowers. Most flowers used in the US aren’t grown domestically. About 80% are imported – mostly from Columbia (read more here). Thankfully, the amount of flowers grown domestically is growing – the 2022 census found that the number of acres in open field cutflower production had grown 33% since 2017 (read more here). I’m excited to be a part of that movement. To read more about the local flower movement, check out the Slow Flowers Manifesto.

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