Our Big Dreams

Mothers Day

Sat, 02 May 2026 01:12:51 GMT

Happy Mothers Day!

To all the moms out there working hard to do the best for everyone in thier family and putting themselves last. I hope you are able to find some peace on your special day and soak in all the love from those you value you most. I also hope someone goes to Bailey's Produce and picks you up a special Mothers Day Bouquet from me, to celebrate you.

Baby Bunnies for Sale!

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 17:02:23 GMT

New baby New Zealand Rabbits coming soon!

We have four does pregnant and due next week!

These rabbits can be house pets and litter trained similar to a house cat if you like.

We raise our rabbits for the amazing garden compost they produce! Yes, their poop is a near perfectly balanced cold fertilizer which means it can be directly applied to your garden without having to be composted.

Please reach out if you are interested in purchasing a rabbit.

-Annicka

Welcome Home

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 22:17:47 GMT

So Happy to be Back in Pensacola, the place we call home.

While we sincerely miss our customers and market friends we made in Memphis, TN. We are so grateful for the bonds we created with like minded customers and friends who appreciate hard work, organic farming and beautiful flowers! However, we are beyond ecstatic to be back in Pensacola. This is where we started our family and the place we truly call home. Pensacola is where we want to put down roots literally and figuratively. We love farming, and we truly miss the farm we started in Tennessee (zone 7b), but we learned a lot throughout the process and know that we can still grow all our favorite flowers and veggies on a smaller plot of land here in Pensacola (zone 9a). We have a long way to go, since all the infrastructure we created for our farm remains in Tennessee, but we will not be deterred. This new space just means a blank slate and something to be inspired by. I truly spend my days and nights dreaming about our future growing area and have come up with many design scenarios. I'll tell you one thing, I'm going to utilize every inch of ground we've got to maximize our growing potential. I cant wait to incorporate fruit trees, roses, perennial beds, evergreens and more! I also plan to interplant my cut flowers throughout our landscape, not just in the flower farm portion of our property.

It is my hope that we will be able to spend this winter building and preparing our flower beds for production by next summer! I'd love to be able to offer spring flowers but I just don't see us being able get everything in place in time for that. We are two zones warmer than when we were in Tennessee, so that means cool flowers here would really need to be planted this fall. Trust me, I am itching to get seeds in dirt! One major bonus to our new location is that I wont have to dig up dahlia tubers if I don't want to! What a game changer! Thankfully I kept most of my dahlia tubers, and I have been doing my darndest to get those babies in the ground! I still have four tubs of them that really need to get in the dirt soon, so hopefully I will find a way. So far I have planted some in containers, some in our little herb bed. I recently built a flower bed to go by our chicken coop where I was able to stash a full container of Cafe au lait Dahlia tubers! Cant wait to see the beauty they bring to that space!

As we know more about our plans, and have products to sell I will do my darndest to keep you posted here, but in the mean time please keep up to date through our social media and Youtube channel. Wishing you all the best and keep playing in the Dirt!

-Annicka

Memphis Flower Collective

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 21:24:57 GMT

Calling all Florists in the greater Memphis area!

Flower farming in our community and frankly the country, is taking root!

There's a healthy number of flower farmers in the Memphis area dedicated to growing quality flowers everyone will love. We are currently working together to create a one stop shop for all florists to gain access to our flowers through the Memphis Flower Collective. This week we will meet to discuss what florists want and what we as flower farmers can provide. We also plan to coordinate our weekly flower delivery schedule and determine the best pick up time and location. If you are looking for a local grower feel free to reach out to our public Facebook page at Memphis Area Flower Farmers or shoot me an email through my website.

We are all enthusiastically planning and planting our 2023 flowers for you, please follow along and seek out all of our individual farm pages. Most of us are also selling flowers at different local markets in the area and offer fun workshops and bouquet bars throughout the season. If you are interested in on farm visits to pick your own flowers, photo opportunities, or farm fresh food please visit Our Services to find out more.

If you are interested in getting weekly blooms for five weeks this spring and throughout the season please go to our Store and secure your own bouquet subscription! Spring subscriptions are on sale now!

Thank you for continuing to support our small family farm, and local growers in the area.

Wishing you the very best,

Annicka

Emmie Treats

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 20:53:06 GMT

Let's get baking!

I don't know about you, but I love baking in the winter! This past winter has been no exception. We've tried lots of new yummy recipes to include pretzels, bagels, doughnuts, cookies, and cakes! We routinely watch Kids Baking Championship to get new fun ideas and the show inspired our littles to start their own baking business! We are planning to focus on dog treats mainly because we love our goldendoodle pup Emmie, and we like the idea of her being our taste tester.

So far we have perfected some really yummy doggie biscuits and donuts! Next step will be to create a delicious dog cookie with pup friendly "frostings." We are adamant about selecting dog friendly ingredients with little to no sugar included! Sugar is not great for any of us and really not necessary for dogs. We plan to include lots of dog favorites such as bacon, chicken, pork, deer and rabbit. We specialize in making our own bone broths through processing our own meat here on the farm so any liquids in recipes will be substituted with broth. We also take pride in using our own farm raised eggs in all our products. Your pup deserves a quality treat! Because these treats are made fresh with no preservatives, we encourage all our customers refrigerate their pup treats to ensure a longer shelf life.

Thank you for following along and supporting our small family business. We plan to primarily sell our dog treats at local markets but we may choose to offer some online as well so please stay tuned to our social media or check our store regularly for availability.

Wishing you the Very Best,

Annicka

BUNNIES!!!!

Fri, 20 Jan 2023 19:40:42 GMT

Coming soon!!

We are so excited to announce our next venture! We are getting rabbits to help out on the farm in many ways! As a flower farmer I am stoked to utilize their amazing bunny berries in my flower beds, garden beds, and compost pile! We will also be raising these little fur balls for their amazing meat which is comparable to chicken. YUM! If I am being honest, it will not be easy processing these adorable animals but I feel really good knowing how our food has been raised, and how much love they received during their life from our family.

We are researching legal requirements for offering rabbit meat products to the public and continue to find more ways to serve our local community. This year, we will be making and selling dog treats in many forms. Rabbit will likely be a main ingredient in some of the tasty treats we create. It will likely take a year or two before we have compost to sell to the community but that is a long term goal of ours.

Please continue to follow along through our social media and blog posts to see what we are up to. We are joyfully anticipating this coming season and cant wait to see you!

Very Best,

Annicka

Cool Flowers

Tue, 17 Jan 2023 22:56:01 GMT

Starting my seeds for spring 2023!

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Giving Thanks

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 20:45:23 GMT

Grateful for Family

Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on all we have to be thankful for. This year, more than most, I was able to really live in the moment and allow myself to be overcome with the joy family brings. After a year of hard work trying something new and starting our business, nothing could have filled my cup more than a wholesome week of family fun! I am so grateful for everything our farm offers us and those we love. We were able to hone our shooting skills, hunt deer, play games, and make smores around the fire. Kids got to meet cousins for the first time and enjoyed playing from sun up to way past bedtime every day and the adults really enjoyed the opportunity to reconnect after years.

I also really enjoyed the opportunity to take family photos for my cousins and their families. Photography has always been a passionate hobby of mine and I am inspired by the many photo opportunities our farm offers. This is why I am happy to announce the expansion of our farm services! We will now offer one hour family photo sessions on the farm. Please contact us to book your next family photo shoot! We plan to offer these services all year round so book your session soon.

I am so excited for this opportunity to serve our local community. When you do something you love, you'll never work a day in your life. I really hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday and I really look forward to capturing beautiful moments when you visit the farm with your families.

Eternally grateful,

Annicka

It's Fall on the Farm!

Sat, 08 Oct 2022 15:38:03 GMT

Market season is over

It's crazy just how fast this season went, but I will tell you I am excited for the change. I am thoroughly enjoying the cooler weather and with that, the flowers that love this time of year. After growing Lisianthus I thought I couldn't love another flower more, but as my Dahilas started to bloom I realized, I don't have to pick my "favorite." I honestly fall in love with every flower in bloom so my goal is to always have some flowers in bloom throughout all the seasons!

This first growing season was full of lots of firsts for me, I learned a ton and have plans to make lots of changes next year! First of all, I learned I have a lot more growing space than I thought because not everything requires irrigation and landscape fabric. The first few years I'm sure are going to be learning experiences but I am excited to expand our growing area into our back two acers! Mid-summer we decided to see if we could get sunflowers to thrive back there and right now I am swimming in beautiful sunnies! According to germination time I thought our sunflowers would be in full bloom around Halloween but they were really at their peak in the last week of September and into the first week in October.

I'll tell you, it's really tough ending our market season with so many flowers still blooming! It breaks my heart a little to not gather beautiful flowers for our amazing customers but the fields need time to germinate their cover crop and before then I still have to gather seed, transplant all my perennials into the landscape and pull up all the landscape fabric and irrigation! This season is proving to be just as busy as spring. Along with all of our field prep, I am converting our garden beds into tiny greenhouses! I am so excited for this! We will overwinter all the herbs we planted this year and grow lettuces and cold loving veggies but best of all we are going to grow all our spring flowers in our garden beds!! Yes, I'm talking specialty narcissus, ranunculus, anemone, snapdragons and more! My plan is for the mini-green houses to create an environment for these flowers that will protect them in winter and have them blooming earlier than any other flowers in the area! So, while I am sad about pulling perfectly good flowers out of the ground early to prep my fields, I am getting so excited for spring!

Come spring I will not only be selling spring bouquet subscriptions, I will have eucalyptus plants for sale and any extra flowering plugs I don't have space for. I will also be selling seeds and mondo grass plugs so please keep checking in to visit our store or follow our social media posts.

There is so much in store for this flower farm, I hope you give us a call, schedule a visit and come experience it for yourself. Wishing you all a beautiful fall season full of family time and special moments.

Swimming in Flowers

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 15:16:28 GMT

Lisianthus, and Zinnias and Sunflowers oh my!

I first just want to thank the Lord for getting us to this point! We haven't even lived in this home for a year and we already have a functioning flower farm! Who knew we could get so much accomplished in such a short amount of time? Now I will be the first to admit, our farm is not nearly where I would like it to be. We have grass and weeds growing up through a lot of our fabric holes so the weeding is a full time job on it's own. Thankfully my children have learned the value of a hard days work and enjoy a few bucks in return. I would also love to have a lot more flowers but the amount of time, effort and personal sweat it takes to have just what we've got is enough to fill any ones plate, not to mention the fact that I also have a full time job. I definitely tackled this project head on and would not be where we are today if I hadn't. I am enjoying so much of it and cannot turn off my dreams of adding to our inventory! I'd really like to invest more in perennials and pollinator's to keep our bees and butterfly's happy, and honestly, hone in on which annuals do very well for us and try to narrow down our focus to specific flowers. One flower I know we'll keep growing is our Lisianthus, they are beautiful, sturdy, hardy and not attracting ANY BUGS! They are a true powerhouse, I love them! Our sunflowers are coming into their own, and our Sunflower Steve beauties are showing off! I have chosen not to cut our Sunflower Steve flowers just to see if I can collect some seeds for a larger crop next year since his seed sales are limited at the moment. I also planted similar sunflowers near them to try and create my own special mix that will be unique to our farm. I am a biology and horticulture nerd so it is in my nature to try fun experiments like that.

We are swimming in Zinnias! They are such a fun flower, they just keep giving, flourishing and showing their lovely faces! The more we cut, the more they give! I'll tell you another thing, our weekly foliar feeding with Kozgro Organics has really kept all our flowers very happy! There is so little our soil has to give and this product, that we also mix with fish emulsion one week and worm casting tea the next, has really helped all of our flowers bloom in abundance and has also kept insect pressure low since they are happy and healthy plants.

Right now we are selling our farmers choice flower bunches at the Arlington, TN farmers market every Saturday, but we are also encouraging our customers to come out to the farm and experience the joy of cutting and making your very own personalized bouquets. Please see our store for pricing on all our products and contact us if you have any questions.

Thank you for all your support, we really love and appreciate it!

Annicka

The Busy Season

Sat, 14 May 2022 12:23:23 GMT

We are in the thick of transforming our land into a flower farm!

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Market at the Crossing

Sat, 09 Apr 2022 12:00:05 GMT

2022 Market at the Crossing, Arlington, TN

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Sunflower Steve

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 01:16:41 GMT

The most unique sunflowers you'll ever see!

NovaJames Homegrown will be growing the most beautifully created sunflowers ever seen! These sunflowers have been specially developed by Sunflower Steve over the last 15 years! This year, 2022, Sunflower Steve is offering the first of his seeds for sale to only a select few growers. I've linked his page to the picture of his beautiful Van Gogh's Fantasy Mix sunflowers. I cant tell you just how excited I am about growing these sunflowers! Sunflowers were my gateway drug into flower farming, as with many. They captured my heart with their sunny faces smiling at me each day. Little suns of love and light filling my heart with happiness! I cant wait to grow and share these beautiful flowers! I will not be selling any of these flowers as cut flowers this year since there are so few but I promise there will be lots of pictures and hopefully many more in future years! Special thank you to @sunflowersteve for his beautiful sunflowers! Happy growing friends!

We're officially a Nursery!

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 22:19:05 GMT

Ready for plant babies!

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We got our Tractor!

Sat, 19 Feb 2022 14:59:44 GMT

First day with our tractor and already breaking new ground

I think we did what most people do when they first buy a farm. We bought the least amount of equipment possible because we wanted to save money and figured we can do a lot on our own. Well after only six months with our commercial lawn mower, we realized we needed something that can do more than just mow the grass. We had to upgrade to a tractor. If you own a farm I'm sure you've been through this whole process before. You know you have a ton of different jobs to do on the farm and if money were not an issue you'd probably want a Bobcat, an excavator, a tractor, a bulldozer and who knows what else! Well, while we could probably put all those tools to use somewhere on our farm, there is no way we could afford all that. We did however, do the math and realized one whole years worth of payments on a tractor would be less than one month of renting a Bobcat. We are very practical people so the obvious choice was to buy the tractor. Thankfully we were able to trade in our nearly brand new lawnmower to keep our debts to a minimum.

As for all the things we need to do on the farm, the list is endless, but job number one is to get our ground leveled out a little better and create a designated garden space. In the picture above you can see the two 4x20 foot garden beds we built the first month we moved in. I had a lot of wonderful herbs and flowers from our last house and the new owner didn't have any need for garden beds so she told us we could haul it all away for her. These beds were wonderful for that short growing period but certainly not big enough for all the veggies, fruits and herbs we'd like to grow to feed our family. I am so excited to fill this garden with all our favorite treats! Who's ready for summer? I cant wait!

The second project we need to work on, is our farm driveway, which will be used for hauling loads to and from the farm allowing access to the back without disturbing our home life. We have a lot of dreams for this farm and completing this driveway is the key to making them happen. Operating a farm takes a lot of good quality dirt. The driveway will allow us to get large loads of compost and dirt to the back of our property. Right now our only option for large loads of dirt is to have a dumpster load of dirt dropped in our front yard and hauled to the back. Before we got our tractor this would have had to be done via wheel barrow but even with the tractor this is a very time consuming process. Another reason we need to have this driveway done is for our trailers. The slope of the current driveway is too steep to get up with a heavy load so we usually have to drive straight through the front yard to get onto the road. We have a small camper trailer for our family, but our parents also like to bring their trailers when they come stay at our house. Over the Thanksgiving holiday we had three trailers in our backyard to host our whole family, it was wonderful! We'd also like to join Harvest Hosts one day and be able to share the beauty of our farm with friendly travelers.

Hopefully we can get the driveway in a usable condition by the time we need to amend our flower field and get it all prepped for seasonal flower production by the end of March. This is a lofty goal and I do realize we are pushing the limits of possibility but why not go for it? If we fail, we will learn, and that's way better than not trying at all.

Thank you so much for your support and keeping up with our journey. This farm has been such an incredible blessing and we are happy to share the beauty with you. Have a wonderful day.

With love,

Annicka

Community Supported Agriculture

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 04:02:04 GMT

Frequently Asked Questions

WHAT IS A CSA?

CSA stands for community supported agriculture, a popular model for buying food, flowers or herbs and supporting farms throughout the world. Many different models exist.

WHY JOIN A CSA?

Personal Health – our flowers are grown without chemicals and are seasonal and fresh, usually harvested and delivered within 48 hours. We also grow herbs and edible flower varieties that can be purchased separately for making beautiful salads, deserts and flavorful dishes.

Economics – you get a substantial savings over the price you would pay for the same items at your local florist or grocery store. By supporting a local business you also keep your money circulating in your community. When you eat, you vote with your food dollars for how you want your food to be grown and how you want natural resources allocated.

Food Security – supporting a local farm ensures that farmland and farming knowledge stays in the community, which is great for the landscape but even more importantly ensures that local food and flowers will be available into the future.

Environmental Health – buying local uses less fossil fuel for transportation and farming without pesticides keeps harsh chemicals out of the environment and its better for the farm workers and the consumer.

Community Building – Knowing your farmer and where your food comes from is a huge piece of creating a stronger community. Learning how to cook, eat and design flowers seasonally gives us a sense of place.

WHAT DO I GET IN MY CSA BOUQUET?

Weekly shares reflect the growing season and the type of herbs and flowers vary as the season progresses. The cost of your share each week reflects a discount from what we charge at the farmers market. Summer flower sessions contain lots of zinnia, dahlia, lisianthus, calendula, foxglove, stock and nigella. Late summer, early fall sessions include dahlia, , sunflower, amaranth, celosia, and cosmos. We try to grow as much variety as we can throughout the entire season so you don’t get too bored of any one item and always have enough to keep your home filled with color.

While you don’t get to pick and choose what exact flowers or quantities you will receive, you are provided with a great variety of the best quality flowers selected at the prime moment for maximum vase life. Other specialty items may be available for pick up if coordinated ahead of time. Please contact us directly for additional requests.

WHAT IF I GO ON VACATION OR OTHERWISE CAN’T PICK-UP MY SHARE?

Ask a friend, co-worker or neighbor to pick-up and enjoy your weekly allotment, maybe you will convert them into members for the following season. If no one picks up your share, it will be donated to a local charity or fed to the chickens.

HOW DO I ORDER CSA FOR HERBS OR SPECIALTY ITEMS?

We are very excited to offer multiple products to the local community but we are also growing slowly. Please follow sign up for our newsletter and follow us on YouTube and Instagram to stay up to date on the latest offerings and sales locations.

All the Marketing

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 04:33:09 GMT

On weeknights we do marketing!

This week has been chalk full of all the things most farmers probably avoid but I have enjoyed the learning experience. I have mapped out my farm based on the number of seeds I have which is twice the size of the original plot I was planning haha. That will be interesting when I tell the hubby to just keep on going with the tiller. Yes you heard that right, we will be tilling this first go around but more to come on that later. I have a room half full of seedlings and by next weekend it will be nearly full! But those are all the fun parts.

What I've been focused on this week is updating my website, writing my blog (right now), writing my first newsletter and then taking three days to figure out how to link a newsletter to my website, not to mention how to program the little button on the webpage to prompt you to enter your email address and then find a way for your email address to eventually find itself on my newsletter mailing list, fun fun! Honestly though, it has been fun learning all these new things. I'm a one woman show over here with about 10 plates in the air but I'm also learning every aspect of my business and I will be the perfect person to help my future employees learn how to get it right! Please have patience with me as I go through this learning process because it is going to be so so sweet on the other side!

Other fun fact, I've been reaching out to wholesalers, florists, neighbors and friends just trying to get my name out there, NovaJames Homegrown ladies and gentlemen, and make sure I have a way to sell my flowers once my whole 5,000 square feet are in full bloom!! Yes, I said 5,000! Those catalogs just call to me. Want to know something crazy? I somehow didn't buy cosmos, whaaaat??? I know, crazy right? I'm sure I'll figure something out.

If you haven't seen it yet our first CSA sales are available for purchase between now and valentines day! This is going to be the cheapest price you can get all year so be sure to sign up and get your subscription early!

Please also sign up for our newsletter because I will use that to share the latest deals, offers and any other special thing I can think of.

Bloom well and prosper. Until next time.

Annicka

Dreaming BIG Dreams!

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 16:27:01 GMT

So many things are happening I can barely stay focused. Thankfully I have my Dream Board to guide my path!

A lot has happened since my last blog post so first I will fill you in. Also, if you'd like to stay up to date on all our happenings please follow us on our YouTube channel, just search NovaJames Homegrown, and please be sure to subscribe. If you take a look at our YouTube channel you'll see that we did not end up using the small chicken coop I bought at Tractor Supply like I said in my last post. We ended up buying six ducks and ten chickens from Tractor Supply and decided to build something that could fit at least 30 chickens since we'd like to be able to sell our chicken eggs and hopefully at least help us pay for their feed! We have also been working on a lot of house projects, we built our dining room table, created a mud room, built a wall in our outbuilding creating a small gym space. On the farm projects include the purchase of a commercial grade lawn mower, building a walk in cooler, building a staircase that leads to our garage attic space where we installed insulation and are preparing the space to be my seed starting space and garden storage area. We have videos of almost all of this if you'd like to learn more.

As for future projects, we are still working on the seed room and walk in cooler. We've also realized that the commercial lawnmower is just not enough for all the other work we need to do around the farm so we are planning to purchase a tractor!!! So crazy, sometimes I have to pinch myself when I think about the life we are living right now! It is so stressful, intimidating and scary but also everything I've always wanted! Once we have the tractor, we have a lot of ground to move! This winter has shown us just how much water our property holds! We have a lot of work ahead of us grading our property and setting up proper drainage. We also plan to put in a second driveway that will go to the back of our property for trucks, tractors, and trailers. We will certainly need this since we are going to need a ton of quality dirt brought in because of our thick clay soil. As we move our dirt we plan to expand our home garden area and prepare our flower farm beds starting with a 3,500 square foot plot. Once the dirt is set and we know exactly where our beds will go, we have to install irrigation lines for supplying water to our chicken coop, our garden and for the flower farm. Then we need to build garden beds, install our landscape fabric and plant out our seedlings. Oh I forgot to mention the fact that, while all of this happening I will also be starting seeds and caring for them round the clock! Exhausted yet? HAHA! This is why I do not sleep! I can not stop thinking about everything we have to do!

In the mean time I am also working on my flower knowledge. I am currently taking Floret's online course which has been incredibly helpful and stressful teaching me all the things I should be thinking about and doing. I have also been checking out books from my local library and filling my knowledge gaps as much as possible. You know this one woman show is not going to work down the line and I know I will eventually need to hire some help on the farm! The thought of having employees is another scary aspect of business because that means I not only have to make money for my family but I have to be successful enough to support those who chose to work for me one day. I could never let them down so I am determined to learn my business, grow slowly and know every aspect of my business so I am capable of training my employees and can be successful at this whole flower thing.

Thank you for reading, I hope all our projects don't scare you away from continuing to follow us haha! Wish us luck and God Bless!

Where to Start

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 20:27:31 GMT

No time like the present

I have been gardening since 2014. Something about being pregnant with my first child brought out a need to care for more stuff. You would think as a new mom, I probably had enough things to worry about, but I felt the opposite. I started very small with a raised garden bed in our back yard. My husband constructed a high bed for me since bending down low was going to add extra strain on my back. One lesson I learned from that raised bed is that I will never do a raised bed like that again. It was raised off the ground with the bottom about two feet off the ground and then It was a 12 inch bed. The bottom was made with chicken wire and enforced by wood beams with a layer of cheesecloth under the dirt. The problem was that we lived in Florida and the moisture level under that bed made it a perfect environment for mosquitos! That first garden became my nemesis because I got eaten alive any time I went out there to tend to it. The lessons I learned from that first garden I keep in my pocket even today! I loved growing potatoes in containers; since then I've only tried potatoes in a bed once and I will never do it again. I find it very difficult to find all of the potatoes when I grow them in a bed, it's so much simpler to just dump my container upside down and gather up my bountiful harvest. I also learned a lot about companion planting although I started small with tomatoes and basil, a perfect pair. One thing I am constantly learning is how to deal with new pests. In this first garden, the trellis you see in the picture above was for cucumbers. We had a lot of beautiful cucumbers growing, and then one day they were eaten up. My guess would be rabbits but who knows, I never found out.

Now that I have rambled on I realize my title for this post is not aligning quite yet. My point to the title is to give you a sense of where I am right now. We are about to move to our dream property and I am getting very excited about growing our landscape and all of the potential possibilities for running a business. I am realistic enough to know that the business will likely take years to be ready and profitable but that doesn't mean I cant start documenting the process. Before I start jumping into all of the present projects I wanted to give you a glimpse into my past and let you know a little about me and my experience level. I am a firm believer in lifelong learning, I will never claim to know everything because I know I don't, but I will always pursue more knowledge and I will share what I learn with you. In the midst of all this, I will also be sharing and documenting on my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCekXnhVq2KZwurYgAYi3nsg. I will update the YouTube address once I have enough followers. I am excited about sharing and documenting this process. I don't know if you enjoy reno shows but we are starting with a blank slate and I cannot wait to start breaking ground at the new place! I am starting the YouTube channel for personal reasons since it's much easier to talk and do work than it is to garden and write a blog. I plan to use both mediums to record the process but I definitely lean toward a visual medium. Thank you for reading. I plan to do a few more blog posts to get you up to speed on where I've been before we get into where we're going. Have a wonderful day!

Visit to the New House!

sites@tailorbrands.com — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 11:38:31 GMT

We still don't own it, but that doesn't stop us from DREAMIN'!

Today was wonderfully exhausting! We got another chance to walk around our new property! Since our initial visit when we put the offer in on the house, we've thought of myriad ways to add our special touch. Not to mention all the big farming dreams we have! Thankfully the new owners allowed us to visit the home again so we could reimagine all of the interior spaces! This was great because we were able to look at which rooms have fans and which don't. We're also already planning our first demo to lighten up the living room by taking out the fireplace and putting in a large sliding glass door. Sadly a lot of trees near the house are going to have to be removed but we will do everything we can to save the two pear trees! I am so excited about pear trees! I have a plan to create a beautiful orchard so this is a wonderful start! After we spent an hour in the house we headed out to our wild backyard. The best part about our new home is our 60 acre backyard! We all made the mile long trek through the long grass back to the river at the edge of our property and then took a deer trail across the property to a magical section canopied by large oaks with deer tracks everywhere! We were all hungry and exhausted by the end but man do I feel so blessed!

We are so excited to try lots of crazy fun ideas for building the farm, I can't wait to share them all here!

Chicks, Ducks and Guinea Fowl Oh My!

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 11:37:25 GMT

Baby Chicks!

Our first experience with baby chicks was a Christmas morning surprise thanks to my brother in law! It was a great surprise!

Christmas of 2018 when our children were still toddling around we were invited into the garage for the final present of the morning. I couldn't imagine what the present was, possibly a recreational toy of some sort for the kiddos but then we get in the garage and all we see is a plastic tote. I was so surprised when my kids lifted the lid, for some reason my immediate vocal response was "OMG, something else to keep alive!" This still makes me laugh to think about that response. How strange right? It's funny, I guess I was feeling the pressure since at that point I was truly struggling to keep house plants alive. Thankfully the supposed rule, "if you can keep a houseplant alive, you can keep a kid alive," holds no weight in our home.

Thinking back to this time really gets me excited about our upcoming adventures. I was at the local farm store just the other day and I saw a chicken coop on sale! I just had to buy it! This time we will be prepared, no more, the chickens come before the house crazy lifestyle of yesteryear! We will build the house and the chickens will come next, halleluiah! I am excited about what's to come next because we plan to also incorporate a couple of ducks into our lives and we're looking into the possibility of including Guinea Fowl too! The ducks and chickens will initially be for egg production because in this house, we eat 9 eggs a day!!! The Guinea Fowl are supposed to be gosh darned useful on a property like ours! I plan to use them for all their amazing bug clean up properties! We have so many big plans ranging from Orchard, You-pick berries, pumpkins and flowers, to market gardening and having Guinea Fowl around to keep our bug and snake populations down is a win-win!

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