Our Story

The land we were interested in was owned by a lumber company who had recently harvested it for timber and was looking to offload it from their holdings. The first time we toured the property, there was eight inches of fresh snowfall. We picked up some snowshoes and headed out with the family to explore. The land was full of skidder trails from the recent harvest. We snowshoed up the hill and from the top the views were breathtaking.  It was a clear winter day, and we could see all the way to Sugarloaf.

Despite the destruction from the recent wood harvest, we could see the vision.  A few months later we owned the land and over the next year, we planned our escape from the Washington D.C. area and designed our new home and future flower farm. 

When we first broke ground in May of 2024, we quickly realized that the soil was going to need a lot of love. It was heavily compacted, full of boulders and tree roots, and completely barren of nutrients according to the soil test. With our many years of being garden hobbyists, my certification as a Master Gardener and reading lots of books, we knew just enough to know that we had a ton of work ahead of us.

To add to our stress, we had just relocated to Maine during the same month and brought 350 Dahlia tubers and about 2,000 seedlings that need to be planted in the ground.

Our goal was to follow no-till practices, build permanent raised beds, and rely heavily on high quality organic compost.  Due to the condition of the soil and the limited time we had, we did achieve the last two goals but had to concede on following no-till practices although, this is a very important goal for us going forward. We purchased a BCS tractor with the rotary plow and while Chris would run the BCS back and forth and I would go behind him picking up rocks with a wheel barrel. A few small areas where we hit ledge, we just skipped over them and continued the row on the other side. Later, we went back and built raised beds out of rough-cut hemlock on top of the ledge. “When life gives you rocks, build a big box!” we would sing. We were not entirely sure how we did it, but within three weeks, all the seedlings and dahlias were planted in the field.  We also had room to spare which was quickly taken up by Sunflowers, Zinnias and so many vegetables that the whole family was well-fed all summer. By the end of the year, we had harvested hundreds of stems and multiple varieties of beautiful flowers