Important upcoming dates:

April 1: Next drawing for our email subscribers! Seriously…it is not a joke.

April 19: Second annual Earth Day at Loving Farm. We have a lineup of 3 bands: Violet and the Newsroom, Hogtown, and Highly Likely for a day of music, nature and friends. Asking for a $10.00 donation for entry to help cover the cost of these amazing artists! Please come. Please tell everyone you know to come. It is going to be a special day.

Five years ago tomorrow, we closed on our home here in Nepton, Kentucky. We really wondered if it was an April Fools Day joke as we drove from Newport to Flemingsburg on that cool morning, pretty early on in the pandemic. April 1, 2020. How can you forget it? All precautions were in place, with an extra table in between us and the banker, taking turns with the seller (the son of the people who owned it and now friend) in the office signing our paperwork one after the other. Directly after, we drove to the house to take a peek and Marcus, the son, met us here to show us where the water meter is because it is all the way across the creek! We would have never known! He graciously agreed to let me snap a picture of him in front of the house and I could not help but imagine what he was thinking, turning the page on this huge chapter of his life. He grew up here.

We first looked at this place on December 14, 2019, my birthday, soon after having departed an attempted communal living situation in Indiana. We had not yet gone “all-in” still working on finishing a hand built A-frame cabin of our dreams. For two years we drove back and forth between a small Indiana town and Newport almost every weekend, building dreams and a tiny home. We developed building skills we never imagined were inside of us. We just walked away from it all, cutting our losses in search of a better fit for ourselves. I couldn’t even look at pictures of the cabin for at least a year without feeling that punch in the gut of loss.

Mostly looking for a place to put up our tipi again (rest in pieces you beautiful structure), we found our current home through an internet search and a phone call. The real estate person who helped us, met us here first, then we drove all over to three or so other spots. Marcus was here when we arrived and had lit the propane stove ahead of us, in order to warm it up a little. The house had sat empty for a couple of years so it was a bit stuffy as homes become when they are not used. As we walked from room to room both of us saw nothing but a future 80’s montage and a couple of cute pieces of art with ducks on it. The house had a green roof, just like the one on our cabin we left. Could we be so lucky to trade a tiny home, almost finished for a whole house? I guess you could say yes.

Having recently planted the seeds for flower farming, the landscape seemed perfect. Not many trees and lots of grass. The possibilities were endless. Perriee and I are good at seeing potential in things. We once looked at a house in Cincinnati together that had a hole in the roof and piles of trash covering the floor and still said, we might be able to work with this! That was a big moment of knowing you are with the right person. Anyhow, we had an offer on the table for what was to become Loving Farm before the end of 2019 and the back and forth and roller coaster of securing a loan and insurance began. I wondered if my coworkers began to think it did not even exist for as long as things drug on. After COVID started, I really thought we were done, not knowing if a bank would find it logical to lend to us in such a weird time. But they did!

Since then, we have redone a lot of the house, mostly siding, updating the bathroom, and some wall repairs and paint. We have slept in most of the house, moving from one place to another as we slowly unpacked and finished each room. Max, Gray, Oscar and George all decided to live here. Mr. Mittens and June and Nikki are now here only in spirit. Tux and Howard and Dayz are still kicking and the three duckateers, Mia, Mamma and Baby are settled in.

Never having met one person in our Indiana community over two years, we feel so comfy knowing so many neighbors in Nepton. Within weeks of coming here, we were approached by folks on either side of us asking to cut our field for hay. Not having the slightest clue what that entailed, we made an agreement, hoping we did not have to pay them to do it and if we did that it would be affordable! Now as I type, I am waiting to hear from one of them who is going to help us knock down the pollinator patch area and consider all of them the best neighbors we could ask for. We have been invited to porch sit across the tracks and harvest meat around the corner and pick peas across the creek. One of our closest neighbors, another son who grew up in our home, even used to cut our grass before we started planting too many things to know where it was safe to mow. He even fixed our mailbox post. I could go on and on.

And the flowers…yes, we are still planting them. It started with one little pollinator patch in the back of the house that first 2020 spring. We started laying down garden beds in 2021, on top of the grass, ever expanding them to reduce the need to mow less and less each year. For the last few years we have been juggling home improvements and other jobs in the middle of our flower farming so maybe we are a little behind compared to others who started around the same time, but this is the journey we are on and we are not mad about it. Perriee and I are together doing it. It might take a lifetime to get it all situated, however long that life might be, but until then, we will fill it up with flowers as much as possible.