Important dates:

April 19: Second annual Earth Day at Loving Farm. Rain or shine! 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!

We also so excited to announce a menu from PBJ (Plant Based Junk) offering a variety of vegan street food coming all the way from Cincinnati! Exact change appreciated or cashless payments accepted.

Hot Dogs: $4.50 (+1.50 for gluten free bread option)

Chili Cheese Coney $6.50 (+1.50 for gluten free bread option)

Walking Taco $5.50 (gf)

Bowl of Chili $4 (gf)

Extras/Chips $1.50 (gf)

Condiments: free

Please stop by and say hello to PBJ and get a snack while you are here enjoying the music! They are looking to relocate somewhere in our general direction from up north and Perriee and I have been daydreaming of this cool couple being our neighbors since our paths crossed back in February at a conference in Louisville, meeting two days later AGAIN at the farm school I am a part of in Lexington. I mean, what are the chances?

May 1: Next drawing for our email subscribers!

By the time you see this newsletter we have officially relaunched our guest space in the Flower Studio. Can we do more to it to make it nicer? Absolutely. Is it infinitely more comfortable then when the last people stayed in it? Heck yes it is. It has a bed off the floor, on top of a not sponsored Yona bed frame, in front of their mind puzzle of an origami headboard that almost broke my spirit assembling. Perriee came through with a cool piece of wood for the large window that the air conditioner is installed in to vent out of the big window (thanks to the neighbor for the quick lend of the jigsaw so she could get it done).

We were fortunate to get on the list of potential lodging for a local cycling race series this season, so it is the perfect opportunity to showcase what we can do in front of an audience who will be needing a place to stay for a few nights this summer. The race itself is being held at the local brewery who will be having a local food vendor selling during the race as well. Not to be “punny” after this week of weather, but it is the perfect storm of small businesses supporting one another. I say it all of the time, but we are so fortunate to have landed here.

The first tulips were harvested this week which we managed to transport to the Kentucky Flower Market along with a few giant bunches of forsythia and our first spirea of the year. It was so magical to see how they styled the display. Never having been to one, it reminded me of what a Japanese garden might look like, all tall and wild and beautiful.

Speaking of tulips, if you remember, we planted a whole 100 of them this season to sell. Before flower farming I never knew how tulip growing for floristry worked. We always thought of them as perennials, which means they come back year after year when you plant them once. Not in flower farming. When you harvest a tulip flower to sell, you pull the entire bulb to preserve the foliage as well. Since the foliage (the leaves surrounding the tulips) is what is needed to feed the bulb for the next season’s flower, the likelihood of a new flower returning is so low, you discard the bulb after pulling them out. You can store them in a cooler completely intact loosely wrapped in brown paper or newspaper until you are ready to sell them. We do not have a floral cooler…yet. That is another reason we did not purchase too many bulbs for this spring harvest, taking this year to see how the process works on a smaller scale. We did however order 1000 bulbs for 2026. For reference, one of our fellow flower farmers shared that she ordered 9000 tulip bulbs for next season. We are still taking it relatively slow.

Learnings so far: On unusually warm spring days you will be pulling tulips on an hour-to-hour basis. If not, they will open up too much too soon, not ideal for resale value. You will be pulling tulips in rain storms for the same reason. While we were eyeing our little patch this week, I was imagining all of our fellow farmers out in the storms pulling flowers in the torrential rains. You have to rotate the spot you plant them in from year to year, a general good farming practice for any crop, but important to avoid disease.

They continue to grow after you put them in a vase. When you are ready to arrange them or bunch them for sale, you snip the bulb off and put them in water. Then the tightly closed bloom will open up and the stems even get a little taller! It is so cool to witness and means you get some good vase life to enjoy them longer when harvested at the proper stage.

On the No-Till Flower Flowers Podcast, we learned that planting tulips is a great way to use fresh compost in preparation for an early summer flower bed. After you pull them all out you are left with a nice soft bed of aged compost ready for something else. You plant tulips so easily in the fall/early winter pretty close together, covering them with compost and maybe some light fencing to keep the critters out. We had a friend come “help” us plant a third of ours this year. We all had a good laugh five minutes later when we finished because it was so quick.

They are so easy to arrange in a vase! I love making bouquets with so many different flower types, and enjoy the process but it often takes a bit of time to assemble one to my liking. Tulips are so simple and elegant all on their own. We have a basic mix of colors in our bulbs, so I just separated them between a couple of colors and stem lengths and put them in their respective vases and voila! Chef’s kiss of an arrangement.

Even though we have been eyeing the tulip game on the sidelines for a few years now, hearing the grown-not-flown mantra applied to them, it really hits home, literally, when you harvest your own home grown bulbs with the whole process in mind of how so many tulips travel to the United States from abroad or just from the other side of the country. I just looked up where the big box stores get theirs from. I am not linking it here, but it was pretty easy to find. Let me know if you need help looking into it yourself. Spoiler alert, they travel to get here.

If you are local to the area and are interested in a jar or two for yourself, shoot us an email or give us a call to pre-order some. We have a couple of jars reserved already, so we have about 8 jars worth available. If you are local to us (think from here to Maysville) they are $10.00 each, with 5-6 stems per arrangement. You can pick them up here at the farm or we can arrange a pickup for you at a small business close by. We had one in Maysville identified, but it looks like they closed so we are looking for a new spot to work with there if anyone is open to it, let us know!

Otherwise, check out the Kentucky Flower Market for all of your spring flower needs!! They definitely have a big selection of all of the tulips with many fancy varieties. Support your local farmers, wherever you decide to buy them. If you are out of the area and need help finding a local grower let us know and we can probably help.

PS: If you are so inclined, feel free to forward this email to a friend or two that you might think would enjoy the Earth Day celebration. We really think it is going to be a special day. Next week I will include some details on parking and such in advance of the big day!