Important dates:

July 26, 2025: pre-order a bouquet for pick-up at LilJumbo Coffee Company between 9 and 2. It is a great addition to your morning weekend coffee!

Aug 1, 2025: monthly email subscription giveaway drawing.

The topic of conversation around town this week has been all about rain and heat. We have had our share over the last several days and it looks like there is more to come. While laying awake at night itching from my poison whatever rash I have been afflicted with, I had a fun thought to expand our pollinator patch beyond the area we have planted (which looks pretty awesome so far). In light of the heat and rain, I thought we could try mowing down the grass around the existing goldenrod and sunchokes and other “keepers” and scatter a bunch of buckwheat seed to see if we can’t establish a good stand that we can naturally terminate (chemical free, of course), and plant some wildflower mix into it this coming spring. It might require an additional cover of crimson clover to get us into spring, but I think it could work! Why not take advantage of what Mother Nature is dealing out if we can? We have another nice stand of buckwheat going on a new patch of untilled ground behind the duck run that should be ready for something fun this fall.

With all of our extra appointments all over Kentucky this summer it has been extra hard to get to the flower market in Frankfort. Because of that, we are happy to have our local farmers market to lean on as a means to sell some blooms. We set up at our farmers market two times this week, Tuesday and Saturday. Both days turned out great, with good conversation and some flower sales. I honestly always feel a little deflated after a day at the market from all of the peopling and the heat, but it is ironically counterbalanced with a fullness in my heart that is priceless.

A quick rundown of interactions we had on Saturday are as follows: We arrived and got parked in a spot we were stuck in for the duration, in between one of the two local beef businesses that were there and a local veg farmer, all making us feel welcome with their morning greetings. With three buckets of flowers to sell, there was not a need to bring our tent. That tent gives me anxiety on a day with rain in the forecast anyhow. We have had to hold onto it several times over the seasons during storms that blew threw with little notice. I’d rather toss the flowers in the car when they need some shade.

The market manager, Debbie and I walked to the storage shed to grab our paperwork for the year which we had forgot about until that day. Around 8:15 I started having second thoughts about going, thinking I could be at home with the ducks in the yard or working on the pollinator patch expansion. To calm my mind, I scanned a few pages of “A Tale of Two Cities” while folks trickled in. I thought I was an extrovert, but maybe I am not? We sold our one bag of lambsquarters which was accompanied with an info sheet that I downloaded and printed out to go along with the unique and nutritious green. I hope they loved it!

Perriee called our neighbor to see if she wanted us to get her some corn (she did, and said we could have a couple of ears for the delivery charge). We got to say, “hi” to the guy we bought our house from (our neighbor’s brother-in-law), when he showed up to get some corn and tomatoes. I said, “Well, guess this is why we came today, so we could get to see you!”. Then some newlyweds came through, who we got to catch up with for a few minutes and hear a bit about their beautiful honeymoon that they recently returned from.

About halfway through the morning another dear friend showed up with her butterfly book to see about these little silvery checkerspots that have been donning our oregano this year. It seems that aster is a host plant for these critters and we sure do have a lot of native aster, so it makes sense. She let us hang onto the book for some more fun identifications at the house. I then made a round, checking out all of the other booths and nerded out with another vendor about the lambsquarters and then with another about her beautiful cosmos and dahlias. Another vendor asked me how we keep our weeds out of our flowers and I got to excitedly respond that we don’t and that sometimes when possible we weed around the base of the plant to give them some room.

There were amazing cookies and bread at one table and beautiful crocheted bandannas at anther booth. You can almost get it all in one little market, and support so many families all at once. They get 100% of the profits as opposed to like, 15% when you go to the grocery store. That is $1.00 versus $.15. Huge difference.

When we did get to scoot off, we made a trip to LilJumbos with our new sign that Perriee made to advertise our bouquet drop off opportunity. We gave them one bunch of flowers for their time and for offering to let us use their spot as a pickup point, and ran upstairs to Rewind Books to give them one as well, just because they are awesome and we have not seen them in a while. It was a good day. Support your local economy. Ten dollars spent at a big box store goes unnoticed. Ten dollars spent at a farmers market can change someone’s month.

Something else I wanted to remind you before I sign off is about our guest space here at the farm. The flower studio is not going to be rented for money anymore. If you want to pay, fine, but we would rather have you stay and maybe weed some flowerbeds, share something you can offer in trade or something else along those lines. Take some time to dig in the dirt, use your dollars to support our community, and spend some time in nature.

When we used to do short term renting out of our home in Newport it always felt like our guests left us with something. Sometimes it was a thing- a picture of Marilyn Monroe or a book they wrote. Sometimes it was just an interaction, like a crazy story about being a movie producer. We have so much more to offer one another than stupid money. If I am being honest, we are trying to use as little of it as possible since it seems to have shown itself as toxically addictive to people. Everything in moderation. What is valuable to you that you would use to “pay” for something with if you did not have to use dollars?