Important dates:

March 1, 2026: Monthly giveaway winner drawing. Here is a picture of our February prize that we mailed to a subscriber in Texas!

April 25^th, 2026: Third Annual Earth Day Celebration at Loving Farm! Mark your calendars. We will be having a day filled with fun and music, food and makers!

May 17^th: The Wildwood Faire at Talon Winery and Vineyards in Lexington, Kentucky. We will be there hosting flower crown workshops.

Dear Flowerers,

The thaw is happening! Oh my gosh it feels so good to not be absolutely freezing cold outside of the blankets of the bed. Speaking of, we moved our sleeping area out of the parlor and opened the house back up this week. It is so funny how 60 degrees in the house felt frigid the last few weeks and almost comfortable this week. Peonies are peeking out of the ground, we spotted the first crocuses, and yes, there are tulips poking out of the soil! Perriee wanted to make sure I told you that!

If you missed out on the pecan turtles, worry not because we will definitely be adding them to our repertoire. Oh my gosh they turned out so good and it was fun to have some in the house to munch on for the holiday of love! In years past we would go to the drugstore for their half-off candy sale the day AFTER Valentine’s Day. This was much more delicious.

It also felt really nice sending out a dried flower bouquet for someone to gift to their love. We got to watch those flowers leave our farm knowing the person getting them as a gift was not going to be exposed to any yucky chemicals from a long trip in an airplane. Perriee and I really do see the beauty in dried flowers for enjoyment this time of the year and hope to inspire others to lean into a locally grown, off-season dried flower as compared to an imported off-season fresh bloom. They are so much more than I ever could have imagined before getting into them around our second year of flower farming.

They shed, only a little, some more than others for sure, but mostly are just beautiful and retain the beauty long enough to get you to those fresh, spring blooms. Ten out of ten, highly recommend.

At MINIMUM, we would be stoked to see you getting your loves some locally grown tulips like one of our KFM counterparts had this February for her customers at Wildroots Flower Farm. Click that link to see their LEX18 news story. Sorry (not sorry) to sound like a broken record. It just makes sense on so many levels, especially environmentally.

We are thinking this Mother’s Day we can run a special of a candy-flower combo. Believe me, it will get you some points on the mom-love-o-meter. The candy ingredients are not local, but we sourced everything we needed to buy from two of our local grocery stores with the nuts and butter from Yoder’s Dinnerbell Market and everything else from Ken’s. Looking at the prices and ingredient comparison of the mass produced ones, I think you would rather get ours. No palm oil or caramel coloring (whatever that is) and we used butter, not butter oil. Full disclosure, we bought some Kroger pecans this week while in Maysville to compare prices, but at least it is Cincinnati based… That butter though? We can just keep on getting that at Yoder’s.

We had the pleasure of helping tap maple trees at Turtleback Ridge again this year. The time spent outside was glorious and I believe my phone might have suspected some other person was carrying it around on account of the steps I accrued throughout that day. I got to work with Kevin at first, who has been doing this for quite a few years (he lives there) so it made it easy to get reacquainted with the process. The trees were ready to flow, beginning to weep upon drilling the holes for the taps. It is so amazing to see the network of tubing that connects them all, taking the sap into the collection tanks. I felt like a tree phlebotomist for the day, of course approaching with respect and care so the “patients” felt comfortable with the procedure! After finishing we ate good food and warmed up with friends, old and new. Good times.

Seedlings are looking good and we are about ready to keep some more things out in the greenhouse full time as the temps are looking nice next week. The sweet peas have spent some nice time outdoors the past few days and are getting so tall! We are currently brain storming ways to let them keep trailing without moving them our of their bucket where they seem very happy. Lisianthus is coasting and growing, snapdragons look healthy, and ranunculus is bouncing back from the cold snap time in the Flower Studio, much happier in the greenhouse with the nice cool nights.

Pride Update: The ducks are so very happy with the warmer temperatures, back to 2 eggs per day, spoiling us rotten with their little gifts. We got their ice plug out of their pool and have it all freshened up for their cold winter plunges. The kitties were blessed with a donation to their “frisky fund” this week via a Chewy gift card. It came with an affirmation of support to us that was priceless, cheering us on for continuing this journey of growing and getting through the wintertime, while adjusting to the new life we have chosen (this will only be our second season, full-time for both of us on the farm). THANK YOU!

We are always looking to expand our email list so feel free to encourage folks, who you think might enjoy this newsletter, to sign up. Shoot us an email with the addresses if they have trouble signing up themselves from the “subscribe” section and we would be happy to add them manually. I could adjust the setting on the website to include a “sign-up” pop-up every time you open it, but I find that to be off-putting we are not doing it. We are also reducing our time on social media and really want to have more of a website-based business (in addition to in-person, of course) which is why I am here with you all each week. The social-media platforms (at the tippy billionaire tops) are not in align with our values and tend to profit off of our anxiety as a society. Especially when it comes to making a living, it is a conscious and choice to devote more time on this newsletter.

Saying that, if you ever have anything you are curious about regarding our farm, feel free to email us at lovingfarm134@gmail.com. I would love to write about topics you are interested in. Keeping it personal here…

-Marietta

Max

His tail is long and flowing,

Blonde and light and bright.

Stranger danger sometimes full of fright,

But his trust for me has grown so we cuddle at night.