Where to find us/ Important dates:
Saturday, September 26th. To celebrate the harvest moon, we are teaming up with Graceful Serenity Yoga for a half day retreat hosted here at the farm filled with flower crown crafting using our homegrown ingredients, yoga, herbal teas and a sound bath! Spots are filling up and we are so much looking forward to spoiling whoever comes for a few hours. Register here.
October 1st: Next subscriber giveaway drawing! We love doing these because we ALWAYS share a moment of excitement for the winner.
Sunday, October 11th: “Birds of a Feather”, Mini Market and Music at Loving Farm featuring Nat Lefkoff in collaboration with Presa Ceramics.
Saturday, October 17th: Hainted Harvest 3:00-7:00 with storytelling by Derby City Midnight at dusk: Turtleback Ridge Brewery
Hello Flower Lovers!
Although the season is definitely having the winding down feeling in terms of daylight hours, we have still been harvesting a decent amount of flowers. It was another good week for us at the KFM in Frankfort and our late week haul that we cut for a market on Saturday was full of zinnias, aster, sedum, a few marigolds, and of course goldenrod and lemon basil. We traded a bouquet and some garlic with a fellow farmer who had the most beautiful onions! Perriee made some jalapeño cheddar bread and “kettle” corn which we sold a bit of. It was not a cut flower type of event so we ended up bringing most of those back home, but we will be practicing our spirals again with the leftovers.
A goal for our upcoming class we are going to be taking is how to get that second harvest of the week better accounted for. The early harvest for the flower market is easy, being able to pre-list it or take it to Frankfort for the market floor. We have had good luck with selling about half of what we bring each week which is pretty good for our business but the late week haul, here at home has been challenging to move.
I think I have said this before, but it does not take thousands of dollars in sales to keep us a float from week to week. We literally celebrate every order that we see come through our shop on Rooted (the online platform our flower collective uses to track our sales). Five stem bunch of sunflowers sell? We celebrate. Ten stem bunch of aster goes home with a buyer? Party time. First jar of catnip flower sold? Hands in the air. Every one. I cannot imagine we are unique in this experience, so when I say, “shop local” you are likely invoking similar feelings in other small business owners with your purchasing power.
Additionally, buying ANY flowers from the Kentucky Flower Market directly supports 30 Kentucky farmers and their families. I can’t comment on numbers outside of our sales, but I guarantee that Loving Farm alone is NOT keeping the lights on at the shop, but if the collective does not exist, we would immediately have a huge gap in our sales. It is a beautiful business model that allows small farms like ours participate in tandem with the big gals (oh yeah, it’s mostly women run farms also).
Spending $10 at a multi billion dollar business ($1,000,000,000 is a billion, for reference) practically goes unnoticed (speculating but you get me), yet somehow they keep on getting us. We have not ordered a thing from the big “A” in over 2 years. It has been the same amount of time that we stopped paying for subscription services (streaming, ink, internet, using only a hotspot from our phones to connect to some YouTube or PBS on the T.V.). We watch tapes and DVDs that we have, the library has or that we borrow from friends. That is not a brag, but hopefully an inspiration to start shifting your thoughts towards more intentional spending. It is exactly how we are able to live this life right now. Anywho, thanks for coming to my talk. Feel free to ask me about this anytime! We are not financial gatekeepers and will happily share how we get by these days on a fraction of the salary from years past.
Other things we did this week besides cutting flowers and riding the roads with our flowers: We made a batch of soap (1,500 bars, 5 scents) at Sunflower Sundries, planted about 50 iris bulbs that a neighbor gifted us, planted a couple of other perennials we have been babying through the summer, and we have been cleaning up throughout the week to open up part of the house for the tea tasting portion of our retreat on Saturday.
This coming week will be spent finishing getting ready for Saturday, doing our best to transform the farm into the most welcoming, serene environment for some restorative time for our guests. There is still time to reserve your spot but I think we will close registration mid-week to ensure that we have a solid head count for final preparations. Flowers and Sound ‘26 is almost here!
Pride and Flock Update: The big molt of 2026 is at the (duck)tail end, Dayz probably waiting until January or February to change her clothes (horrible timing for sure but maybe she is henopausal and enjoys the cool air?). In our our house organizing we put out a piece of corrugated cardboard on the floor which quickly turned into a cat mat. George is the only one who has not had a turn on it yet. We will be sure to update you on that development!
Loving Farm 