The dream of a flower farm began close to three decades ago when I was a very young mom. I was thumbing through the pages of a magazine and caught myself mesmerized by a dreamy photo of a mother and young daughter walking through a glowing field of flowers. (I can still see it.♥) I wished there was a place I could take my little one to pick flowers, in a field like that, together. However, as a teenage mother and all the struggles that come with that chosen path, I didn’t have room for frivolous ideas. Traveling wasn’t an option and I definitely didn’t have the funds to create it for ourselves. So, the thought got tucked in the back of my mind while life continued on.
Fast forward 13 years, I had gotten married, began a career and we were having our second child. My husband and I found a small overgrown acreage just outside of town. It had sat empty for a few years and needed a lot of work, but we were in love with it. To be totally honest….I was so nervous to move to the country. Growing up ‘in town’, I was never a ‘country’ girl, bugs scared the crap out of me and I was scared of the dark…. Heck, I still am. Haha! But I always had a love for growing things, transforming our landscapes, transplanting plants and such, so I was willing to go for it.
The summer after we moved in, we tilled a vegetable garden so I could get my hands in the dirt. While this was fairly new to me in my adult life, I felt like it was a way to honor the century old home and embrace the idea of living in the country. We slowly began to make the property our own. It was a lot of work to landscape, tear down an old, dilapidated barn, mow an overgrown horse pasture, plant trees and clear a wildly grown grove, but we loved it. However, the idea of a field of flowers was still tucked away in my mind and in some regard, tucked even further away with all the busyness of life.
Tack on another 17 years, a dear friend was sharing with me how she planned to grow her own pumpkins and flowers the coming year. And just like that…..the dream resurfaced…A lightbulb basically exploded in my head! At that VERY moment, I said to myself, ‘Why are you not doing this? You have always wanted that flower field.’
That very next day I told my husband about the decades long dream and I made the solid decision to go for it.
Through sharing this story I hope to encourage others to never give up on their dreams. With some of the things I’ve navigated through my life, I see how they have all prepared me for this to come to fruition. I hope one day, I will hear your story as well.
— Allison Dhabalt
