I was not a naïve city girl who moved to the country to follow a farming dream when we began this farm. Although farming was not their full-time job, my parents had a beef cattle farm during most of my life and they had an enormous garden. I had a substantial garden before we moved to this property, and I also had grown chickens for meat and for eggs. Regardless, I allowed my enthusiasm to get ahead of me a bit and I entered our first season selling pork, eggs, vegetables, and dabbling in growing cut flowers. 
I knew I couldn’t pursue all those farming ventures at one time for the long term, but I decided to experiment with different farming avenues. When I considered raising animals, I knew that caring for them involves a great deal of hard and potentially dangerous work. I chased enough cows and watched my father fix fences and bale hay to know that I did not want to raise cattle.
I chose pigs because they are smaller and easier to keep in the fence. The three batches of pigs we raised produced some wonderful food for us and for our community, and, well, pigs make me happy. However, although I have children and a husband, I am the primary caretaker of the farm. I can lift 50 pound bags of feed, daily, to feed the pigs, now, but I don’t want to risk a back injury or some other injury from 300 pound hungry animals. 
Cut flowers as a primary crop is not something I thought was even possible when I began dreaming about farming. I read an article in a magazine at least 20 years ago about a farm that grew cut flowers. I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, but how could anyone make money growing zinnias? I had a yard full of them! I dismissed that notion.
Anyway, when I read that article, I lived in a subdivision. My immediate goal was to get enough land so I could have a large garden, and so I could live far enough away from others so I couldn’t hear my neighbor’s toilet flush or smell their bacon cooking.
After getting the large garden, and some distance from my neighbors, I was satisfied with gardening and homesteading for many years, as you can see from the articles in the archives of this website dating back 10 years or more. I grew every vegetable I had ever heard of, and I canned and froze vegetables, made jam, and raised chickens for meat and for eggs.
Eventually, I began to want to have a farm. They do say chickens are the gateway farm animal, and I think that is true.
A few chickens for eggs sounds like fun, and they are, and eventually you find yourself watching the sun rise through the windshield as you navigate back country roads while hauling six pigs to the butcher.
In the intervening years between dreaming about a farm and actually having one, I read every book and article I could find about farming and large-scale gardening. I experimented with many methods of farming and gardening, and decided what worked for me and in my climate and what did not. I already knew that I did not get along with machinery, although I knew tillage was necessary to break new ground. I knew about tarping, and drip irrigation, and mulching. I knew how to compost and to use cover crops.
It is probably a good thing I didn’t have the money or the time to grow things on a larger scale, because with larger scale endeavors I would have been able to make huge (expensive) mistakes.
Small mistakes on a garden scale are affordable.
We enjoy the vegetables from the garden, and we have of course loved our meat and eggs. Last spring, the critters ate my chickens and so I have no animals on the farm now and I have no plans to get more.
The cut-flower aspect of our business is easily the most profitable, and so for 2022 I am going to devote all my energy to growing flowers. I will primarily sell to local florists and event planners. I hope to also have some opportunities for people to come to the farm and to pick their own flowers as well as opportunities for people to purchase bouquets. I enlarge my planting space each year, and I this spring I have close to 1/3 an acre in cultivation.
