THE FARM
In 2010, I followed my dream of starting a flower farm. My writer-turned-gentleman-farmer husband and I relocated from the concrete jungle of Chicago to the bucolic hills of northeast Connecticut. I was a fierce advocate of all things organic, and was increasingly alarmed by the advent of smart phones and their intoxicating influence on childhood. I wanted my boys to grow up connected to nature. My mother grew up on a farm in Indiana, and I cherished her stories of helping her father de-tassle corn, and sneaking chickens into her bed. I aspired to homestead and teach the boys the value of hard work. So, with two young boys in tow (soon there would be three!), we settled into a 1776 farm house tucked on a dirt road and converted an overgrown horse pasture into a field of flowers.
What happens when a theater artist and a writer move to a farm? We got creative and learned by doing. We dug giant raised beds with a backhoe, lost 10,000 sunflower seedlings in one night to deer, got chickens. I applied for grants for unheated hoop houses and eventually a new barn, and explored what seemed like hundreds of different outlets for selling our flowers. Today, the flowers grown at Muddy Feet supply my event work and beloved Westport farmers market, as well as the Connecticut Flower Collective, a wholesale cooperative of Connecticut flower farmers.
As a 'boutique' flower farm, we grow small quantities of many, many different flowers from April until November. We are a proud member of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers. Our flowers are grown using only sustainable farming methods, and we are constantly learning how to be better stewards of our little patch of land.
