Hi, I’m Kelly—and I want to be a farmer. Usually when I say that, people don’t respond with words right away… it’s a face. A big smile, maybe a slightly furrowed brow. I’ve come to expect it. You might even be making that same face right now.

That’s okay. You can underestimate me—just hold my beer while you do 😉

A long, long loooong time ago (basically the stone ages), when I was trying to decide what to study in school, agriculture and botany were actually at the top of my list. But I started out as a nursing major… because I had always been told I should be one of three things: a teacher, a nurse, or a preacher’s wife. If you know me at all, you just laughed. No ma’am to all three, thank you. That was what was expected. But I got comfortable disappointing people early in life—I’m way too hardheaded to live someone else’s plan (my hair is redder in spirit than in root). I changed my major 12 times. Studied art for 7 years. And eventually graduated with a Liberal Studies degree with a concentration in communications and media studies… gulp. My advisor basically pushed me out the door—and honestly, I was grateful.

In the years that followed, I was a teacher, a missionary (never a nurse :D), a volunteer coordinator, a manager, a director……but quietly tugging at me the whole time was this irrational love of beautiful things. Especially flowers. When I bought my first home, one of the very first things I did was plant them. Cutting flowers in the warm months made me happier than any of my “real” work ever did. I loved getting dirty. There’s something so honest about it—

dirt + seed + water + sun = flowers.

Simple. Real.

At the time, it was just something I did on weekends. A hobby. A little pocket of joy. And then… life got weird. Like it did for a lot of people around Covid, mine kind of fell apart all at once. I got engaged—yay! And then that ended, unexpectedly and painfully. I adopted a dog—yay! And then he died. I was heartbroken and alone in Atlanta, so I moved to Athens to be close to my family and start over at 38—which is harder than it sounds.

That spring, I went to visit my best friend in Washington State. She took me to a couple of flower farms (we’re both plant nerds), and at one of them, I saw something that changed my life. The farmer was a woman. Wild hair. A little irreverent. Completely at home. Completely happy.

I wanted to be her.

She was handing out ice cream cones in the middle of a lavender field and she casually mentioned she knew another flower farmer… in Athens.

Wait... What? There are flower farmers in Athens?!

Her words exploded in my head. Like something that had been trying to get out of a cage for 38 years. It didn't have to be a dream, I could actually BE a flower farmer. So I started learning, planning, reading and watching anything I could get my hands on. The dream was becoming a plan. I signed up for a permaculture design course through Oregon State (because, according to my family, I’m a bit of a hippie 😉). I wanted to learn how to do this in a way that was thoughtful and sustainable. For the first time in a long time, everything felt like it was clicking into place.

And then life hit again.

On my 42nd birthday, my mom’s lips turned blue while she was getting ready for bed. The ambulance came. ICU. Blood clots. A breathing machine. Five days later, we lost her. Seven days after that, still in the fog of grief, I lost one of my best friends to an overdose. If you’ve ever experienced something like that, you know… grief isn’t just sadness. It’s disorienting. It’s heavy, and it can paralyze you from head to toe. It's hard to breath, it's hard to think, it's hard to move. But at some point, you have to decide:

Will I let it crush me or will I get up and actually live the life I still have? You have to choose to lift your head. To move your feet. To open your eyes again. And you have to decide what’s worth doing that for.

Before my mom died, I promised her that I would find my land, build my farm, and grow her a beautiful field of sunflowers (they were her favorite). So… I told grief to hold my beer. And here we are.

Thistle Hill Flower Farm — Year One 🌸

This year, I’m growing my mom a small field of sunflowers on borrowed land. What do they say? One inch of doing is better than 1000 miles of thinking. Something like that. Well... this is my inch. I'm growing these flowers not only to honor my mother's memory but also because flowers matter more than they seem.

In a world that can feel heavy with sadness, greed, division, and all kinds of ugly… flowers are a quiet rebellion. A soft reminder, intentionally cultivated, that not everything is lost. Not everything is dark. They bring beauty on purpose. They create joy. They remind us that no matter how long or cold the winter feels… spring always comes back. And so will the beauty. This—along with my family, my sweet puppy Julia, and friends I love deeply—is why I lift my head and open my eyes every day. It's the rebellious redheaded spirit in me that knows you must cultivate beautiful things on purpose, intentionally, or the kudzu will take over. So...

I will have my land. I will grow this farm. And if you want to be part of it—you can. You can support this dream by buying flowers, grabbing something from the shop, or simply following along as this little field turns into something bigger. It’s a long road (especially in this economy 😅), but I’m walking it anyway. Come with me. You and me, in this small flower field, building something real—one season at a time 🌿