-EST. 2017-

Growing for 10 seasons &

still growing strong

     In 2017 we started what we like to call, “The Grand Experiment”. Dreaming of combining my creative design talents and Tim’s agricultural skills, we set out to turn this place into a flower farm. However, it was many years earlier that the seeds of Homeplace Fields were planted.

As a young girl I would watch my mom carefully tend her roses along the side of the house. I remember the excitement we had when a little bud would form on each plant, as well as the beautiful scent that would follow. However, the real excitement came when she would cut a few stems and wrap them in a damp paper towel to keep them hydrated, followed by a layer of aluminum foil to keep the thorns from poking my little fingers. Then off to school I would go to give them to my teachers. The smiles were instant and contagious. Flowers have that way about them. They connect us to others, and to God’s creation. It is hard to ignore the residual effects of them. Roses were always my mom’s favorite, but as I grew I found myself drawn to the multicolored fields of wildflowers in the countryside, and the array of tulips that pop up in the spring. Over the last ten years Lisianthus has become my favorite flower, followed closely by Dahlias, and yes, even Roses.

     Tim grew up on a farm, just a mile north of where we are now. Having his hands in the dirt has always been his happy place. He has memories of visiting this farm and running around with his cousins. They jumped hay bales and climbed trees just as our kids do today. The area where we grow most of our blooms used to be a cow pasture for the dairy cows, but the farm was not his only training ground. As a kid he and his family helped to plant and care for the many blooms at Cool Crest Golf Course. Alongside his grandparents and parents his flower-growing knowledge grew. After studying agriculture in college, he worked for a Christian Humanitarian Aid organization and taught growing techniques for many kinds of crops in many different countries. Time and time again he has proven he can grow, build, or fix just about anything, just about anywhere.

     In our 20s, with God’s leading we both found ourselves living and working in East Africa.  I walked to work most days. On the way, I would pass by a flower peddler selling his buckets of freshly cut stems grown in fields not far from where he sat. Growing up in Midwestern America, flower bouquets were mostly found in the grocery store aisle or deep inside the floral shop. For the first time in our lives we were able to see and purchase flowers for sale, just a stone’s throw from where they were grown. Bringing that awe-inspiring feeling of a freshly cut bouquet back to northwest Missouri, for others to experience became part of our mission. The fact that we get to do all of this on what the family knows as “the home place”, is the icing on the cake. According to Tim’s Grandpa, our children will be the 7th generation to grow up on this farm, which was founded in the 1800s by his Swiss German ancestors.  

We have grown a lot of blooms over the last decade, but we’ve grown a lot as people too. It is a joy to bring beauty to our community and share the farm we have aptly named, “Homeplace Fields” with them every season. There is a growing movement in the U.S. toward locally grown flowers, and we are proud to be a small part of it!