For I know the joys and discomforts of agricultural life...

When I was in high school I fell in love with agriculture. I did not grow up in a farming family.... hell I never even helped my grandma in the garden if I could help it. The excitement, the field trips, and the challenge it all presented lit a spark inside of me I had never felt before. When deciding where or what I wanted to go to college for there was no question... I was going to NCSU and I was majoring in agriculture. I had no desire to teach so I chose the only other option I thought I had.... Extension. It wasn't until I took my first horticulture class in college did I even think about plants. Bryce Lane's first lecture had me on the edge of my seat and I knew there was something there that I needed to chase.

Fast forward to my senior year. I spent that summer before as an intern in an extension office in my home town and worked at a well known nursery in Raleigh during the school year. I was killing it....so I thought. I was moving right along and just knew I was going to land the dream job after graduation. I applied to every extension opening near my home town and with the extension agents I had worked with on my team I landed an interview for every job I applied for. Those interviews were the hardest and as you can already guess unsuccessful. My boyfriend was going to WCU and working as a vet tech. He met a lady who owned a dairy goat farm in Cullowhee and was looking for someone to move in and work on the farm. Sign me up!!! I packed my bags and we moved into her guest house. We worked on the farm for rent. We milked, we mucked stalls, we helped birth baby goats, and we grew as a couple and individuals. She helped me get a job at a local family owned "farmers market". I shook my hand on a deal with the family that I would stick around and anyone in agriculture can tell you a hand shake deal is solid gold. You don't break a handshake deal. Probably six months after my last extension interview I received a phone call to come back for a second interview... but I just couldn't bring myself to break that deal I had made. So here we are both working full time jobs and working on a farm that is not ours but both desiring something more from life so we made the decision to move out and move on.

Kyle started working for a landscape business in Cashiers and started knowing more about plants than I could ever even imagine. That turned into him wanting his own business instead of settling for working for someone else. I still had that fire and desire to do something more with my career as well. Kyle planted a row of zinnias and sunflowers at the house for me and it just made me so incredibly happy. I thought.... this could be something. The next year I planted more. The year after that I read Floret's Cut Flower Garden book, took notes, bought all kinds of seeds and man did I grow some weeds. Although not profitable I was hooked. Year after year we would keep trying to have a cut flower farm while both working 60-70 hour weeks each. You could only imagine the weeds we had. I never lost my desire for it and Kyle never stopped helping me chase this dream even though it looked like a complete waste of time. One day the name Buff Blooms just came to mind and I sat down and made a logo. Kyle was already doing his landscape thing after he got off from his full time job and I just knew one day we were going to make this whole "running your own business" thing work. Kyle convinced me to plant his parent's garden and here we are. We bought a greenhouse, we invested in some landscape fabric to help with the weeds and man are we giving it our all. When I get discouraged from all the things that go wrong and how hard it is to chase this pipe dream I hear in my head the pledge I made in high school....

"I believe that to live and work on a good farm, or to be engaged in other agricultural pursuits, is pleasant as well as challenging; for I know the joys and discomforts of agricultural life and hold an inborn fondness for those associations which, even in hours of discouragement, I cannot deny."

So the moral of this story is we ARE Buff Blooms, a flower farm and landscape business in WNC and we are SO glad you are here. Follow along as we grow, learn, and share the behind the scenes of running a flower farm!

Our first farm job....

The flowers that started it all......

Where we are now....