Farm but make it fashion.

True story, I used to own a clothing boutique. Back in 2014 I approached my yoga studio owners, Nicole and Todd, about wanting to have a small boutique to sell clothing online and in the yoga studio. Not only did they say yes, they became silent partners and invested in me to be able to place my initial orders. What a huge blessing!! Then Nate built me a small rack on wheels and Harlow Boutique was born! That year I sold womens clothing, shoes, and accessories and it was a super fun experience!!!! I learned a lot about running my own small business, marketing, and so much more! I stopped selling right before Carter was born and had made just enough money from my little side hustle to take 3 months maternity leave, paid for by Harlow Boutique. Another huge blessing!!

Owning Harlow Boutique was such a beautiful experience and made me realize how much I loved being an entrepreneur. ❤️  I cannot wait to run my own business again!! I love getting to be a part of every aspect and learning along the way! I know that our flower farm will be a blessing to me, to our family, and to everyone that visits!

Happy May Day

This European tradition involves some of my favorite things: flower arranging, surprise gift giving, and friends & neighbors. Sign me up!!! I’ll be making May Day arrangements to hang on peoples doors every year, but instead of this years Costco flowers (which ended up being very pretty!) they will be from our farm!! I can’t wait to host a May Day arranging party next year so you all can join in on this tradition!

We delivered 28 surprise arrangements this morning, starting at 5am. I say “we” because last night as I was mapping my route out I told Nate how I just didn’t know how I would go from Peoria all the way to Queen Creek and everywhere in between in less than 5 hours (had a v important meeting at 10, so I was on a bit of a time crunch!). So he volunteered to drive to Queen Creek and East Mesa to deliver the two furthest ones to shorten my route. 😭❤️ Gosh I love that man. 

I was seriously giddy at 5am as we loaded up my car because I knew I would be delivering little jars of joy to some of my favorite people!!! A few times I got teary eyed as people texted me after receiving their May Day arrangements. Gifts are totally my love language. So thank you all for letting me love on you today. You filled my heart just as much as those flowers filled yours! #imnotcryingyourecrying

The Flower Barn!

This photo was taken April 20th, 2019 in Ubud, Bali. Earlier that day I had told our retreat group about the flower farm. They were the first people outside of my immediate family to know about the farm. To celebrate my public declaration of this major dream goal I went out by myself on a shopping trip. I found the Bali Home Goods. :) Not really, but it was the cutest little home decor shop in Ubud and I bought a gorgeous macrame garden swing and some handmade garden hooks to hang my tools in the flower barn. (the shop owner took this picture of me outside of the shop - I was so happy, you would have thought we had just purchased the farm. Haha! In my head, we had, even though in reality we hadn’t event started looking for it yet). I was already starting to envision all of the little details of the flower farm, and a barn was big part of that vision.

I just knew that I wanted a barn. To have a farm with a barn on it was ultimate life goals for me. Our farm was listed for sale online with one picture of the front, so we had no idea what to expect when we went to see it for the first time. When we walked into the backyard and saw this huge, beautiful, metal roof barn in the very back of the land, I almost screamed in pure joy. THE DREAM!!!! It's the only thing new-ish on the property (house is original 1973) and it was a huge selling point. We knew we would eventually have a barn in the back to process all of the flowers and host events, and Nate had already done research on building one since most homes for sale in Phoenix don’t come with a barn! I had also looked into buying one... a cool $30k. So to have this already on the property and in the very back centered (oh my symmetry-loving heart!) of the property was just another huge YES moment.

When we purchased the farm, the barn was full of horse poo poo and still had all of the stables and bridle gear in it from the previous owner. We have worked to completely clean out the barn, spreading all of the left-behind straw bedding and horse poo throughout the flower field - free fertilizer!!

And while we aren’t sure when we will actually start the transformation from 4-horse barn to flower barn, I’m deep in the visualizing and planning part of it! The flower barn will have a two major functions:

• Serve as the Fillmore Flower Farm Headquarters - all orders will be processed through the flower barn, so it will need to be super functional to process hundreds of roses during our peak blooming seasons. Cutting, sorting, designing, storing (in a walk-in fridge) will all happen here!

• Serve as an event space - I absolutely love to host parties and have said from day 1 how I can’t wait to host parties in the flower barn! So aesthetically it will be beautiful. That’s just how I roll.

Can not wait for you all to see the flower barn in all of her glory! For now, here are are some progress pics:

Check out our instagram @fillmoreflowerfarm to see some inspiration boards for the future flower barn!

Our rose family history

Roses are special to both mine and Nate’s families. The more I learn about our family history of growing roses, the more I feel

A. I’m on the right path and

B. I’m kind of a third-generation rose farmer :)

Growing up my mom had us clean the inside of the house while she did the yard work - true story! She has always loved taking care of her yard, plants, and flowers. My mom was raised in Sunburst Farms West (63rd Ave & Greenway) and has always told us stories about growing up on that acre farm and how much she loved it. Tons of kids and animals and roses - it always sounded so dreamy to me. When I told her about our plans to buy an acre farm and grow roses and that we had found out that there was a Sunburst Farms East that we were looking in, she was super supportive and excited. It's been so fun and such a new point of connection between her and I to talk shop about roses - how to grow in AZ, pruning, watering, varieties, etc. We often reminisce about her parents, my Grandma Arlene and Grandpa Howard (the real greenthumb of us all), and their love for growing roses and their Sunburst Farms days. My grandparents kept their rose bushes absolutely pristine all the way into their old age. When my mom offered to transplant the roses that she has at her house, that are from her parents Sunburst Farms house, I knew that she truly loved and believed in what we are doing. 

My mother-in-law, Debbie was an angel of a human. She is the mid-west uber-caring and loving mom that takes care of everyone. She passed on October 5th, 2017 with all of her children and her husband by her side. A few days before she passed she got her final burst of energy and requested to dance with her husband. We put on music and watched as her and Poppa Jim danced in the living room. With a room full of tears, she seemed so peaceful and happy in her white nightgown, dancing like an angel with her lifelong sweetheart. It was one of the most memorable moments in my life. One of the last things she said to me was "take care of my boys". I took that to heart and knew that one day Poppa Jim would live with us. I didn't know at the time what that would look like but I knew she would help guide us in the process. This past October 5th, on the second anniversary of her passing and our fifth wedding anniversary, Nate and I drove out to Gilbert to look at a property and it was all wrong from the beginning. We ended up getting in a huge fight and it was one of those moments that made us both doubt the whole thing and dig deeper into why and if we should do this. Looking back, I think Grandma D was like "No! This isn't it. But keeping looking!"

A little more than a month later, right around the same time that we signed on the Sunburst Farms East house, Debbie's yellow rose bush out front starting blooming like crazy. Yellow was her favorite color! This photo is from Dec 26th, when it should have been going dormant, she was blooming almost daily and encouraging and confirming for us that we were on the right path. 

Side note: Since Debbie's passing, Poppa Jim has taken it upon himself to learn all about growing roses as he wanted to keep Debbie's out front alive. They are from one of the houses she grew up in back in Ohio that they transplanted out to AZ when they moved here over a decade ago. It has been so special to watch him tend to and take such special care of her roses. 

So we have roses from both of our grandparent's homes that we plan to transplant to the new house into their own family heirloom garden. I imagine this to be one of the most special places on the whole farm. I can just imagine sitting and reflecting and enjoying roses that are all over 40 years old, that have all been grown by our parents and grandparents at some point in their lives.

The heart whispers....

Have you ever felt like you heart and soul was whispering to you to do something? To make a change or start something new? The whispers deep within me had been stirring for a few years. I had been telling Nate and my closest girlfriends that I wanted a flower shop, that I wanted to be a florist. That it was my "dream job". I just absolutely love and enjoy buying and arranging flowers to give as gifts or for events. Just give me a few hours with flowers and I'm in heaven. But it didn’t feel super realistic, this dream goal of working with flowers. I would come to find out as I dug deeper (farmer pun intended) that it’s usually how dream goals work… they push the boundaries of what you think is possible.

On Dec 31st, 2018, around 8:30pm as Nate and I were waiting for the NYE ball drop (we celebrate East Coast time cause even 9pm is pushing our bedtime), I signed Nate and I up for a Tony Robbin’s seminar and deemed 2019 as the year of studying the mind. I had devoted the past decade to studying the body through being a yoga teacher and I was ready to start digging deeper into what makes us who we are, how we experience life, and how to create the life we want. Of course this will be a lifelong study, but through lots of meditation and prayer, hiring an absolutely AMAZING life coach, attending workshops & retreats, reading books & blogs and listening to podcasts on all kinds of mind stuff, my dream goals turned from whispers into loud clapping and cheering. Being willing to truly listen to my heart and the wisdom that was trying to come through was scary at first, but just like training the bicep, you start to train yourself to listen to your heart and life unfolds with so much synchronicity and magic. We all have our own internal guidance system that is trying to guide us down the path of our true joy and happiness. But often we doubt it (for many reasons, but often it is fear of judgment, failure, or being unloved). And while the doubts creep in sometimes, I have done a lot of work to tune into MY internal guidance system and not worry about others.

So as I started to really reflect and tune into what I really wanted, I realized that I didn't necessarily want to own a flower shop, more so I wanted to grow the flowers. Growing flowers, specifically roses, has always been something my family did. I will get more into our family history of growing in another blog post, but know, growing roses runs deep in both mine and Nate’s families. The clarity of my dreams was that I wanted to have a homestead, a farm, and grow roses (and our food too!). I wanted to have space in the middle of the busyness of the city to experience peaceful beauty. 

I had told my husband in Dec of 2018 that I wanted to sell our home. At that time it didn't have anything to do with wanting a flower farm (because I didn’t even know I wanted one yet!), I just knew that wasn't the right house for us. We planned to sell our house in May as we had international travel plans coming up and didn't want to be mid-sell or mid-move while we were gone. Our plans were to sell our house and move in with Nate’s dad (Poppa Jim!), until we found a home, remodeled it, and added a guest house for Poppa. Then we would sell Poppa's house and all move to the new house together.

I don't remember exactly when this all came to be so clear in my heart. But I do know that in mid-March of 2019 my husband and I were at Tony Robbins’ "Unleash the Power Within" conference and that was the first time I ever wrote it on paper that I wanted a flower farm. Thank God for my amazing husband, although reluctant at first because well let’s be honest, it’s not his dream goal to have a flower farm, has totally come around to the idea and is now 100% on board, supportive, and excited for it!

On April 4th, 2019 I opened a gmail and Instagram account for fillmoreflowerfarm... just wanted to make sure I secured the name! :) 

Later that month I was in Bali leading a yoga retreat and that was the first time I ever told people other than my immediate family about the flower farm. Saying it out loud made it feel super real, but also made me doubt it almost immediately. Like what was I thinking?!? Who was I to have a flower farm?!? I already had this amazing dream job as a yoga teacher and studio manager that had me surrounded with incredible people and took me to amazing places like Bali and Costa Rica to lead retreats! Did I really deserve to have another dream job?!? I remember talking with my friend and mentor, Rachelle, in Bali. I told her that I was feeling a bit guilty about wanting this new "dream job" when I already had my "dream job" as a yoga teacher. Is it ok to have two dream jobs and to do them both? Her response was confident and certain: "YES! absolutely." From that moment I have never doubted it again.

We sold our house in May in 10 days and the search for the farm began! 

We bought a farm!!

Well let’s get real… its land in the city with a barn on it, so I am calling it a farm!! Haha! But it is in the quaintest little neighborhood, Sunburst Farms East. Driving through the neighborhood you’ll see horses, goats, sheep, chickens, and even donkeys! It truly is an urban farm community!

We have had our eye on this community for about 8 months (literally looked at 2 houses outside of this community, which only confirmed even more that this was where we wanted to live!). I drove the neighborhood nearly everyday for 6 months. I know, kinda creepy, kinda charming. Haha!!! I was just putting the vibe out that we were going to live here, waving at the neighbors and making a list on my phone of potential houses that I thought might be going up for sale soon (aka the most run-down houses which are a jackpot for a couple of DIY/Fixer-Uppers like Nate and me!). Only a handful of houses have sold on the MLS in this neighborhood in the past 2 years so I knew we were going to have to act quick if something came up!

More in a later post on how we actually bought this dream land. But for now, we are over here celebrating (and designing!) the future Fillmore Flower Farm!!!!