It was five years ago this weekend that we moved into this home with an 18 month old baby and started Finding Eminence Farm.

We are not the same people that we were on day one.

Our child is in kindergarten, there have been career shifts, we have wandered and wondered and gotten our hands dirty and have built a sustainable business that makes money. This thang hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s been the hardest things I have ever done and continue to do.

One of our first products when we started the farm was our story. We invited you the reader to follow a long with us as we started a farm with no farming background. We’ve strayed away from telling our story because we have been so bogged down with trying to keep a new born business afloat.

This winter has left me planning and budgeting harder than we’ve ever done before. There’s a misconception that as your business gets older it should expand and become larger each year. I want the opposite of that. I want a business that reduces expenses each year and just gets leaner and more efficient for me to be able to spend time with our child during the summer and be a good version of myself at the end of the day.

Our hoop houses are currently full of spring floral goodies waiting for winter to snap into spring. Seeds are being started and warmed under grow lights. We’re moving forward into 2020 while still seeing the remnants of 2019 lurking in the edges. There’s still landscape fabric on the ground in the field that were never properly cleaned up. The shed and floral studio are also in this category. In December, I tore tendons in my ankle and it still doesn’t feel right.

As our farm has grown, our social media presences has increased, surveys returned with kind words and hard to hear constructive criticism, it’s been hard to know what to share and how to share it.

While reflecting on the past five years and looking into 2020, here’s what I do know:

• I want to grow high quality flowers that are hard to find and show they were painstakingly cared for
• I want our wedding clients to feel like they are receiving an experience and products that are not produced elsewhere
• I want people to come to our farm to learn how flowers and food are grown and you feel better when you spend time outside and you conjure magic when you create
• I want to work with people who have good work ethic, are nice, and are human beings
• I want to create experiences for people that reconnect them with nature and more importantly each other
• I want to reiterate that no one knows what we’re doing and we’re all just doing the best we can while floating around on this blue marble

I want to work hard and work with people who are nice. I hope you feel that when you’re here. I hope you feel that when you eat our microgreens, buy our flowers, take a class, or hold our flowers when you walk down the aisle to the rest of your life.

I hope you feel the wonder we have discovered on this little windy hilltop.