How our story began (part 2)

How our story began (part 2)

If you have not read part one of this two-part series of blog posts, be sure to do so by clicking here! You won't want to miss how our story began.

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This feeling was so strong, and we were SO determined to build our future homestead in Dickson despite some of the numerous obstacles we faced. The first house that we fell in love with sat on a steep hillside, and as much as I love Tennessee's rolling hills, it wouldn't make for a great garden, so we had to pass on it.  We quickly went on the rebound and put in an offer on a house that our hearts weren't really connected to, and as fate would have it, we lost the bidding war. From that point, we decided that the right one would come when it did.

Hard at work in my old garden in New Hampshire

One day, Steve called me at work to say he thought he’d found something, and funnily enough I had also been eyeing a potential future home that day, so we agreed to look at them together and plan a long overdue trip back down to Tennesse if we liked either of them enough. When we got together after work, we both turned our phones around to show each other the house we loved, and wouldn't you know, it was the exact same listing...

Can you believe Acres Abloom started as just an empty horse pasture?

...the farm that would eventually become Acres Abloom! We jumped on it and put in an offer sight-unseen (much to the dismay of our realtor). We were confident that this was the place we wanted to be and knew that everything would work out how it was supposed to. And work out it did - we were under contract after only 6 hours of the house being on the market, and in 20 days, it was officially ours! We came down to sign paperwork and ended up in a pinch when we were unable to get a hotel. Our impulsiveness made us realize we had a lot to do before we could move to Tennessee! We both had work commitments, I was still in the middle of closing an estate, we hadn’t sold our farm in New Hampshire yet, and the news outlets were talking about some odd sickness that was breaking out all over the world - time to pivot! 

A warm welcome from the family of deer that would later come to terrorize my flower farm

So, we used our farmers' grit and figured out a way to keep going. We immediately put our house on the market and rented the future site of Acres Abloom to a microbiology research professor.  He was willing to move out when we were ready to make the move to Tennessee, so we felt comfortable renting to him knowing that it would afford us the time we needed. When I asked him what he was studying at Vanderbilt, he said an unknown illness called Covid, which we would later come to learn was the mystery sickness spreading around the world. 


Our future was shrouded in fog, but we were ready to face whatever lay ahead

Obviously, selling a house during a pandemic was not usual! No one wanted to buy anything - we hosted a multitude of open houses that no one attended - but finally, in April of 2022, we got a contract that stuck, and we closed.  All in all, it took 4 Uhaul trucks to move our farm but we got here. But as you all know, moving is only half the battle. We were finally in Dickson, Tennessee, where we'd dreamed of putting down roots for years, but we were left with a house in need of a little TLC and acres of land that had been trampled by horses for years and wasn't at all suitable for planning. But I was determined, and I spent over a year solarizing the grass and cultivating the soil so that it would bear fruit, and eventually, I was able to start sowing seeds. 



The first rows of seeds planted at Acres Abloom

Since moving to Tennessee, we have put a lot of blood, sweat, money and tears into this farm - it's taken a lot to get it to where it is now! Three years later, we have a flourishing farm in the middle of a wonderful community. 

The beauty of the flower farm on a winter's day

We've made so many friends and connections with other local farms and businesses, and we can't think our customers enough for making it possible for us to provide a local source of chemical-free, farm-fresh flowers for you all to enjoy. Here's to another year of spreading joy and embracing community in 2025!

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