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!