Moving from St. Louis to Leawood, the Payne family purchased 12 acres of land south of Johnson County in 2017 to pursue their dreams of building a custom home and developing their cut flower farm business. That dream is now a reality, and they live on their flower farm growing and selling flowers in Bucyrus, Kansas called FarmStrong Flowers.
It all started with building their modern Scandinavian barn home, which was designed by Colleen Payne.
“I have a construction background and have been selling real estate in St. Louis for almost 20 years,” says Payne. “I sketched the layout and design and had an architect and engineer draft the drawings. Our home interior has a lot of white oak, high ceilings, some exposed steel beams, black commercial storefront windows and white walls. The exterior is cypress rainscreen siding with a black metal standing seam roof.
The Payne family knew they wanted to do something more with their land than just have a large lawn. Originally, growing produce was the plan until they discovered that growing flowers commercially for cut was a real business. Whatever the plan, it needed to emphasize growing with the environment in mind.
“Growing flowers for cut became an obsession. I had no idea 80% of the flowers we buy in the U.S. from florists and grocery stores are imported. I wanted to be a part of the “slow flowers” and “grown not flown” movement to shift that percentage closer to 50% or less imports and joined the Association for Specialty Cut Flower Growers (ASCFG). I have evolved into a no-till, regenerative-mindset farmer and focus on soil health first and foremost. Most of the specialty cut flower growers in the U.S. are growing intensively in under two acres, which is what we align with. We have chosen to not get organically certified because the certification allows growers to use way more chemicals than I would ever feel comfortable using. I consider myself beyond organic, or better than organic, since I am not using any harmful chemicals for fertilizer, weed suppression or pest management. I’m looking into pursuing the Certified Naturally Grown route instead.
“I focus on using primarily compostable products and avoid single-use plastic as much as possible. I’m very big into recycling everything. We focus on building permanent growing beds that are 3’x100’ with minimal disturbance to the soil. To encourage microbes and beneficials in the soil, we don’t do very much soil disturbance with heavy machinery. We typically tarp a new bed area for a period long enough to kill the grass and weeds underneath and then broadfork manually before laying cardboard and layers of mulched leaves, compost and soil. To avoid having bare soil that can contribute to soil loss from wind and runoff, we use landscape fabric that we reuse year after year. I’m working towards eliminating this step to lessen our plastic on the farm. The health of our field has changed drastically since we bought it in 2017, which was conventionally farmed and was mostly bare soil. We have been letting it heal naturally and have not used any chemicals since purchasing. Heavy tilling is the death of living soil, so we practice and encourage the no or low till farming.”
Formerly Reverie Flower Farm, they changed their name to stand out and symbolize resilience.
“As cut flower farming in the U.S., Canada and worldwide has become a new booming trend, there were too many Reverie named floral businesses popping up. FarmStrong was something my husband always referred to me as even well before we moved to the area and were farming. I have always been physically strong, so that is where it stemmed from. It speaks to being resilient, which is so necessary in life and in farming right now.
“Last year I supplemented my flowers with flowers from other local growers in my informal co-op. I drove to each of the farms on Thursdays and Fridays and brought our blooms to the Park Place Farmers Market on Saturday. It was a great way to market local flower farmers and educate the public about the benefits of local blooms.”
FarmStrong Flowers will be at the Park Place Farmers Market in Leawood from May through October. For more information, visit farmstrongflowers.com.