Just A Morning on the Lily Farm

It takes a team to keep this rambshackly place running

To visitors, our little farm looks ramshackle cute, fresh with spring green and snowdrops around the outhouse this time of year. The place is quiet and even calming. But it's a deceitful little place. Let's take a closer look at what's really going on behind those weathered outbuildings.

One shed still has its cypress shake roof, probably installed about 1900. It leaks a lot, but today, it protects 10,000 pounds of tubers, rhizomes, bulbs, and corms imported from India. These are killer, rare plants that will eventually sell, but for the moment, we're hoping it doesn't rain and that the wood shingled roof doesn't let leaks drizzle on treasures like blood and voodoo lilies.

Handsome, tropical looking leaves, big beautiful bulbs and stunning red flowers of blood lilies.

One shed has wi-fi, shaky but it's there. We tore down the calf stalls and rebuilt this into an office. Today, Mathew, the computer guy, is in there renovating our laptops and plant labeling system. We can't sell rare bulbs without labels.

Trish is in the old chicken house, built in the ‘30s—I'm guessing. It looks like the same chicken house, but on a date weekend, long before we were married, Tom and I tore it down and rebuilt it as a shipping shed. It’s Trish’s domain now— she sending out rare bulbs that we grow—with labels that Mathew set up.

Cole is in the old garage, the kind of 1930s garage that would barely fit a modern golf cart. It’s where we set up lunch for farm tours and workshops. He's splitting and stacking wood from the downed trees for next winter. He's the end of the line for today's big work event.

That cycle starts with three generous volunteers helping Tom and me out behind what we call the smoke house. It’s not actually a smoke house—more like a tobacco drying barn. Nonetheless, we call it the smoke house, and it lost its entire roof, rafters and all, during Helene.

The big event today is Helene's pecan tree clean-up. Pee-can, we say in these parts. Storm clean-up, we say, like it's one thing. It's Tom, me, and these three extremely generous volunteers. They've shown up with chainsaws, gloves, shears, and muscle. Most importantly, they've done this kind of work, and they get it; tree and farm field clean-up is a process and an art.

First, we get the little stuff, such as baseball bat diameter and undercut. That gets the fire pile stacked. Stacking is an art, too—you have to understand fire to be a good stacker.

Second, we cut the next size up into 20-inch chunks. Those can be stacked directly in the firewood shed. Since the storm made us rich in firewood, Buck’s little donkey house is going to become wood storage.

Third, we cut the big stuff into 20-inch segments that get loaded into Daddy's old Chevy truck and taken to Cole for splitting. There's lots of noise, oily gas exhaust smells, and bonding. But the bonding is quiet as we all have on ear-plugs. We watch each other, look out for each other, and stop our work to jump in when another guy is doing something dangerous.

This is the final part; the trunks and roots that are too heavy to move will stay in place or we’ll build a burn pile on top of them.

We all take a break. Trish comes out of the shipping shed with a mess of blood lilies, and Momma calls us to the barn. She's made biscuits with muscadine jelly that she put up last year.

For a few minutes, the farm is deceptively quiet, calm, and romantic again. Rested and refreshed, we return to work, the tapping of keystrokes and rumble of chainsaws, the dog barking, and the UPS man yelling; the farm's soundtrack.

To the untrained eye, our efforts might seem scattered and the buildings ramshackle, but there's a method to the madness. Each piece and person competes this patchwork quilt. Though the work is never done, we wouldn't have it any other way, and the people who love it by sharing their work, their ideas, or by showing up for a farm tour when things are quiet and cute are part of this farm family.

Join us for fun events this summer! A casual lunch and learn, a day making cords and beads from native plants or for our evening spectacular Moth Ball - to celebrate and count for National Moth Week.