The Beginning of Our Tale

Prairie Grace Farm is owned and operated by two city folk who recently moved to the country.  The closest either one of us got to the rural life was when Jim, my husband, would spend summers on his grandparents' farm in western Kansas.  Especially fond memories of those days planted the seed of owning a farm in his soul.

As for me, I've lived in the city all my life, fighting hour-long traffic and eating vegetables out of a can.  I was so surprised the first time I ate a crisp green bean or a spear of asparagus - neither one of them looked or tasted like their canned counterparts.  Then I started buying my produce at the farmers' market in Tulsa and met some real-life farmers.  Jim and I started dreaming of buying a farm and living a simpler life.  Now, our dream is a reality and we are living in Winfield, Kansas, on a 10-acre piece of paradise.

Who knew that potatoes had flowers?

What do we know about growing vegetables?  I say not much.  I still consider it a miracle when a seed the size of a pin head sprouts into a full-grown and quite delicious basil plant.  Jim laughed when I opened up my first packet of corn seeds and saw they were just kernels of corn.  This year I planted my first watermelon, and, guess what?  Watermelon seeds are of those same seeds you spit out when eating watermelon.  Who knew? 

We keep telling each other that this is our experimental year.  We didn't decide until three weeks ago to make this our full-time profession, so we have a rather small area of land that is now growing produce:  just 1/3 of an acre.  On that land we're growing potatoes, lettuce, radishes, turnips, broccoli, bush beans, black beans, peas, tomatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon, peppers, cucumbers, okra, squash and zucchini.  We're selling at the Walnut Valley Farmers' Market, which doesn't open until June 2.  We're not sure if we're going to have enough product to make much of an impression that first Saturday, but, again, we're experimenting.

Patty pan squash in full bloom.

One thing keeps me going and that is something I remember Mary Kay saying all those years ago when I worked at the Mary Kay headquarters.  She'd say that you can do everything wrong with the right attitude and succeed and do everything right with the wrong attitude and fail.  So, we've got a good attitude.  We're happy that our office is now the great outdoors; that our co-workers are the birds, the bees and the dogs; and that we're working for ourselves, instead of someone else.