BUTLER COUNTY, Ohio – A perfect Sunday evening for flower lovers is coming up on Aug. 9 from 5-8 pm. A Flower Farm Tour will be visiting three neighboring flower farms. At each farm, visitors can pick a bucket of flowers, have refreshments, and learn what it takes to run a flower farm.

Morning Sun Flower Farm, the first tour stop, is owned by Mindy and Josh Staton, who also own the Farmers Collective in Hamilton. Mindy is a florist – she and her mom run Two Little Buds, also in Hamilton. A trend started where clients wanted more of a garden feel to their flowers. Since she and her husband lived on a farm, it was an easy step.

“That was a trend that started in 2015,” Mindy said. “ It made more sense for me to grow them instead of importing flowers that we could grow here in Ohio.”

Eventually, they opened the farm for u-pick flowers. They have now expanded to have a greenhouse and a hoop house.

“If someone is interested in starting a flower farm, I would say grow four or five easy plants: zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers, amaranths; start there and start small,” Mindy said. “Try 25 or 30 plants of each and then see how that goes. As you learn what works, then you can start adding perennials or annuals that are a little bit more finicky to grow.”

It is all a learning curve, she said. Start with a stand in front of your house or sell to a local florist. Then you can get into season expanders, winter sowing so you have flowers in early spring. People want local flowers.

The local flowers continue at the second tour stop, Farmhouse Blooms, where Sarah and Ray Seals have a little more than an acre of flowers on the family farm.

Sarah has always loved flowers. The fall before COVID, she bought seeds, planning to take flowers to farmers markets in the spring. COVID hit and things shut down. Instead of just growing the flowers for herself, she decided to open it up for u-pick.

“I invited people to the farm, and I was the first in the area to do that,” she said. “I didn’t even know flower u-pick existed; I just flew by the seat of my pants. I love to learn as I go.”

People were delighted to be able to get out and pick flowers during the pandemic. Later, when festivals started up again, Seals built a flower trailer, which she drives to festivals and other locations. People can come in and pick out a bouquet of cut flowers.

Flower farming is a lot of work, Seals said. People need to find their niche. She got started because she married into a farm family and wanted to find her own thing to do on the farm. It keeps her happy.

And flower tourists will be happy as they continue to the third and final stop of the tour, 7 Wonders Farm. Besides flowers, 7 Wonders has a farm market so tourists can shop and take food home.

Jennifer and Mark Bayne and family had been homesteading in Colerain Township, a suburban area. They had backyard chickens and rabbits and “everything we shouldn’t have had in Colerain Township. Flowers were always in the picture, she said.

“It all started when my husband bought home some chickens,” Jennifer said. “You know the chicken math? You start with four and the next thing you know it’s 40.”

So, they bought some property in 2017. Jennifer was growing produce and her husband was not cooking it up fast enough, so they loaded up and headed to Oxford Farmers Market with mostly vegetables and a few flowers.

“Then we grew more flowers,” Jennifer said. “And then we started the u-pick for the flowers. We are trying to get more into the wholesale and wedding market. We recently joined the Hamilton Bridal District.

The Baynes have seven greenhouses, three heated and four that are not. The flowers are mostly in the non-heated greenhouses, but it helps them get an earlier start in the spring.

“We can have Mother’s Day bouquets,” Jennifer said. “We get May flowers in April. Overwintering them in the ground, with a little cover, they come up a few weeks earlier.”

The flower business has gotten bigger over the years. Their biggest sales are at farmers markets, especially the Oxford Farmers Market, home of Miami University. The students like the flowers. Jennifer and Mark’s daughter, Erin, makes most of the bouquets, and she is taking over the flower side of the business.

“She has an eye for what the students are looking for,” Jennifer said.

For information on the tour, visit https://shopthefarmerscollective.com/products/flower-farm-tour-with-morning-sun-flower-farm-farmhouse-blooms-7-wonders-farm-8-9-5-8pm.