After my granddad’s funeral, all the flowers from the service were brought to my grandparents’ house where they filled up the living room. I sat in that room a long time with those flowers…their beauty and scent were overwhelming…and I knew I was sitting in a shadow of heaven! That was the start of my true love for flowers.
Time passed and I found myself married to a farmer. My husband and I started growing wholesale pumpkins as a row crop over 15 years ago to help save towards our children’s college expenses. As our business ‘Arkansas Crop Technologies’ grew, we wanted to find a way to use the pumpkins to serve our faith and community. Our two kids helped us come up with a great idea and the annual ‘Great 5K Pumpkin Run and Pumpkin Patch’ was born, with all proceeds going to a local shelter for abused and neglected kids.
As my kids grew up into wonderful young adults, I had more time to think about new ideas and my thoughts continually drifted back to what I love. So, I decided to try my hand at flowers. We live on 20 acres not far from Little Rock, Arkansas and years ago we named our farm Sweetgum for its plentiful Sweetgum trees. So now, Arkansas Crop Technologies is also doing business as Sweetgum Flower Farm. We are not only growing local, fresh-cut flowers to sell but are using them to give ‘Faith Flowers’ that provides free bouquets of beautiful flowers to people in shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, or funeral homes who need to see a shadow of heaven!
sweetgumflowerfarm.com 