Hi I am Sarah, while this farm is a family effort, I am the farmer and floral designer. I’m also a homeschooling mom, a speech pathologist, a wife, and a Jesus follower. The story of Green Pastures is a story of beauty from ashes. It is a small story, but one I love very much.
In 6 weeks of April and May of 2024 I lost my grandfather to the beauty and heartache of old age. I lost my father to the devastation of mental illness. I lost my best friend Brittany to ravages of cancer. She was only 38 and had a life full of people who loved her and prayed desperately for her healing, including her 4 babies aged 6-12 at the time.
I spent the rest of that year encompassed by grief, depression and sorrow. I felt bittersweet about my papaw, grateful for the end of his inevitable decline, but finding a hollow spot in my heart where he used to be. I grieved the father I had just lost, the father I lost to mental illness before that, and the father I needed but never had. I ached for Brittany’s friendship, discipleship, and unwavering loyalty. I was so mad that someone so good had suffered so much I could barely see straight sometimes.
I grieved whilst homeschooling 3 kids, and working 20ish hours a week. I cried when I could find the space where nobody else needed me. It wasn’t enough time.
Spring of 2025 brought light and new life like only spring can. On March 17, I lost my job unexpectedly. When I probed my heart I felt only relief. With unemployment I found something I longed for- a little more time. I needed to be outside so I started paying attention to my very first rose bush, given to me on my 41st birthday, the day Brittany died. It soon became apparent that I needed more rose bushes. By April there was more than 20, by May more than 50, by October more than 70. I also decided that I needed some more things. Hydrangeas, astilbe, lily of the valley, Aldi clearance dahlia tubers, 50 calla lilies, a few packs of zinnias and 7 kinds of basil. In June I filled my house with roses and Callas. In August I cut my first dahlia blooms and I was elated.
While I planted, watered, sowed and reaped, I healed. I met with the Lord in the Garden. Gardens are precious to Him. He made a Garden for his first children. He spent His own Son’s last night with him in a garden.
He gave me a garden and made me as whole as I can be with all of these holes. He used thorn scratches and failures, perfect blooms and the owl that comes most summer days to keep me company.
In my garden He reminded me that in my true home, my perfect home, everyone I had lost was already there. And in the meantime, He offered me this beautiful land, a green pasture to rest in.
By September 2025 I had a vision, a budget, and a plan. Green Pastures flower farm specializing in making gorgeous, unique and high-end flowers accessible and affordable for middle class people like me.
Our model includes a cut flower subscription (my passion) with blooms valuable enough to sell to florists when there is excess. This is an investment in my land, my family and the good work my Lord is doing in us. I pray for God to bless this farm. I pray with gratitude, because I am already receiving greater blessings: beauty, quiet, dirt under my fingernails, a vase arrangement that really must be good because the teen girls approved, a boy to plant bulbs with, and a couple of dogs to follow me around.
Every poison ivy rash, bug bite, thorn scratch and lawnmowered rose bush (looking at you Matt) has already been worth it. Praise to Him who makes me lie down in green pastures, who leads me beside still waters, who continues to restore my soul.