Belle Blooms Farm

09/23/2025

Story time! In early 2024, I bought a couple of new dahlia varieties from after having the delightful experience of seeing them in real life in her field. If you are a mid-Atlantic dahlia grower, you should give LeeAnn’s varieties a try – They are born and bred in PA and truly thrive in our hot and humid summers, plus in my experience they are tall strong plants that produce fab-o tubers. Anyway, bummer - I never planted the new tubers in 2024. Fast forward to 2025…I am working and growing at and found the old box from Coseytown with a couple of shriveled up tubers, and decided to pot them up…SURPRISE! A 16 month old Coseytown Kate tuber sprouted, and I took a cutting. We now have two plants growing here at Clear Ridge and they are PUMPING OUT BLOOMS! The plants are tall, prolific and gorgeous. How?!?! Tubers are not meant to hold for that long, but somehow, someway, here we are. It feels like a little bit of magic!

How are your dahlias growing this season? There was a minute there where we weren’t sure we’d have much of a harvest…But happy to report the dahlias are thriving in the cooler fall temps and as usual, knocking our socks off!

Wishing you all a little bit of magic and a table full of flowers! Happy growing :)

03/26/2025

Happy hens lay yummy eggs! From a customer last week…
“I wanted to say these eggs are amazing! Thank you so much for providing such decadence, you can tell these are from some happy hens!”
Grab a dozen (or two) and enjoy a ride out to the farm to pick them up!

11/12/2024

This is a REALLY hard time of year for some. The shorter days and the anticipation of the holidays…Expectations that are not met, loneliness, depression. If you know someone who is struggling, I’d love to offer you a card to mail….I have so SO many of these delightful little cards that are sure to cheer someone up and it will only take you a couple of minutes to write a heartfelt note to someone in your life that you know is struggling in some way. Please like and share so we can spread some cheer together 🩷❤️🧡

10/09/2024

The end (of my 2024 season) is near! Last week I was NOT ready but something changed over the weekend. Besides a cool down in weather and shorter days, all of a sudden my mind is shifting to the many fall tasks ahead. This flower life is full, beautiful, at times frenzied (spring and especially fall), and full of hard stuff - manual labor, small margins, a changing climate, weeds…I learn new things almost every day and no season looks the same. I am planning a blog series about the lessons I have learned in my time in the garden! Looking forward to having some time to write.

As always, thank you for following along here! I love sharing the beauty and the bounty 💜

09/30/2024

Greetings from a wet and soggy farm and farmer 👩🏻‍🌾! I have been stunned and saddened at the photos of the aftermath of hurricane Helene. We are all so vulnerable to a catastrophic event like this, and I am praying for those affected this time…Here in Adamstown we are on day 9? Of a very rainy period after an extreme drought that brought me to my knees in tears on more than one occasion this summer. I keep working because I know I am pretty lucky to even have a crop of dahlias to harvest. And the lessons this field teaches me every day! I need to start sharing those here more often but today it’s simply a reminder that the plants just want to bloom - even in the grayest, gloomiest week I can remember (and that’s saying a lot, 2018!) these plants want to bring joy and color and nourishment and just like they are doing their job, I need to do mine and share the beauty and the bounty. 💜🩷🧡

09/17/2024

Peaches n cream has been the *star* of my otherwise rough season. Somehow she keeps churning out the most stunning perfect blooms by the bucket load - since late June - and somehow I never tire of ✂️✂️✂️ because she is perfection. I love how consistent she is (even when she’s not - hello mostly peachy orange blooms I love you). She’s a must grow! Do you have a consistently amazing dahlia you can’t live without? I love to learn of new varieties - please share below 📥

09/11/2024

In my blonde era…
Platinum Blonde that is 🙃 really loving this new-to-me dahlia variety with that anemone center - so much texture - these gals add lots of whimsy and movement and fun. Are you growing any anemone varieties that I should know about?

09/05/2024

I’ve been so quiet here! This summer was…intense. Hot and dry - I only wanted to be in the pool. The goal was to teach my girl to swim…Mission accomplished! All of a sudden July turned into September - back to school (kindergarten WHAT!) and cool mornings and buckets full of dahlias and all of a sudden - the time to care for them and harvest them!

I’ve been in the weeds - literally and figuratively - for at least 4 of the last 6 seasons and definitely for the last 2 months. I have no idea what next season looks like for me, right now I’m just happy to be cutting buckets for my very loyal and appreciated clients and every week, and enjoying the cooler temps and the rhythm & routine that the fall brings.

Wishing you a vase full of late summer’s most beautiful bounty to enjoy before it’s all just a colorful memory ✨ Hopefully you will choose locally grown flowers when possible! 🩷🤍❤️

07/29/2024

Crushing hard on this new addition to the farm! Henry Eilers rudbeckia - petite fluted blooms that seem to open in threes, they pop in bouquets and seem to play well with everything I put them next to. I’ve been wanting to grow this variety for a loooong time and am so glad I was able to source them from and get them in the ground last fall!

07/10/2024

It’s so hot the dahlias are burning up 🥵 (the farmer is too). The overwintered varieties are so tall and have been blooming since early June, but they need a break. I’ve been taking lots of breaks too - trying to get work done in the mornings and swimming/eating lots of popsicles in the afternoons. Our irrigation is slower than usual which means I need to take it apart and start fresh. Ready to put the whole field under shade cloth! Stay cool out there friends!

06/27/2024

Having a total love affair with statice this season - it is so easy (I need more easy in my life…!) and blooms like crazy, comes in so many good colors, dries well and most varieties hold their color…excited to use it in mixed bouquets and dried floral work. Blue flowers make up a small percentage of all the flower colors out there so I try hard to always have something blue blooming - it really plays well with most things. Do you have a favorite variety?

06/26/2024

When I pray for rain I always hope it comes with no wind 🤪 this really hits home! Irrigating has been a full time job the last few weeks!

We’d like all your hopes, prayers, and rain dances, please!

So far it’s been a garbage year for crops. It started out too wet, then we had extreme slug damage, hail, and now no rain. Pretty crazy that our whole industry is governed by the thing we don’t control— the weather.

We NEED rain or there will be total losses. That translates to no income, and long term effects like no feed— the corn and crops we grow now are to feed into next season. The crops others are growing go to many other uses and will have other reaching effects.

This isn’t meant to be a sob story, but to bring light to folks who don’t farm and might not grasp what this whole thing entails. You have to pay to play— meaning you HAVE to up front pay for seed, equipment, fertilizer, etc. You are gambling there will be a harvest that pays your bills that are a certainty.

Anyway, please hope or pray for rain and if y’all have any good rain dances you are encouraged to share them!