We were once a small family operated dairy farm. The property has been in the family for just under a hundred years (1906-2005), and although in the last 15 or so years we could no longer support the dairy herd and all of its many needs, we still felt the need to play in the dirt and make things grow. For many years we had rather extensive vegetable gardens, and many benefited from them. Nobody came to visit with out leaving with a bag of something harvested from the garden.
Although we no longer have any dairy cows, we do have 3 horses on the property (a long way form the 15-18 that used to be seen in the fields - Harolds Mom once raised and bred registered Morgans). No, they are not for riding, although they could be if one wanted to, but for the farm ambiance and their organic by-product which is in high demand in our gardens. I frequently refer to them as our "live lawn ornaments" or our "four legged fertilizer factories".
As our children grew up and moved on to go to college and begin their lives, it became less and less necessary for us to produce a large vegetable garden. Slowly but surely, the beans and beets and carrots etc, moved further and further up our back yard. Every year their patch got smaller and smaller. Every year the flower gardens got bigger and bigger. With the shift in our main garden crop, we still got the pleasure of being out in the garden, but were freed from the bounty of the harvest. We had soon discovered that we could only eat so much produce, and although we did get pleasure from giving it away, we began to enjoy the flowers in the garden even more. At this time, we grow a very limited amount of veggies, but have managed to fill the old garden and many new ones with a rainbow of colorful blooms for most of the summer months. Daylilies are the stars of our garden, but we do grow many other plants also. Along with the daylilies, we have a fairly large collection of Hosta, Iris (Bearded, Siberian, and Japanese) Liliums, and an innumerable amount of mixed perennials. When asked to discribe our garden, the best I can do is to say that it is an informal cottage garden, but with some major "sprawl".
Growing daylilies has also given us a surprise crop that we never anticipated. Daylily wine anyone? Athough still in the infancy of its development, we have produced a few batches, and have greatly enjoyed the people with whom we have shared it. I sincerely doubt it will ever be the focus of our daylily gardening, but it has been a very interesting idea to explore. Mostly it has been a lot of fun, and a great conversation piece when visiting with other daylily lovers. It definately is not the brew for everyone, but we are assured that there is definite potential.
We hope you will all enjoy viewing our new site. Please feel free to browse through our photo galleries. We have been concentrating on the daylily photos and then the hosta photos, so the lilies and Japanese iris galleries are just in the beginning stages. We hope to improve them this summer. The site is a work in progress, so we hope you will check back frequently to see what new might be happening here.