Farm Profile: Flowers for all seasons

Aunt Willie's wildflowers Farm as growers and teachers

July’s sold out Field School workshop location was held at Aunt Willie’s Wildflowers and taught by owners Linda and Roy Doan.

The Doans equally excel at both teaching and farming.

Both Linda and Roy Doan had careers in education. Linda is a retired Milligan University professor of exercise science, and Roy retired after a career in Sullivan County Public Schools. 

During the workshop, they shared about their 20-year flower farm history, and some of the older history that goes back to the 1770s land grant, and their technical production practices and marketing.

“I married a farm when I married a farmer,” says Linda.

“A farm can take you over.”  She told the story of a long hot summer day mowing hay and all things going wrong, early in their marriage,  a day that ended with her sitting and crying from heat exhaustion.

“I knew we needed a niche. So we built a road stand and I took the wildflowers during hay season and put them in jars at the stand by the road. The first day, the flowers were still there but the stand had been taken.” 

Undeterred, they decided to keep at it, by becoming vendors at the Kingsport Farmers Market. 

They were the first professional flower farm in northeast Tennessee.

Over twenty years of business growing and arranging flowers, their farm itself is what drove their business model.  Linda explained how she came to do on-farm events, particularly after retirement, and grew sales and relationships. Starting the flower CSA service so they could plan ahead was a keen business idea for profitability. The Field School workshop included a tour of their greenhouse and other farm sheds and structures that have been repurposed for a professional flower growing operation. The old chicken shed is now the charming flower arranging studio. The shed is now a walk-in cooler. And Aunt Willie’s historic home is a backdrop for their main dahlia and cut flower fields.

“We have taught our competition,” says Linda of their dedication to teaching and sharing through many flower farming 101 courses and individual workshops across the state and country. “We tell everyone to be collegial to each other. We aren’t getting rich, but we’re profitable on this half acre. We will need things from each other, so we need to be connected. We love seeing people make money from their flowers. There’s a big world of ideas out there in the flower growing world.“
 

Above all, she listed joining early on the professional Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers (ASCFG) as a step that propelled her knowledge of how to grow flowers most efficiently.

“There’s a lot more competition today than there was 20 years ago, but if you keep your quality, you keep your customers.”

 Find out what’s new on the Aunt Willie’s Wildflower farm at their website: https://www.auntwillieswildflowers.com

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While the TN Farmland Preservation Fund was being considered in the legislature in spring 2025, the Doans actively reached out to their elected officials on the importance of farmland conservation. Thank you Doans!