Beautiful blooms: A colorful journey through Lily Oak Farms
Photos by Rachel Howard
After sixteen years working as a sonographer, commuting more than an hour one way to work each day, Hartselle native Ashton Davis and her husband Jimmy decided it was time to find a way for her to be home more often. The work was fulfilling and enjoyable, but working eight hours and then being in the car for two more hours each day began to make her job in Huntsville untenable.
“We’ve got two girls, ten and thirteen, and we’d been praying for over a year and we also wanted to try and make our land profitable,” Davis said.
Davis and her husband, who is originally from Danville, met when she was a freshman in high school. After they purchased thirty-five acres in Falkville they knew they wanted to do something with their land, but they weren’t quite sure what. Neither Davis nor her husband Jimmy had much experience farming, with the exception of the small vegetable garden they had grown for the past five or six years and a few goats and chickens, but after a few of her husband’s co-workers talked about bees and flowers they decided growing flowers might be a real option.
After the birth of a couple of goats, Davis’s daughters decided they wanted to name any female goats after flowers and any male goats after trees. When they decided to start their flower farm, they knew they wanted something special, so they decided to name the farm after their first two baby goats, Lily and Oak. Thus Lily Oaks Farms was born.
Looking for guidance and a mentor, Davis emailed a flower farmer in Vinemont that was getting out of the business and was willing to coach Davis for her first season of farming. “They made a lot of mistakes their first couple of years and there’s a lot of things they had to learn. I didn’t have to make those mistakes because of them. She went step-by-step from starting the seed indoors, when to plant it, how to pick it and how to cut it. She did that so I could know what florists would buy from me.”
While she is very pleased with the success she has had so far, Davis says ultimately the blessing Lily Oaks Farms has provided for her and her family is the opportunity to be home with her daughters.
“We wanted to cultivate our land, but mainly I only have a few more years with my girls being at home, and this allowed me to be home with my girls for the first summer ever and cultivate their hearts,” she said.
Knowing the importance of being home with her children made the transition from the medical field to flower field very easy. “I knew I wanted to be home with them,” Davis said. I wanted to do things with them and they have both been huge helpers, from washing trays to planting in the field at night.”
Their main focus is to grow flowers for wholesalers and designers, but in order to minimize the amount of flowers thrown away, Lily Oaks Farms also has a self-serve roadside farm stand.
“It’s at the end of the driveway and I just put bouquets of flowers and vegetables out there and people just drop by and buy whatever they need,” she added.
“I don’t want to say taking this on was scary, because there’s a lot of faith involved. It’s a great opportunity just to be able to do this with our family and to step out in faith and obedience: whether we make a dollar or we don’t, that’s ok. I had never grown a flower in my life until I grew thousands of them, but it was honestly what the Lord laid on our heart and once we started researching there was no turning back.”
Lily Oak Farms is located at 1606 W Lacon Rd., Falkville.
