As summer turns to fall, Lauren Catey Dillon is thinking about love. Specifically, weddings — the small flower farmer rents out her barn for events year-round. This helps support her family through Indiana winters, when the dahlias and the sunflowers slumber under frost. Selling cut flowers to florists is just one part of Dillon and her husband’s income: They also create floral designs for events, run DIY flower workshops, sell bulk buckets of flowers, manage CSA subscriptions, and run a farmstand two days a week. In addition to the farm, they both work at nearby Ivy Tech Community College; her husband Jem is an adjunct philosophy professor and a success coach, helping first-generation college students navigate the education system.
Although flower farming can seem dreamy, something out of the romantasy novels Dillon reads in the spare hours between multiple jobs and co-parenting their toddler Imogene, the reality is that flowers alone cannot sustain their modest lifestyle. Sales of cut flowers in Indiana totaled $461,000 last year, about 15% of what the CEO of 1-800-FLOWERS earns annually — an extremely slim slice of that is the Dillons.
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