By Bruce Karnick

[email protected]

A unique business has opened on the border of Hastings and Rosemount, Emery Acres Flower Farm. Emery Acres is a ‘youpick- em’ business for flowers. Founded by the mother daughter team of Connie and Alicia Merriman, Emery Acres opened in June of this summer. The farm is located on the east side of Emery Ave, just inside the border of Rosemount, about a 10-minute drive from Hastings out County Road 46. Connie and her husband have lived on the farm since 1996 and they have had a dream of sharing the beauty of their gardens as part of a business.

Connie is a lifetime gardener, a trait that Alicia inherited from her mother at a young age. Both excel at growing flowers and produce.

“Back in January, my mom said, hey, I want to do a you pick flower farm. And my dad said, well, I want to retire someday. And that sounds like work. I don’t want to do it. And I said, well, I’m in Let’s go. So, she started ordering all the seeds and doing all the planning for the garden.

I started doing all the research and planning for the behind-the-scenes business, you know, setting up entities, and dealing with taxes and all that good stuff,” Alicia explained.

See EMERYACRES Page 3

Alicia and Connie Merriman, owners of Emery Acres Flower Farm, at the service counter of their small retail space where they offer the pitchers and flower vases for purchase along with water and ice-cream. Photo by Bruce Karnick

This row of flowers greets guests as they enter the farm portion of Emery Acres Flower Farm. Photo by Bruce Karnick Emery Acres

From Page 1

A key piece that Alicia worked on was separating the business from the personal side of things. Making sure the family was protected because the property is also their home. As the legal side of things was taking shape, so were the flowers.

“We started planting in my parents’ basement, the most inefficient way,” Alicia chuckled. “We’d run to the sink and fill up our water and we would plant all the seeds. We had some help from friends that would come over and we would plant the seeds and then just keep them under the growth lights and keep watering them. So literally their entire basement was flooded with plant seeds.”

Of course, they hope to improve that process for the following offseason along with improving their greenhouse setup in the future. For now, they are going to focus on their main goal of everyone that visits leave happy. Guests can expect to see a wide variety of flowers from nearly 10,000 they planted this year, something they also look to expand in the future. Other features they are proud of, a children’s area for the kids to play, plenty of rest spots in the shade and they provide all the tools you need to pick your flowers, including pitchers to carry the cut flowers around the property.

As guests enter the property, they walk by a small building that has the pitchers, tools, water and snacks. Nearby is the arrangement area where guests can bring their haul to properly cut and arrange it in vases that are also available for purchase. This is just before the pathway opens to the farm space where all the flowers are laid out neatly in rows.

The property is well laid out and has plenty of room to expand for years to come, as they optimize the business side of things. For their first summer in business, the size seems just about right. Their services are solid too. If you cannot pick your own flowers, they will do the arrangement for you along with delivering it.

Their current hours for the you pick side is Friday through Sunday, 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. To learn more about Emery Acres, including an expanded list of their services and prices, visit www.emeryflowers.com