Valley Abloom LLC

04/02/2025

Sorry, Kenny Rapp! There’s way more than 500 seedlings right now. 🤭

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03/30/2025

🌻 Lessons from Last Year & New Beginnings 🌻

I’ll be honest, I try to forget the defeat I felt when two entire rows of these beautiful sunflowers were devoured by deer last year. 🦌 But as we all know, the best lessons come from failure. Those lessons tend to stick!

This year, I’m taking action! 8-foot electric fencing is going up to keep these beauties safe from hungry deer. 🏡⚡ In return for taking the deer’s favorite snack Kenny put in food plots in the back fields.

I bet most gardeners grow sunflowers, but these are procuts – a high-end, gorgeous, vase-worthy cut flower! 💐 I can’t wait to see them thrive this year. 🌻

03/30/2025

✨ Creating Magic in the Garden ✨

Welcome to the second perennial garden! 🌸 This year, I'm planting a dreamy mix of Foxglove, Veronica Speedwell, Delphinium, yarrow, Lamb’s Ear, Stonecrop Sedum, Lupine, and Gayfeather. 🌱 During the last snow, I also sowed poppies and coneflowers, and I’m adding a sprinkle of wildflowers to complete the magic. 🌼 Now, I’ll patiently wait for the garden to bloom and bring these dreams to life. 🌷

After a couple of years of building healthy soil with leaf mulch, compost, and pine needles, it’s time to plant. I backfilled the holes with compost, blood meal, bone meal, and kelp meal to give the plants the best start. 🪴 To keep weeds at bay and retain moisture, I topped the soil with straw, followed by a final layer of compost for good measure. 🌾

If the weather doesn’t do it, I’ll give the garden a deep water myself! 💧

03/29/2025

And so it begins! 🫰

03/28/2025

💐 The boys doing the heavy lifting and Margot doing what she does!

03/28/2025

Is anyone else out there completely blown away by how little it has frosted late winter/early spring?! I can’t remember a time that our last frost date has occured so early?

Also, I’m probably going to be tempted by this! 😬

03/27/2025

👦 Grady and Gus 🐕 Last I heard $5 is the going rate for a bucket full of rocks picked from the garden!

03/25/2025

Reason 377 to plant a garden.

🌻 To build a sense of wonder.

03/24/2025

🍓 A reminder that you can go get a few strawberry plants from the nursery now and a few years later have a ton of strawberry plants! Here we have Baby Margot learning the skills when she was a baby! 👩‍🌾

03/23/2025

Here’s my yearly shout out to Ben’s Nursery and Landscape Supply and Clifford's Cut N Clean LLC. We get all our black gold compost from Ben’s Nursery every year and Josh at Clifford’s Cut N Clean LLC delivers it out to us. Just look at how beautiful it is in the beds and flower gardens and it makes all the difference in what we grow! Hit them up if you need a load or two! I could NOT grow my jungle without them. 🙂

03/22/2025

Changing smellies, garden wellies, and full bellies has pretty much summed up life around here the past decade or so. Maybe add in puppy dog tails and chicken fails, too.

03/22/2025

I wonder if my husband thought he got off easy because I don’t care about manicures, jewelry, or designer bags.

But little did he know, I’m obsessed with black gold!

Who needs shiny jewelry when you've got 20 cubic yards of rich, nutrient-packed compost to spread in the flower rows and top the raised beds?

Oh, and I do love a good manicure though; dirt manis are my favorite! 😉

Sorry, not sorry.

The designer bags would have been cheaper…

03/21/2025

Local fire department is hard at it today!

03/21/2025

🏃‍♀️ 🪴 RUN to your local library!!

Our Seed Library is stocked up and ready to go! These won't last long, so hurry in!

03/20/2025

Attention Honey Lovers!

Your favorite honey is now available for purchase at Oberle Meats in Ste. Genevieve!

In the event you are new to Exit 157 Farm and Apiary and it's honey, be advised that we hand write the bee's actual location on each bottle. Rather than mix all of our honey together each season, we take the added time and effort to keep each yard separate. This allows you to buy a honey that's closest to you if that is your goal, or try a true "taste of Ste. Genevieve"! To do that though, you'll want to buy them all 😏. Every year the color, texture and taste will change, to reflect what the bees harvested that year. This is why you see such variances in honey color.

Again...Big thanks to Steve and the Oberle crew for allowing Exit 157 onto your store's shelves! And to Cedar Ridge Design for dealing with all of my demands for new signs and labels! It's much appreciated when small businesses can come together and support one another! Shop local. Buy local.

Please remember to like, follow, and share our content and help us grow one small click at a time!

Thanks,

Nick

03/20/2025

03/20/2025

🐣 Are we up at 3:30 in the morning? Yes! Why? Because Margot just became a chick mama again! She heard me get up to check on the babies and followed me.