Our story

It all started when city dwellers Mary and Kevin purchased a beautiful 120+ year old farmhouse on 20 acres near the northern tip of the Door County peninsula in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin. They named it MaFolie Farm, which translates loosely from French to “My Madness”. Mary’s sister, Ann, looked at the property, and said, “You could have a flower farm!” Mary and Kevin thought that was pretty funny. Fast forward a couple years, when Mary and Kevin generously offered to host Ann’s daughter’s wedding on their farm. The ambitious mother-of-the-bride, an avid gardener, thought it would be a great idea to grow the flowers on the farm, too! After all, the 17 acre field was tilled by the local farmer who leased it to grow crops—why not just stake off a small portion—about 1/4 acre—and plant seedlings there in the spring? Seed starting over the winter was something that Ann did every year for her large cottage garden at her home—just scale it up a bit!

Everything was going as planned. The seedlings were growing well and 20 flats and pots of snapdragons, Icelandic poppies, roses, feverfew, delphiniums, dahlias, sweet peas, and more, were hauled from Illinois to the farm in northeast Wisconsin. The future bride and groom, along with the future in-laws, formed the dream planting team with Mary, Kevin, Ann, and Amelia (Mary and Kevin’s daughter), on a fateful Memorial Day weekend in 2022. Little did they know what awaited them in the field—Winter Wheat!

Robbie the Farmer had planted wheat seeds in the fall, so by late May, the wheat had grown too high to be tilled in! A whole day of wheat pulling ensued, followed by planting all the seedlings, tubers, and plants. Whew! The field grew like crazy that summer, and the wedding was held on the most perfect day in late July—it was spectacular! When August rolled around, the field was still bursting with blooms! Lisianthus, dahlias, snapdragons, feverfew, poppies, sweet peas, lavender, and more were still going strong. Should we try to sell them? That’s crazy! And we sold every bloom we cut to local floral designers eager to buy locally grown blooms. And that’s how our moment of madness turned into MaFolie Flower Farm.