How We (Accidentally) Bought a Farm
“I have a crazy idea to run by you.”
These are the words spoken to me by my husband, Dave, that ultimately brought us here to Lucky Fox Farm. Crazy ideas, impulsive moves, big changes—none of these typically are part of Dave’s personality. But those words, at the dinner table on a September evening in 2022, would lead us on an adventure we had not anticipated.
We were living in a great neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia but Dave’s commute to his office in Maryland was long and our yard was pretty small. Dave thought we could find a place with more land where he could either be closer to his office or move his office to our home. The house that originally got us excited was a home on 28 wooded acres in Prince George’s County, Maryland. But we didn’t act on that property right away. We started looking at other homes in the Washington DC region, all within 40 or 50 miles of the District of Columbia—first looking at large lot suburban homes on 2+ acres then increasingly finding ourselves on properties with more acreage, outbuildings, and more “farmlike” vibes.
And as we searched, we started hatching a plan for starting a flower farm after learning about the feasibility of earning revenue from growing specialty cut flowers on just a few acres. Now we were getting excited about what it would take to actually turn this adventure into a business. Along the way, we sort of forgot about the original goal of moving so that Dave could bring his current office home.
Our home in Alexandria sold really fast and we were still looking. Our home search took us to Prince William, County and Loudoun County, Virginia, out to Charles County in Southern Maryland, and to Montgomery, Howard and Frederick counties. We moved into a temporary apartment as we got closer and closer to Christmas and still couldn’t find a place.
The 1890 farmhouse on 12 acres in Middletown, Maryland was a little further out than we had been looking. But when we saw the property—with two silos, a big red barn, and fenced in pastures—the possibilities seemed limitless. We moved in shortly before Christmas…and quickly realized how much work the house needed. In addition to starting a flower farm, we also found that we were going to have a ton of work to do to preserve and make improvements to this old house.
So, from a dinner table conversation in the fall, in only four short months (OK, four short months that felt really long) we began the next phase of our lives and would lead to Lucky Fox Flowers!