About Us
Well, hello there. We’re glad you stopped by our page. We are Summer and Wade Wilkinson, flower and vegetable farmers. Or at least we’re trying to become farmers.
Our journey started about a year and a half ago. Like many of you, our lives were turned inside out with the onset of Covid-19. I had spent the past 20 years as a computer consultant in the utilities industry and would normally travel 40 or more weeks out of the year. Leave on Sunday afternoon or Monday morning and return in the wee hours of Friday. A truly grueling routine. And then Covid stopped the travel. I was still able to work, serving my clients remotely, but no longer able to travel. Turns out that this saves my clients a lot of money, so I should be travelling a lot less when the Covid emergency is truly over.
Summer is a CPA and owns her own firm. She was working from a home office, so her routine didn’t change much with the rise of Covid, other than having me at home instead of flying around the country.
At the time we were living in a Suburb of Dallas. Life was good, but we were getting a little cabin fever. We’d always talked about moving to the country and escaping the hustle and bustle of the big city. I looked at our situation and suggested to Summer that we move to Tennessee to be closer to her parents and family. She contacted a real estate agent that afternoon.
There’s something you should know about Summer. Once she sets her mind on a goal, it is laser focused. Our house in Texas sold and closed in 4 weeks. (It’s a really hot real estate market.) We had everything we owned packed into storage pods and headed to Tennessee with our small travel trailer and 2 puppies, thinking we’d live in it until we found a place to buy.
Finding the right property took a lot longer than we thought. We would locate a great place and find that the internet infrastructure would not suite our needs. We both need high speed connectivity. Or find a place that was a little too small for our dreams. Or way out of our price range. Or already under contract. Tennessee is a really hot real estate market too.
It took almost 6 months but we finally found a home. It has a log home, 42 acres of pasture and some woods, flowing creeks and springs. It’s heaven. Just look through the photos page and I’m sure you’ll agree. And what makes this a unicorn is fiber optic internet in one of the most rural parts of Tennessee. Yes, we have gigabit internet. Our closest neighbor is half a mile away and Summer’s family is within a half hour drive to the north and south. We are situated about half way between her sister and her parents.
During our long search for a property, I started looking into market gardening, raising livestock and doing woodworking to supplement our income. I stumbled upon flower farming and shared a Youtube video about it with Summer.
Laser targeting was engaged and Summer ran with it. She’s always had a passion for landscaping and live plants. Every home we’ve ever had was always a showcase of flowers and interesting landscaping. This interest blossomed into a cut flower farm.
We have been on Sweetie Pie Farm for a year and 1 month as of this writing. It’s been a busy year of learning, working, researching, working, buying equipment, working and even more working. This year we’re scheduled to be in 2 farmer’s markets. Friday evening in Loretto Tennessee and Saturday morning in Madison Alabama.
Come see us!
* sorry about the text colors changing. Trying to make the text readable against the photo of our old barn.