Daily Inspiration: Meet Ronni Hannon

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ronni Hannon

Hi Ronni, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’m Ronni Hannon with Kansas Girl Flowers. I own a small scale cut flower farm with my sister Lacey Webster. We currently serve up blooms across the Greater Kansas City area. We started growing flowers in 2021 as a way to get through the pandemic. Once we started growing flowers, we fell in love with their beauty. We knew we had to share our blooms with the world, so we started our cut flower farm, Kansas Girl Flowers.

Over the past handful of years we have experienced some hurdles including an unexpected farm move, crop failures, & challenges with our Midwest weather. Although we have had some challenges, the joy our flowers bring both our family & community far outweighs any struggles. We have learned to navigate our storms & are thrilled that we have been able to expand into two growing locations in Paola, KS & our newest in Leavenworth, KS.

Our main focus has shifted over the years & is now twofold. We are now offering Porch Petals, our farm CSA (community supported agriculture), in which we offer pick up & delivery of seasonal cut flower bouquets for local flower lovers who order a share of our crop before the season kicks off. The second part of our business is that we now distribute cut flower plugs across the nation. We offer the plant starts to other small scale farms & home gardeners who want to grow specialty cut flowers.

We absolutely love what we do & continue to evolve as we grow. We aren’t afraid to pivot our efforts to align with our goals & the needs of our flower community. Through much trial & error, we have learned what works for the season of life that we are in. Every small business has a limited number of resources both in regards to time & monies. We’ve learned that we deeply value having more time on weekends to tend to our flowers, so we shifted our business model away from farmer’s markets to align with our needs. We are grateful for our gardens & our flower friends who support our business over & over again. Entrepreneurship, especially in the farming industry, can be such a risk, & the community that we have supporting us has been such a blessing that we are forever thankful for.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Getting Kansas Girl Flowers off & running was not necessarily a smooth start. We’ve had more than a few challenges.

In our first year as a business, we were surprised to learn that we had to move out of our borrowed growing space in the heat of a summer. Moving delectate cut flower plants in 95 plus degree heat is no east feat. We recommend transplanting in spring or fall. If you must transplant in summer, like we did, use lots of water & be sure to replant in the cool of the very early morning or late evening. Keep watering after planting!

Additionally, this past summer, we experienced a pretty large loss due to thrips, tiny insects, that decided to feed & multiply on our gladiolus crop. We had only two gladiolus bloom instead of the 1,500 corms that we planted. Since we do not spray for pests, we have worked to find organic solutions. One thing we do it strategically grow supporting plants that attract beneficial predatory insects. Sadly, our efforts were too late to save the gladiolus. As we continue to navigate these hurdles, we lean into both each other as sister farmers & our flower community. We also aren’t afraid to reach out to our fellow Kansas City flower grower community as farmers tend to support each other, & it really is such a blessing to have other growers to relate to when the going gets tough. So far the good has far outweighed the bad, & we try to do our best to navigate any storms that come our way.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Kansas Girl Flowers is a micro flower farm. We specialize in growing cut flowers that we use to design our hand tied bouquets for our Porch Petal, farm CSA, members. We also specialize in distributing specialty cut flower plugs (plant starts) in small quantities to micro farms & home gardeners across the nation.

We are most proud of building a flower community around a shared belief. From fellow growers to flower friends who just want fresh flowers to fill their homes, we have build a community who understands the true magic of farm fresh flowers. Flowers are soul medicine, & having flowers in our gardens & homes is a natural form of wellness.

Our community understands that it is an act of self care by growing or sourcing flowers from our farm. Seeing a pretty bouquet sitting on a table or in a powder room makes us happy, reminds us to all slow down to appreciate the little things. Additionally, seeing flowers regularly reminds us what a blessing it is that the same higher power that created those flowers also created us. Isn’t that amazing?

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
In the next 5-10 years I believe the locally grown flower industry will continue to grow, especially in the United States. Currently the vast majority of US flower sales come from imported flowers that are filled with chemicals that have been proven to be harmful to farm workers in other countries. There is plenty of documented literature on this ongoing issue. Luckily stateside, we have a massive farming community dedicated to shifting the numbers on the volume of imported flowers. Many US flower growers are working to prioritize regenerative farming to protect our soil health & also aren’t spraying chemical pesticides. Additionally, there is also a growing volume of florists who actively seek out hyper-local flowers when in season & US grown flowers during the winter that are often sourced from California and/or heated greenhouses across the nation. I am hopeful that with all of our efforts, we are able to keep educating the public & decrease the volume of imported flowers over time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kansasgirlflowers.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kansasgirlflowers/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kansasgirlflowers
• Other: https://kansasgirlflowers.myflodesk.com/newsletter