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About The Fluffy Dog
I’m Emily: music historian, animal lover, and mom (to two little kids, two big, fluffy dogs, and fourteen lovably bird-brained chickens). I grow flowers in my backyard here in Acton, MA, using sustainable and regenerative methods.
I haven’t always been a gardener, but I have always loved flowers. Even when I was a grad student on a seriously skimpy budget, I’d bring home a weekly bouquet from the grocery store – usually whatever was cheap and bright at Trader Joe’s. What I especially loved, though, were those lush, romantic blooms with a million petals. Ranunculus, dahlias, lisianthus, double tulips with blooms so big you’d swear they were peonies…you know, the flowers I’d only ever seen in wedding magazines, not in anyone’s backyard.
When the gardening bug bit, it bit hard. (Just ask my husband, Noah: I tend to do things at either 150% or not at all.) Most of my work as an academic is indoors and abstract, and getting my hands in the soil really helped to balance me out. Learning to produce my own food and flowers, without the pesticides and harmful practices of industrial farming, also gave me a way of managing climate anxiety – a concern of mine that has grown wildly since I became a mom.
Over many years and through trial and (very frequent!) error, I’ve learned a lot about growing flowers – even those finicky, romantic, fluffy blooms I love so much. While I’m continuing to learn (right now, by completing a certificate in sustainable farming at UMASS and listening to a million nerdy podcasts on topics like Korean Natural Farming, pulse watering, and no-till methods), I'm feeling ready to share my flowers with my neighbors here in Acton, Boxborough, and West Concord. And so, in the spring of 2023, my little backyard flower farm - named The Fluffy Dog, after George the Saint Bernard and Violet the Great Pyrenees - opened its doors!
