Jenny (00:28)
If you have ever had things not go your way or you feel discouraged or you feel behind, or if disaster has struck you or your farm or your business, and you don't know how you could possibly come back from this. This episode is for you. And I have to warn you that this is a super vulnerable and a little bit emotional episode as I sit down with Jen and Adam O'Neill of pepper Harrow farm.
And we're talking all about a tragedy that struck their farm and how they overcame it. And this is all a discussion in hopes that you can glean some really important insight about mindset and also really practical ways to prepare yourself and your farm for potential disasters or tragedies in the future. But Jen and Adam O'Neill are the wildly hardworking owners of Pepper Harrow farm in Winterset, Iowa.
where they have a beautiful 60 acre flower farm where they host various workshops and events on their amazing farm every year. And they are also the authors of the book, Small Farms, Big Dreams, which I highly recommend you pick up a copy of.
Jen and Adam are super seasoned flower farmers with a lot to share in this episode. And I am beyond inspired by their story, their grittiness and their overall resilience because they have been through a lot. And I think you're going to get a lot out of this episode with them. So without further ado, let's hear their story.
Jenny (02:02)
Jen and Adam. I'm so excited to be talking to you guys today.
Adam & Jenn (02:05)
Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.
Jenny (02:07)
Yeah, I am such a big fan of your guys' farm. Also, I was just on your website right before we hopped on. And you have the most beautiful picture with the sunset in the back. It was absolutely gorgeous. So if anybody wants some inspiration for their website, they should go check out Pepper Harrow Farm right now. So could you guys start us off just by telling us a little bit about your farm, about you, and what you guys do?
Adam & Jenn (02:27)
Well, thank you.
Sure. want to argue like arm wrestle over it? Well, we own and operate Pepper Harrow Farm. Pepper Harrow used to be a 20 acre flower farm and now we are a 60 acre flower farm. And yeah, I'm sure many people know our moniker was small farm big dreams, but now we're like, maybe we can't call ourselves a small farm anymore. I still think it's a small farm.
Jenny (03:03)
In the grand scheme of agriculture, that is a super small farm. So yeah.
Adam & Jenn (03:06)
It still is a small farm.
Yeah, so we're now a 60 acre property. We're growing flowers on about 10 acres and we're most known for our lavender and dahlia growing. So those are kind of our biggest crops. We're located in Madison County, which is just south of Des Moines in central Iowa. Our growing zone is 5B and I think that's, we have a lot of people around us.
both on the East Coast and West Coast that share the same zone as us. So no matter where you are across the country, we're in the same growing zone as many people. workshops and events out here, really unique experiences geared towards agritourism, having people visit, lots of U-cut offerings.
Floral design is what we're most known for. We actually just got done with selling seeds online, which is kind of something that we'd like to do in the spring. Yeah, so we're getting ready actually today to get ready for a big pop-up on the farm where we'll be having guests join us to come buy seeds on site, some dried flower bouquets. We're getting everything arranged and ready for that tonight.
Jenny (04:04)
Wow.
That's fantastic. That is one thing that has always scared me is seed saving and selling seeds. That's one thing I feel like I will never do. It sounds like so much pressure and work, but I'm sure it's really not. It's just probably in my head, right?
Adam & Jenn (04:33)
It's totally,
it's fun. It's fun. But yeah, like very, very time consuming. Yeah, only like, I think it's easy actually to collect seed. The hard part is to like, you know, separate it out, put it in seed packets, you know, count all your seeds that you have. It takes a lot of time, but well worth it to be able to share some of the beauty that we grow here with other people. You know, yeah.
Jenny (04:39)
Yeah.
That's amazing. Yeah.
Yeah. Amazing. So I have you guys here today to talk about a maybe not so amazing thing that happened to your farm. Tragedy sort of hit your farm. And I can't remember how many years ago it was, but you guys have made the most amazing recovery. And I want to talk about your story about what happened.
how you've navigated, all the challenges that came with that, and how you're recovering and how you're doing now. So do you wanna tell us a little bit about what happened with your farm a few years ago?
Adam & Jenn (05:32)
It was 2022, March 5th, 2022, and we had a tornado develop and come through over the farm. it destroyed all of our farm's infrastructure. We had a lot of destruction or a lot of damage to our own personal home. We were home at the time it hit. We were actually in the basement with our family.
We have three kids, two of our kids were home with us. One of them is moved away and we actually had, it was our son's birthday, which is not fun for him. It was our son's birthday and he had five friends over as well. So we had five teenage boys plus our own two teenage kids. And yeah, my son was just trying to have his birthday party and this happened on his birthday.
I had been out planting ranunculus and anemone in the high tunnel. I had spent the entire day doing that. It was one of these freakish, like 70 degree days. I think it was in- It was a beautiful day. was March, obviously. It was a beautiful day. the entire day. I felt so accomplished. I had gotten all those planted. I had just gotten done for the day. I was checking on seedlings in our propagation house and that's when our alarms went off on our phones. It was a tornado warning.
And for those in the audience who don't know the difference between a warning and a watch, a warning is like, hey, a tornado is imminent. We were like, no way, no way. Like clear skies, not, not any darkness, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Sunshine. Beautiful. Like I just was, I had no idea. But our tornado warnings went off and
the boys were out in our little event barn getting ready to have a game night. They were just getting ready to just have a blast for my son's birthday and those alarms went off and I'm like, well, and the boys kind of came meandering out of the event barn and they're like, what should we do? like, boys, you I'm sorry, I don't know. I don't see anything, but you have to come in the house for a little bit. So they all came in here and nothing was happening.
I think they stayed in here for 15 minutes. Still nothing was happening. It was clear skies. So Adam was like, you boys go ahead and go back out to the barn. You're fine. Just resume what you were doing. We just still didn't see anything. But Adam, at that point, you, can take it from here. Cause this is your story beyond this, this part. the sunsets give us an incredible Western view so we can see the storms rolling in and
I was out scanning the skies because we still had these warnings. Well, he sent the boys out and he's like, I better just make sure. The very front of the system came through and it was the darkest and it's like, okay, it looks like we're pretty good. And then I started to scan the horizon and that's when I saw off in the distance, I saw it drop out of the sky. And I have it on film. And yeah, then things were set in motion at that point.
Jenny (08:18)
Just check.
my gosh.
Adam & Jenn (08:41)
Well, kind of, Adam was keeping an eye on it because he was like, there's no way this is not coming for our house. There's no way this is happening. He just kept watching it and kept watching it. At that point, one of the boys walked by him and he said, go get the others, tell them to get inside right now and get down to the basement. And we all, we all got in the basement. He knew it was coming. I was actually sitting right here. We're in our living room right now is where we are.
I was sitting in the living room and I looked out our front window off to the west out where Adam was and I saw it drop. I mean, I saw it coming out of the cloud. Like I could see a tornado coming towards us. Jenny was the freakiest thing you have ever seen. Like I'm like, I'm pretty sure nobody's supposed to ever look out of their window and see something like this. It was very surreal.
Jenny (09:35)
Can't imagine.
Adam & Jenn (09:36)
I was, and even I, the boys are running inside, you know, getting, they're like, we need to get in the basement. I'm like, boys, do you see this out here? You know, just even in my mind, even seeing that I was like, there is no way this tornado is coming from my home. Like it's just like you're outside of your body at that, at that time, like, know, at that moment, like there's no way this is coming for me. Yes, it is. it is. So Adam, Adam stayed out and he videoed the tornado.
I videoed it dropping from the sky and videoed it till about what I gave myself. 60 seconds. Yeah, about a minute to get the house before it hit. But I have really good footage.
Jenny (10:22)
You are so incredibly brave. I would have been like, yipes,
running.
Adam & Jenn (10:28)
It's not
bravery, it's a lack of intelligence.
Jenny (10:32)
It's
Jen is like, it's stupidity.
Adam & Jenn (10:35)
Totally. This is one of those weird boy things that nobody should ever do. was watching this tornado, getting these guys gathered inside, and you can hear it in the video. There's a point where I see that the tornado is coming right towards us. It's not going from one side or the other. You can see that it is coming straight towards us. Yeah. So he ran downstairs and he used my full name and I said, that was my indicator. Something's really bad because he was like, Jennifer.
you need to prepare or you need to prepare yourself. We are going to take a direct hit and I lost it. I lost it. I wasn't crying. I was, I started praying. I started praying out loud. I'm sure I scared the kids, but I told, I told the kids, said, you know, just like a tornado drill in school, cover your heads, hold on.
And yeah, we had 60 seconds from the time he told me that to the time it hit and just like bracing ourselves. you know, in hindsight, there are a few things we would have done different just to protect ourselves a little bit more. You know, we didn't realize the value of even holding on to each other, you know, and holding on to something because it will just like literally suck you up and out.
But it hit the house and Adam says this didn't happen But we we see and heard different things and experience different things and it's just like that's kind of like a trauma thing But I I swear like the the initial front part of the tornado hit our house and I just literally heard it like the whole house like clench up seize and like kind of crack a little bit
but literally it lifted our house up a little bit off the foundation. And Adam remembered this, I didn't remember it, but dust and grit was hitting our face from, you know, it literally just the wind and you know, everything that was coming in, it was sending debris into our basement, even though we were in there, we were not, wasn't airtight, it wasn't safe, it was lifting the foundation, the house up off the foundation.
Adam could hear things crashing, trees were coming down, windows were blown out in our house. Just the craziest stuff you could possibly imagine. But I mean, it was fast. was probably, you know, 60 seconds waiting for it, 60 seconds for it to pass us. But, you know, those 60 seconds were the most intense. Like, it could have been 15 minutes in my mind. You know, we were down there, we were hearing all this stuff happen. We couldn't breathe.
They don't tell you. Yeah, the pressure of the tornado is sucking all the oxygen out of the room. just trying the pressure. I don't know, whatever the science is. felt like we were breathing against a suction. Yeah, we couldn't breathe. The ears just popping, popping, popping. Like you're taking off in an airplane, your ears pop, but I didn't know what was happening. So like I didn't know to pop my ears and the pressure on my eardrums. I thought my eardrums are going to burst.
The kids were like, oh yeah, we just swallowed. I'm like, I did not swallow. was, I was, yeah, I was too out of it. I was not in good shape. But it got, it went over the top of this. left. At that point, I didn't know, we didn't know what happened. And Adam said, you know, it was quiet. It's just the freakiest thing just completely still after it left.
And it was like, what has happened? We're alive, number one. So that's great. But we didn't know what had happened up above us. So Adam said, stay here. I'm going to go upstairs and check. And you did a, you did a perusal. Yeah. I just had to sweep, make sure that the roof isn't gone or just make sure it was safe for everybody to walk outside and get out of the house. And it was so, so he finally gave us the all clear. I came up.
I came up the stairs. only came up halfway up our basement stairs. I looked out the back door and I started crying because this is my time. Looking out the back, everything was gone. And the amount of destruction that you could see in this tornado's path took my breath away.
you know, not only 15 minutes before that, I had been in this backyard planting the ranunculus and anemone, checking on my seedlings in the propagation house. It was gone. Everything was gone. Everything. had greenhouses, the propagation house, everything was back there and just gone. And so I lost it a little bit. And I'm like, that was my weakest moment, I think, out of all of it. And I should have held it together a little bit more because our young daughter was kind of
taking cues off of me. I just wish I had held it together a little bit more, but I did eventually pull it together, but it was amazing how we had different responses. Mine, and I think everybody learns this as you experience something really, really devastating. And I didn't know I would react this way, but you know afterwards how you're gonna react. I'm not saying that if something happens again, I don't know that I'll respond this way, but my initial response was to gather.
start gathering everything, clean up, clean up, gather. The next wave's coming. I have to save what I can. And I'm like, wow, that's crazy. Adams was response was I need to take care of our family. need to take care of these kids. And he immediately was like, know, boys, you need to call your parents and number one, tell them you're okay. And number two, they need to come get you. I forgot they were even here. You know, just like I immediately was on to like.
Jenny (16:33)
You
Adam & Jenn (16:36)
gather and save and you know, I don't know, it was trauma response. was like a robot at that point. It's just very interesting to look back and see that response and be like, that wasn't right. I should have been taking care of people.
Jenny (16:55)
I just, want to say, Jen, I feel like I kind of disagree with you because I, I just think of myself in a situation like that. I don't know if I could have possibly had any way to respond differently. Like, I mean, you went through, you saw the craziest thing, that trauma response. It's not something that you really have control over that immediate response. Maybe what comes afterwards, but I,
Adam & Jenn (17:12)
Yeah.
Jenny (17:24)
I don't want to, you said earlier that you thought it was like a, a set your weakest point or something, but I don't think that's weakness in somebody. think that's just like your initial reaction and you clearly are not weak at all. And you guys have, I mean, but it is really interesting that you guys had really different reactions to it.
Adam & Jenn (17:37)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. And Adam immediately, the driveway was completely blocked with trees. was like my training kicked in. I don't know what the training was, but we had different, I will say like what he wasn't doing, I was doing and vice versa. So he went and cleared it. He took the tractor and was clearing trees from the driveway. I had no idea that he was even doing that. Like I was completely in Lulu land, like just gathering my thing.
Jenny (17:52)
Yeah.
Good team.
Adam & Jenn (18:11)
I was gathering everything up from the event barn, all of our products and things that were out there that I didn't want to get wet and rained on and having even the boys that were in the house like, grab these things boys, bring them in the house. We were bringing everything inside that was out there that could have been ruined by the rain.
Jenny (18:32)
I'm
Adam & Jenn (18:32)
But yeah, it's interesting. then, you know, later on in the evening, that's when, you know, Adam started to like, he was just like completely tapped out. Like he used every ounce of everything to make sure everyone's safe, clear everything out. So, you know, safety responders could get to us. He had to deal with electricity and heat.
because both of those things went out. The gas was leaking the way. Gas leaks, know, just all so many things. He was dealing with all of that. You know, we were getting phone calls from all over the place, know, news stations wanting to interview us as he's like fixing the furnace. It was crazy. And so he was completely tapped out in the evening. We both couldn't sleep because your adrenaline spikes so high that it won't allow you to sleep. It's something.
Jenny (19:02)
Yeah.
Adam & Jenn (19:28)
primitive that you don't even know. But you know, back in the stone ages, you know, if a saber tooth tiger was chasing you, you would have stayed up for days and days and days because the threat is imminent and real and your adrenaline just won't let you let down. So we stayed up all night, but I was doing, I was laying in bed and like, number one, I have to contact the insurance company and find out our policy. went downstairs, grabbed our policy and started doing research on what our coverage looked like.
I made a list, I needed to call pods and get mobile pods in here so that we could have a storage place for all of our items that I knew we don't have a garage anymore. It got destroyed. Everything needs to go somewhere so it can be protected. I'm like, I need to call pods. I need to get two pods. I need to do this. I was making all my lists. I need to call and get another flower cottage ordered to replace the one that we lost. I was like...
Jenny (20:25)
You're on
it.
Adam & Jenn (20:26)
I was on it and people were
people were texting me like, what do need? This is when her superpower kicked in. Yeah. And it was like we switched off and then, you know, people were texting me, what do need? I'm like, I need gloves. I need trash bags. I need totes. I just was like, whoa, this is where I was pulling it. Like, what do we need? What do we need? This is what I need. And, know, it wasn't it wasn't everyone that I could tell, you know, here's exactly what I needed. It was like these select few people where I knew, like if I tell them what I need.
They're going to show up with it. And so, yeah, I gave that to some folks and we put the ask out on social media too. You know, our immediate need was, hey, having people get here to help us clean up because we knew it was an insurmountable task, what we were up against. yeah, that's where we traded off at that point, I think, on what our superpowers were. Yeah, I was able to kind of check out a little
Jenny (21:15)
Yeah.
So you guys lost, you had damage to your house, damaged, you had this beautiful event barn that you did, like all of your workshops and other things in, right? And you damaged to that or lost that hoop, it was totally gone. Your hoop houses, gone. Lavender field, didn't you have, I think I remember you saying that you had a lavender field, maybe it was a Dahlia field where,
Adam & Jenn (21:35)
Yeah.
lost it was gone wiped away.
Yeah, your houses gone.
The
lavender field was, it was still intact, but it ripped out the, we had it planted up in landscaping fabric and a huge hundred foot piece and it ripped it out and it was gone. It was gone. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen, but it was a, it was a fairly new lavender field. So the plants were still very small, but it ripped the entire thing out and just like chucked it into the next camera. had a mature field that
The younger plants took it, but this mature field, just broke the crowns. And then we got a snow a couple of days later, so we lost that field. But we didn't know it at the time. And I think that's one learning for us is, you know, we're like, the lavender, it's great. It's fine. It's not a problem. Well, lavender can't sustain 170 and 170 mile an hour winds. And especially on mature plants, I think some of the newer plants took it.
because they're so pliable. But once you get some old growth on your plants, it just can't take and sustain wind speeds like that. It just literally cracked them open. It snowed and rained heavily after that and just rotted them from the inside out. So we got to late, probably late May, early June after the tornado and knew. And that was another breaking point for me losing our big production lavender field.
Jenny (23:05)
Mm.
Adam & Jenn (23:21)
we lost the entire thing. It was coming back, out of the entire field, we probably had 20 surviving plants out of 2,000. And I don't like to give up on things. Adam always says, we're not running a nursery. And he's like, get it out of here. It's gone. We're not running a hospital. We're not running a hospital here. And I'm always like, no, there's hope. It's going to survive. And that was the thing. I kept telling him, I'm like, just trim it. Trim it.
Jenny (23:30)
my gosh.
Adam & Jenn (23:50)
let's trim it up and see if it like revives it. And I am like, let's treat it with some fertilizer and rip it out something new. And that was the thing I had to admit, like it's gone. We lost it. And it was one of the things that brought me to my knees. Like, well, and honestly, it was just like another thing on the many laundry list of items that we had lost. And yeah, and they just kept coming. Like there was
Obviously the initial things you see right after the tornado hits and then after that it's just like thing after thing after thing that you don't see that just keeps coming up. You know, whether that be a tool that you don't realize that you have anymore that you go to use and you're like, I don't have that anymore. Drill bits. mean, that's like small example, but you know, just all these.
Jenny (24:42)
But you use those all the time.
Adam & Jenn (24:45)
Yeah, you don't
think and you don't even think that you've lost it until you go to use it and it's not there. But the lavender was the big one for me because it was the first lavender field I had planted. It was huge, gorgeous. Beautiful. Yeah. We relied on it for our business heavily to be able to produce oil to distill our own oil. So I was just it was hard for me to admit that it was gone and to let it go. But, know,
It was part of the thing that we say, we took, we took lemons and we made lemonade and that that's a mindset that you have to have during tragedy is see the opportunity and new beginnings. And so that with that, with that lavender field in particular, we had planted it for production. And so it was very tightly packed in together and it gave us the opportunity.
to plant in rows with grassy strips in between. So it turned out even better than the way it started. So you really have to see the rainbow out of the storm. And that was one of ours for us. It was really bad, it broke me. But seeing something positive come out of a negative, seeing opportunity come out of a tragedy, that is what
pulled me through and got me over the hump with the lavender. And now it is one of the most cherished spots that we have on the farm and people have absolutely loved it. People get to fully immerse themselves in the lavender, sit in the middle of it, do yoga in the middle of it. We set people there for dinners in the lavender field. So it just opened up all these amazing opportunities for us to be able to expand and have people be able to experience and see the lavender in bloom.
Jenny (26:43)
I love that. That is such a powerful mindset shift that you had to make that must've been really difficult to make. I mean, after the initial reaction to everything, what other mindset shifts do you feel like helped you or ones that you had to make to overcome this and start moving on and seeing those new opportunities?
Adam & Jenn (26:44)
Yeah.
I say, do you want to volunteer something? I have one. Go ahead. Compartmentalizing tasks. Yeah. Everyone was like, my gosh, all the work you have to do here is seems insurmountable. Where do you go from here? And people were asking us this the day after the tornado. What are going to do? And Adam, Adam was like, it's like eating an elephant. You just take one bite at a time. Yeah. Well, I was going to say that.
That's the mindset right there. Keep it simple. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Just keep swimming. Just one step at a time, one breath at a time, one task at a time. One task at a time. But we had a long list of things going, things we knew we needed to do. We didn't let it overwhelm us. We had to prioritize the things that were higher in priority, do those first. Not let the...
insurmountable list of things that needed to be done overwhelm us. It was like, you know what? We're just human. There's only so much we can handle and do at one time. So that's where I was like, I'm going to compartmentalize this down and here's my immediate need right here. And I'm going to do these things and completely finish them before we go on to the next thing. And, you know, so we knew, you know, right away we needed to,
have a greenhouse back up to be able to protect seedlings that we knew we needed to get started. So there was all sorts of little things with that. Mindset shifts too. You know, I think flower farming prepares you for these things because you know this, nothing is perfect. There's always loss. There's always something you're going to do wrong. There are plants that are going to die.
Jenny (28:55)
Yeah. Yeah.
Adam & Jenn (29:05)
There's not, just, I do think that's my message for many people is like, you have to look past, you have to look past perfection. Try not to be a perfectionist in flower farming, it will kill you. Allow, allow mistakes to be made, not intentionally, but they know they will happen and be flexible and adjust from it. Pivot away, like if you make a mistake,
Jenny (29:21)
Good one.
Adam & Jenn (29:34)
How can you make it better or how can you take that and use it as an opportunity for something else? You know, this, when the tornado hit, we were 12 years into flower farming. Is that right? Yes. It was our 12th year into flower farming. And I think all those years before that kind of prepared us for that. And after the tornado, now, I mean, we lose things all the time and I'm like, and what do you got?
Jenny (30:00)
Whatever.
Adam & Jenn (30:03)
Seriously, it just doesn't overwhelm me anymore. Like there is a little bit of, you know, loss or something I'm not going to do right. You know, last year it was deer pressure. The deer were pulling my lisianthus plugs out of the ground. They were biting them and taking them and tossing them out. Just grabbing them like, nope, not bad. And flicking them out. I, it was annoying. It made me mad. I lost a bunch of
Jenny (30:26)
How annoying.
Adam & Jenn (30:32)
crops, my fields looked kind of, you know, cruddy. But I was like, okay, I can't let this break me because I could. I could allow that, but I'm not going to allow that. I've lost everything, well not my home, but I've lost everything in the past and this small little bump in the road, I'm going to get past this. Next year when I go to plant my early lizianthus, you know, before, for spring,
I'm gonna make sure I do something different to make sure the deer can't get in there. you you just have to pick how you look at things and see things for what they are and accept a little bit, even though, look, it's never pleasant. You're not supposed to have a smile on your face as you're experiencing these hardships, but you have to have a glass half full mentality to be able to survive. You have to have a positivity.
and unyielding positivity, hopefulness, honestly grace, gracefulness. You have to give yourself grace and allow for these things, right? Sorry, Denny, what else you want to include for a mindset shift that you had? Well, one I thought of is we say quite often now is I survived a tornado. I can get through this.
Jenny (31:44)
Was there? No, go ahead.
Adam & Jenn (31:59)
So, you know, some new challenge comes along, like, I survived a tornado. I can do this. That's our mentality. A couple things, a couple challenging things came up recently. And we, you know, we kind of lean on each other sometimes to get through some of the hard things too that we have to. So having a buddy to help you out. But I walked up to Adam, we hugged each other. We looked at each other and said, you know what? This too shall pass. Because guess what?
We survived a tornado. It is, it's like, wow, you know, but I mean, seriously, like that's life. People have to go through harder things than this. can do this. Is this it? You know, this small little bump in the road that you're letting like completely take you down and take you down for the count. Like it's okay to like have your moments where you're down, like lift each other up and like get through it and have perspective.
Jenny (32:31)
you
Adam & Jenn (32:56)
This small thing in the grand scheme of life in general, it's minor and you will survive.
Jenny (33:02)
I love that. It reminds me of, I recently saw something, like one of these silly things on Instagram where someone had made a bad ass list and they made a list of all the difficult, hard things that they've gone through or all the amazing things that they've gone through, like things that they're proud of and other things that they're not happy that happened, but they got through it. And every time they have something come up where they're not feeling great or it's a challenge, they'd go look at that list and be like,
Well, for you guys, I survived a tornado so I can do anything. But for other people listening, hopefully you never have to survive a tornado, but you can look at other really difficult things you've been through in your life and be like, these deer are plucking out my Lysianthus, but like I've, I've done this other hard thing before, so I can do this too. And I, I just, your story made me think of that, like funny little anecdote. And I thought I'd share it for anybody else.
Adam & Jenn (33:57)
Well,
I was thinking as Jen was talking, it's like, I run a flower farm. I can survive a tornado.
Jenny (34:03)
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. We're
farmers. We can literally survive a tornado. Another question I wanted to ask you was, at any point, did you ever have the thought of just throwing in the towel and not giving up the farm? Or was that never an option for you guys?
Adam & Jenn (34:23)
It was never an option. Yeah, it wasn't an option. We did YouTube videos after the tornado on what we went through and people were like, I don't know how you just didn't quit and move. I'm like, what? Like, I felt like we couldn't, like, this is our job. This is what we do. So like, what's our fallback?
Jenny (34:35)
Hahaha.
Adam & Jenn (34:46)
plan, like I don't have a condo in Miami that I can go live in. am not going back to a nine to five. Yeah. And that too, I'm like, I don't want to go work somewhere else. This is what I know how to do. And everybody was telling us, you know, you had everything taken from you. And I was like, but no, we didn't. We still had 12 years of growing knowledge in our heads. You can't take knowledge away from us. Like we knew what to do, but
Jenny (34:54)
Right.
Adam & Jenn (35:15)
Yeah, part of it was is, you know, a lot of people think if I could go back with the knowledge I have now, we were really put in that situation like we were starting from zero with the knowledge we have now. Yeah. And you heard too during that presentation, Jenny, you know, we walked into this farm with a pre-existing footprint.
it had certain buildings and things that were already here and we were working with those. One of them was our red barn where we were doing our lavender distillation. We called it the distillery. We lost that barn. So we were working with existing infrastructure, which is awesome. Like always use what you have. That's my pro tip for everybody out there. We used what we had, but it gave us the opportunity to like kind of look out and dream a little bit. Like, what would I do with this space now that I'm starting from?
scratch again, but I wasn't even, we weren't even starting from scratch. You know, we still thought we had the lavender plants that were existing. We still had our, our flower growing areas. We just didn't have like the, you know, the infrastructure, I to make sure it got, it was successful. But yeah, there were a lot, there was a lot of dreaming that happened. Like, okay, I, I'm starting a new, and this is kind of, I'm in a good place and this is a fresh start.
me, but I can say one thing that helped us be able to have more of a positive outlook is all of the support that we got from our flower farming community and from our community as a whole. And I will say, you know, everybody who donated the farmer Bailey plugs to help us get plugs in because our seedlings were all gone. And quite literally, we did not have time to start seedlings because we were literally cleaning up, dealing with insurance claims, running around like chickens with our heads cut off.
We didn't have time to start seedlings. That was a huge weight and burden off of our shoulders. That was humongous. And then financially, the money people helped donate through GoFundMe was massively impactful. Knowing that we had a safety net to catch us, like it didn't cover everything we lost, okay? So we can talk about that a little bit, but it just helped give us a safety net, like, okay.
I can take a deep breath, I can pay my mortgage, I can do just these basic tasks to be able to survive, to be able to kind of lift us up a little bit and take a higher view. Like, okay, now what needs to happen? My basic needs are being met. I can kind of pull my head up a little bit and take a look and dream a little bit.
Jenny (37:59)
So it sounds like your community was really beneficial in helping you guys get going, get moving again. What other things helped you during that time period besides your community?
Adam & Jenn (38:12)
Well, I want to bring it back to the community because that was a massive portion of how we were able to recover the way we did was people lifting us through it. The cleanup efforts, people showed up with anything we needed. There's just anything they could possibly think of. Our friends were showing up with grapplers to come and pick up.
trees and debris with these grapplers and throw it in a pile. They were bringing tractor trailers and to load up garbage, you know, metal, sheet metal and take it out of here. Luckily we live in Iowa, an insane amount of people showed up. Yeah, we had to immediately. had 200 people the day after the tornado show up on our farm to help us clean up. It was. I can't even there honestly are no words.
about that day and we were busy with other things and you know, I have my regrets about that. We were in shock afterwards while all that was going on and there was a lot going on and it was a blur. We felt like robots that day. We did a lot of television interviews that day and I...
I just, it was like a blur. I don't even remember. I deleted that file. I remembered a few of the people that I talked to who specifically came up to me on that day. But there were people that I saw on that day and Adam's like, they were here. I had no idea because we were shut, our brain shut down, think. Yeah, we were shut down. And a lot of our friends were here that we...
Jenny (39:38)
I deleted that part.
Adam & Jenn (39:59)
have no clue. trauma response, just know people won't remember that you were there. I have to say a huge, we did not do this intentionally for any reason, but like sharing out our story immediately after it happened. We did it. We shared out immediately after the tornado hit. said, Adam, I'm like, we have to show people what happened here.
Jenny (40:07)
So yeah.
Adam & Jenn (40:27)
like this is beyond anything I have ever seen. And I said, we have to let people know we're okay. We were starting to get texts like, hey, heard there's a big tornado in Iowa, you guys okay? And I was like, we have to do a video right now. Our phone started blowing up. Yeah. Pretty much immediately. So we did an Instagram live and I'm like, I did not, that wasn't intentional. I didn't have any motivation for that other than like, we have to show our people that we're here and we're okay and we're alive. But we also have to show them like,
what the heck happened here because like we were in shock and we're like, this is, we have to show it. So we showed it. I don't have regrets about that now other than like, hey, it looks like we were just like, my gosh, check this out. And no, we weren't, there was no motivation or intention behind it other than like, hey guys, we're okay. We're alive. And to show what we went through because we were in shock. But that was, it turned out to be.
good in a way because it brought more attention to what had occurred here. And because of that, you know, we were being contacted by like NBC nightly news and they wanted to come out like Emily Akeda wanted to interview us. like, yes, yes, that's yes. And we knew that providing a little bit of optics would help.
help us be able to get help to get us back on our feet again. Casting that wide net and having more people be able to see that. So we ended up, they did show up in the next day. I would say that was one of the better things that we did was putting ourselves on that national stage to show what happened here.
Jenny (42:21)
Yeah.
Adam & Jenn (42:22)
And also, you know, a friend reached out saying, hey, I'd like to set up a GoFundMe for you guys. And we were like, yes, because at that point we knew our insurance coverage. This is one of those hindsight things. It wasn't what it should have been. And I think when you get insurance coverage, you think you're never going to have a complete loss. I mean, we still had our house. Thank God.
But you never think you're going to have a complete loss. so some things were underinsured, some things weren't insured at all. And you know, we did the policy when we didn't have very much money to spend in the early farming days. pro pro tip, go big because check your policy. Make sure everything's covered. You know, you know, I think I did our policy thinking like, if we lose a barn.
and we get this much, it's gonna be fine. We'll be able to hold it together. But when you have a complete loss of everything that you have, you know, even for a business that's like, where's the money gonna come from? Those things were only covered at XML and then it was a perfect storm, ha ha, pun intended. We were coming right off of COVID, it was 2022, so.
all the building costs, all the material costs, everything was still double what you would pay normally. So we were still had things insured, like we could replace them pre-COVID and after COVID building costs are so high, even now I think they haven't really come down. You need to go check that and lift everything up. And that's what we were seeing our other flower farming friends were telling us like,
Jenny (43:47)
Skyrocket.
Adam & Jenn (44:11)
We went and checked our policies immediately and raised everything up because they didn't think about that either. Costs have doubled to replace something costs you double. So it just, it was an insurmountable amount of money, even for the things that we rebuilt, even with all the help we got, every little speck of money that we made in 2022 and actually full transparency in 2023 went
back to rebuilding. Like even though it looked like we were very blessed with donations, it couldn't even touch the rebuilding costs of everything that we needed to have done. Yeah, we're still missing some infrastructure as far as high tunnels and we haven't rebuilt our red barn. Right. So we're still down that infrastructure, but still one step at a time. I mean, we're still
Yeah, we still have some cleanup that we're doing. learn how to make do with the resources you have available to you very quickly. And I have to say our neighbor across the way, she stepped up and we had seed starting classes like three weeks after the tornado hit. We had no area, no place to do these seed starting classes. So she has a little carriage house above her garage and she's like.
Jenny (45:25)
my gosh.
Adam & Jenn (45:34)
here's the keys, we're going to Florida, you use the carriage house and teach your classes there and what a godsend, they are the best, the best. Just little things like that, that's how we got through. Yeah. Little things. But it was like a million sprinkles of things like that. I'm gonna cry because it's those things you start remembering as you talk about it, like there's no way I can repay that.
The only way we can repay all the good and the blessings that were bestowed upon us is to bless others. So we just try to be aware and cognizant of that now. If we see people struggling, if we can help in any way possible, we try to help and do onto others as others had done onto us. So that's our motto now.
Jenny (46:27)
That's beautiful.
Adam & Jenn (46:29)
but Jen said a million sprinkles. think that's a really good t-shirt idea.
Jenny (46:34)
You guys
need to start doing that and selling the merch on your website. Million little sprinkles. Love that. So can we talk about things like insurance and how farmers can prepare for the unknown like this? mean, you've talked about your insurance policy, making sure farmers have that up to date.
Adam & Jenn (46:42)
You
Jenny (47:05)
Maybe revisiting it every few years or so, going back to their insurance company and keeping that updated. Are there other things that you would urge farmers to prepare to be prepared for the unknown?
Adam & Jenn (47:21)
You asked, you actually asked this question at ASCFG and I remember that. Cause I was like, you're like, what could you do it to a prepared? like, I don't know. And Adam's like, no, what you take videos of all of your infrastructure. that was the first recommendation our insurance company gave us. They're like, you need to do regular, when things are perfectly fine, you need to go do videos of everything. So you know what you have and you can.
Jenny (47:29)
You
Adam & Jenn (47:50)
Detail out what you've lost. That is huge. Huge. Personally and business. Yeah. Everything. Yeah. He was like... cupboards. Yeah. You go into your cupboards. You go into your closet. Just slowly drift and film everything because that's how we were able to do... I mean, we didn't film stuff, but we did a lot of filming. So... We went back and looked at old videos like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. had this. Oh yeah. Yeah. The pressure, air pressure tank, you know, or whatever. don't know.
Real sorts of things. Air compressor. But that would be a big one. Assess your policy to make sure that your coverage matches current day market demands of what it would take to have to rebuild everything. Know that there are some things that would be too expensive to ensure, like the high tunnels are actually too expensive to ensure. So that might be something that
is below the line. Insurance doesn't like to ensure non-permanent structures. yeah, knowing some of that, you know, terms of crop insurance comes up a lot. There's not a lot of accessibility to crop insurance in our industry. Not a lot of access to high tunnel coverage either. And you know how expensive high tunnels are. It's like, wait, I need help.
But unfortunately, those typically aren't things, at least with our insurance carrier that get covered, it's more expensive to cover it than to just replace it.
Jenny (49:25)
Right. Do you have a insurance company that specializes in agriculture or is it just like a regular? Yeah, I do too.
Adam & Jenn (49:33)
Yeah, we use Farm Bureau, that's our insurance
carrier, and they were absolutely wonderful. Yeah, we live in a small town, so we personally know our agents, and they helped us, they guided us through the process on to get through it and not be taken advantage of by a big insurance company, but they took care of us. They were an insurance company and we couldn't say the same for some of our neighbors.
They had a lot of difficulty dealing with their insurance companies. Yeah, we got no no's at all. was go, go, go. Let's get you back to normal.
Jenny (50:12)
Yeah, I think that is a value of mine that has served me really well is working with other businesses like our insurance company that really specialize in understand at least agriculture, maybe not flowers or flora culture, but with these smaller companies, it seems like you can get a lot more empathy and understanding and be treated like a real human instead of some of these other bigger companies. And so I,
just talking to a lot of different people about all these kinds of things. That seems to be a theme that comes up a lot, but so I want to talk a little bit about your rebuilding process because tell us about what the farm looks like now. So people can get an idea of you went from nothing. And in just a few short years, I mean, we're in early 2025 now you have rebuilt.
a ton. So can you give us an idea of what the farm looks like now and how that's different from before?
Adam & Jenn (51:14)
We're still down our red distillery barn where we did our distillation. So that is kind of a gap that we have where we look out and we're like, that's where it used to be. But we have this absolutely gorgeous, our event barn got rebuilt. We did have plans initially of expanding it, but one reality saw with our rebuild is that,
It was very difficult to get loans to do rebuild. And our area was not declared a disaster area, so we couldn't apply for disaster relief loans through small business, SBA.
I do have to mention that the government was zero help. It was people in our community. You have to rely on your community. Don't think that you're going to get local, state, or governmental assistance in any way. And I'm not being a negative Nellie. That is a reality. everybody needs to know that. It's going to be your community and whether that be your flower farmer community or your local.
town community. But looking out at our farm, it's absolutely spectacular. Everybody's like, I can't even believe a tornado has happened here. I'm like, thank you. But we have this beautiful Borden Baton barn.
It's all it's painted up and all white the guys who built it for us were like you should leave it plain colored wood I was like It's It's it's all white in there. It's absolutely gorgeous Adam finished out the inside with shiplap And it looks so beautiful, but you know we had to do everything in phases Jenny It was like we can you cannot do everything at once. It's too much money
So we basically focused on getting the outside structure first and then just again, compartmentalize took, you know, did one thing at a time. Like, we're like, okay, a bathroom's pretty important in there. Getting it all kind of painted and finished out on the inside was important, but at least getting kind of a cohesive look and feel was important. So we kind of, we finished that out. It looks absolutely stunning.
Our flower fields are, nothing really happened to the flower fields during the tornado, so those were all okay. But one of the first things that Adam, Adam's brothers, both of his brothers came to Iowa to help us. One came from Alaska, the other came from Illinois. And then Levi, Adam's best friend Levi came from Colorado and each of them came for like a week at a time. And I think- Yeah, we built our propagation house and
We put in a bigger greenhouse for our propagation house since we were starting fresh. Propagation house. In our high tunnel back there. In the high tunnel. So those are the first two structures that went up and those are the things that are still existing. We haven't added, we still need a few greenhouses that are missing, but we're doing without for right now. But we immediately went and got a chicken coop.
a little chicken coop because we were looking for any little grain of joy and we went and got chicks. We had to some life back to the farm. Seriously, what a blessing. When everything's destroyed around you looking terrible, you feel down and like down and out, nothing's going to be the same again. Just having that little sign of life and something that brings you joy.
Jenny (54:41)
Aww.
Adam & Jenn (55:00)
It was one of our guilty pleasures. So we went and got a chicken coop and got baby chicks afterwards. And man, it filled our souls. you know, tool sheds, we got practical things that could help us get through temporarily. People coming and helping us organize. like we were on top of a river bluff. And so where our farm's located, it's on the top of a hill. And you can see the spectacular.
Jenny (55:05)
I love that.
Adam & Jenn (55:26)
views of the rolling hills of Madison County and just looking out, like, I really feel like there's a few damaged trees still from the tornado that we need to take care of that are still up. I'm like, Adam, get rid of them. don't want to, for me, I'm like, get rid of it. I don't want to have to see anything that reminds me of this tragedy. So that's kind of our next thing that we need to focus on. But again, phases, right?
Cleaning up trees, I was like, that's below the line. A lot of people helped us, but there's still a lot left. But luckily in the summertime, the leaves hide it quite a bit. They do. We can see it pretty prevalent right now, but. It looks really bad right now, but yeah. The leaves hide it pretty well. I want to get rid of the rest of it. But you know, our farm, people come out here and last year, 2023, people were telling us like.
Jenny (56:09)
you
Adam & Jenn (56:17)
Wow. When I come to your farm, I feel like I can take a break from the rat race. I can take a deep breath, relax and actually connect with the land and with nature and just take a step out of myself for a minute and feel like I have a personal space sanctuary for my soul. And I'm like, my work here is done. Like hearing that is validating to how hard, I mean, we worked like
The hardest we have ever worked in 2022 and 2023, getting ourselves put back together again, we busted our butts. There's no other way to say it. We worked so hard. And in fact, we look at ourselves before 2022 when the tornado hit and after, I'm like, oh my gosh, it looks like we aged like 10 years. It's a little scary. Like I'm sure it's the trauma, but it's also how hard we like the trauma, stress.
how hard we worked. We really pulled it back together and people have recognized all the hard work we've done, setting that aside, like.
just hearing them, seeing them appreciate and love our farm as much as we do. We love our farm and to see other people come out and enjoy it and appreciating it. Well, filling people with anything amazing, positive. It's so rewarding. That's a pretty wonderful thing. Yeah, yeah.
Jenny (57:50)
Yeah, that's incredible. And by the way, you guys both look great. So you don't look like you've aged a million years, but I can imagine how you've. Okay. Earlier you guys mentioned that one of your mindset shifts was to look for the opportunities after this tragedy. And I've heard that you've also.
Adam & Jenn (57:57)
In 2021, I look mid 30s.
Jenny (58:14)
have expanded your farm a little bit. So can you tell us a little bit about what that is looking like for your farm now?
Adam & Jenn (58:22)
Yeah, so expanding on new opportunities, it's literally, we've had a chance to get more introspective about ourselves and our business and what we want to do. It allowed us to like, okay, we've done all these things, now what do we want to do? So a major opportunity, a few big opportunities. It's weird how when you put yourself out there, when you open yourself up, new opportunities just naturally,
present themselves. So we had a few opportunities present themselves last year. And one of them was buying a new acreage. And actually it was the acreage that is adjacent to our existing farm. It's a 40 acre parcel of property. And we closed on it last week. So we are now, we were once a 20 acre flower farm and we're soon to be a 60 acre
Jenny (59:13)
haha
Adam & Jenn (59:20)
flower farm. Well, not soon. We straight up are now. Well, we have officially taken it, but I'm like excited to get things planted up. we have our plans for the new property is that we are going to develop it and plant it up in lavender. So we already have 15,000 plants on order. They're due to arrive sometime in May and the planting is going to begin.
Jenny (59:23)
Hahaha!
Adam & Jenn (59:47)
of getting some of this land planted up. It's going to help us expand our business. It's going to allow us to have more visitors. And new for 2025, we are going to, you're the first to know this, Jenny, you and your listeners, we're going to be holding a Lavender Festival on June 20th and 21st. We would love to have everyone join us for our first ever Lavender Festival at Pepper Hero Farm.
Jenny (1:00:15)
That is so exciting. So I'm going to say the dates again for anyone listening, June 20th and 21st at Pepper Arrow Farm for their Lavender Festival. So if you guys want to see all the action behind what we've been talking about to say today and see how beautiful their farm is and all that they've done to rebuild and go check out their amazing lavender, you have got to go to their Lavender Festival. I like really want to go. So I'm going to try.
We'll see, but I would be amazing.
Adam & Jenn (1:00:46)
It's a hard,
it's difficult at that time of year for anyone to escape their farms. know this.
Jenny (1:00:52)
Nah. I feel like it would be
worth it. That's so exciting. So lavender sounds like it's just a really big important part of your farm. And with this tragedy, you have decided that that's the direction that you really want to go in. And now it's all happening. And you're doing this amazing Lavender Fest and all of your lavender products and distilling it. That's just so wonderful that even after this tragedy, you guys are
seems like you're coming back stronger than ever, at least from the outside looking in. So I don't know, it may not, I don't know if it feels like that for you guys, but it looks like that from the outside. So doing amazing. Yeah, of course.
Adam & Jenn (1:01:28)
thank you. The
only other thing I wanted to tell people out there is, know, nothing can really prepare you for getting ready for, you know, for tragedy to strike or anything like that. But I would say like one thing that definitely I'd missed this point, but one thing that helped us out, we didn't intentionally do this, but, know, within that community concept is like cultivating connections.
taking care of people, being kind, providing space for people and giving back. If you do those things, if you truly care about people, they're gonna care about you in return. we're not nice and we don't care about people because we expect that to get that back. We want to do that. And that was part of what made people care and bless us back. So part of what you could do to help.
You know, I'm not saying this is like a mitigation strategy because that's not what it is. It's just like organically be a good person, be kind, take care of yourself and others, your community, and you're going to end up getting blessed with that same, it's karma. I guess it's karma. You're going to get that back upon yourself in the best ways possible. you know, not that you can plan for that. You don't ever know what's going to happen, but just do the right thing.
be wonderful, provide space. like with what we do with providing beauty and wellness out into the world, like I don't see how there's any way other than how you're gonna get that back. And that goes for all flower farmers and florists around the United States and around the world.
Jenny (1:03:17)
With that, feel like that's a great ending for this meeting. That was perfect. I love that. Well, is there anything else that you guys want to leave us with before we kind of wrap up our time together today?
Adam & Jenn (1:03:19)
He speaks way better than I do. No, he speaks better than I do. He's usually the man with the plan.
Oh,
I would just love for anyone out there who's interested in coming and visiting Pepper Harrow, definitely take the opportunity to do that. Even if it's like a road trip, our community here in Winterset, Iowa, people call it Mayberry. People who come and stay at our glamping tents say that we have a hallmark-esque little town square and little town, and it couldn't be any further from the truth. So, you know.
Grab your girl gang, rent an Airbnb in the area, and come out and do a girls weekend visiting Pepper Hero because it will not disappoint.
Jenny (1:04:14)
I love that. That sounds like my kind of vacation.
Adam & Jenn (1:04:17)
it's so wonderful. You would love it, Jenny.
Jenny (1:04:20)
I'm, need to make a trip out there. really do. So I will sometime soon. So I want to say one last thing before we hop off here is that I originally heard a lot of your story with the tornado and this strategy from a presentation you gave a while ago. And this past summer, I experienced a near what probably wasn't a real near miss, but
Adam & Jenn (1:04:27)
you
Jenny (1:04:44)
I didn't listen to any of the advice that you gave until I had a close call with the tragedy. And now I'm like, I really should have listened to them. And that's what made me think to have you guys come back on. So in Iowa, I assume you live in an area where tornadoes are fairly common or it's a concern. I live in Western New York state. We do not have tornadoes. We do not have hurricanes. This is not something that happens in our area at all.
Then this past summer, I had an on-farm intensive two-day workshop here. I had 20 people in my brand new barn and we all got the tornado warning, not the watch, the warning. And I was like, this doesn't happen to us. Like kind of similar reaction to you. Like they're overreacting. I won't tell the whole long story. We were fine. Everybody was fine. tornado did touch down close to our farm in the next town over. And luckily there...
You know, everything was fine. Not a lot of inner juries or anything, but I have a contingency plan and an emergency plan now for every time we have an event or we have people on the farm. And it's just something that I never thought about. And even after hearing your story, I was like, yeah, I don't know if I really, you know, I should go check up on my insurance plan, but it took me having a close call to really take it seriously for, so for people who are listening,
And they're hearing what you are saying, Jen and Adam, take it seriously because this is really life altering stuff. So anything that you can do to put yourself in a position where you can rebuild and come back strong, like Jen and Adam have, I just really encourage anybody to do that. So thank you guys so much for coming on. I really appreciate you sharing such a vulnerable story. know that it's not easy.
to talk about this kind of stuff, but I'm so appreciative that you are and you're sharing all of it with us. So can you just tell everyone one more time where people can find you online, your Instagram, your website, and then of course, hopefully everyone will go visit you for one of your amazing workshops or your Lavender Fest.
Adam & Jenn (1:06:56)
Absolutely, check us out on our website www.pepperharrowfarm.com, Instagram, pepperharrow underscore, on Facebook, pepperharrow. Tick-tock. Tick-tock, pepperharrow. We have a YouTube channel, so if anybody's curious about our farm in general, can mind our YouTube channel. We have all sorts of great videos on there.
Yeah, and we're also on Patreon, so if anyone wants to sign up for a little bit additional content, Patreon's a great spot to find us for some one-on-one or just a little bit more information than what we generally put out to the public.
Jenny (1:07:37)
Thank you guys again so much for joining me. Everyone go check out Pepper Harrow Farm and we'll see everyone later on the next episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. Bye.
Jenny (1:07:57)
Hey, one last thing before you go, I have a super quick favor to ask.
If you haven't yet, could you please leave the six figure flower farming podcast a review on Apple or Spotify? If you've gotten any value or insight out of this podcast at all, it would seriously mean the world to me and to your fellow flower farmers because those reviews help them find the valuable information they need to build their profitable and sustainable flower farm businesses. So please just take less than 30 seconds. It literally takes no time at all to just
go ahead and leave a review now and I will be forever grateful. Thank you so much in advance and I'll see you next time.
