One Ugly Shower, the Edge of the World, and 1,000 Paper Cranes

That’s the ugliest shower I’ve ever seen. It’s still something I’m saying seven years later, basically any time I walk into our bathroom.

But searching for a farm was not quite as easy as just googling “perfect properties for a flower farm that wants to scale up but start small and also the house shouldn’t be a complete dump.”

Despite not finding a ton of really incredible dream homes with coincidentally perfect farms, we found one that really brought it all together well enough. Nearly 10 acres, in Farmersville, just north of Josephine.

When I was a kid, my dad liked to drive around and look at houses, at scenery that wasn’t our cookie-cutter neighborhood in Allen. We hated it. We wanted to get home to our video games and toys, not sit in the car listening to my parents’ music and staring at boring things.

He’d threaten us with a drive to Lake Lavon, the edge of DFW as far as we were concerned. Nothing beyond it felt like a real place, just somewhere my dad dragged us to torture us a little. It never once crossed my mind I’d live there voluntarily.

So, we sent my mom and dad on a trip across the lake to check out the property in Farmersville. The house isn’t impressive, but it’s in decent condition with some updates and it’s cozy! It seemed like a mansion after our years in city apartments.

The property had fencing, irrigation, a barn, chicken coops, a shed, and a house that we liked. It was the one. The farm started to feel real.

As with any big decision in life, it didn’t happen immediately, and there were about 10,000 things to do to make the move a reality. We had to finish out our time in San Francisco, and, like, move.

To fill the time between lives we dreamed about the farm, went to baseball games, got engaged, just run-of-the-mill stuff. We started to think about names for the farm and ended up with a pile of generic names that weren’t really doing it for us. I think I tried every combination of Texas plus Noun plus Flower Farm.

We wanted it to say something about us. We also didn’t know ourselves as farmers yet. We’d only been together for a little over a year, we barely knew ourselves as a team.

We knew this much: we cared about purpose, about learning a craft, about using our hands to create something. We cared about sharing little joys with others. We cared about using our time to make the world a little more beautiful.

Once I stopped thinking like a generic name-generator, my brain circled around those things we cared about. I remembered that one of the translations of my name, Jenna, is “little bird.” And then I remembered a through-line in my life, a constant thing I always come back to.

Paper birds.

I’ve always been a fidgeter. Always wanted to be doing something with my hands. I learned how to fold a paper crane when I was a kid, inspired by the story of Sadako Sasaki folding 1,000 paper cranes so that her wish may be granted. The paper crane became a symbol of peace after the Hiroshima bombing.

My journey with the paper bird was less grim. I folded them when I was bored, when I had a piece of paper nearby, when I wanted to bring a smile to someone’s face. I folded them and then gave them away. In a small way it felt like purpose. It felt like connection. It felt like putting a little bit of beauty into the world as a result of my practiced hands.

And that’s exactly what we wanted this farm to be. We knew it was a winner the second I said “Paper Bird Flower Farm” out loud.

Does it result in passers-by saying “wow these flowers are paper” at least once a week? Yes. Do I regret it? No. It stops people and makes them think for a second, sometimes long enough to let me explain that they’re real, we grow them, and they’ll look beautiful in their home.

I made our first logo myself and was so proud of it. Looking back at it now it’s a bit amateur, but I recently heard someone say that if you don’t look back at where you started and cringe a little, did you even grow and improve?

I love that name more every year. This farm is our little bit of beauty and joy and purpose. These flowers are our 1,000 paper cranes. This life is meant to be shared, and we feel so fortunate to share it with you.