Finding our Roots: The Story of Driftless Daughters…
Hi! 👋🏻 Erin here, mom of Driftless Daughters. We’re excited you’re here and want to learn more about our story. Living among the rolling hills of Green County has been a joy for my husband and our three young children. Being a family in agriculture and tending to the land, it’s easy to see that nature really sets the pace for us if we allow it. As our seasons unfold, wildflowers, among many things, bloom in their own time, rivers flow gently through the terrain and animals find comfort in their surroundings. Living in the country and amongst nature with a slower pace has been not only a healing journey, but a calling for all of us.
Our Agriculture Roots and a Season of Change
Our family has been a part of agriculture and farming for over 17 years — longer if you consider my husband alone, he’s been farming likely since he was able to walk. My husband and I own a dairy farm, milking 400 cows and running 500 acres of land in southern Wisconsin. I didn’t grow up on a farm, in agriculture so meeting my husband and settling down on our rolling hills here was a shift. We built the home we live in over three years ago and I dreamed of the land to plant beautiful perennials and landscape so that blooms filled the spaces around my yard. I remember years ago telling my husband I couldn’t wait until the day I could have a vase a fresh flowers that filled my space each week. Each spring, I’ve been adding to my flower beds, bringing more diversity to my flowers that could fulfill that wish. Last fall, I started a wildflower prairie (which is a stretch in the sense of that word, more like a small section of our yard transitioned to flowers) in the back of our yard. My mother in law has a beautiful wildflower prairie behind her house and she started teaching me the ropes last year on how to grow wildflowers and start a prairie of my own. After the first frost last fall, you could find me outside sprinkling seeds, living in hope and allowing Mother Nature to take it’s course. Imagine my delight this spring when the seeds she had given as a gift came up in vibrant colors (even after my son had mowed over the initial blooms 😩).
But that’s not where this story fully begins. I experienced deep loss and grief late winter with the loss of my father. He was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia in spring of 2023 and passed away a short two years later. Losing a loved one has a way of shifting the ground beneath your feet. What was normal everyday ‘busyness’ felt heavy and loud, the problems that existed previously were insignificant and my time was going too fast as life seemed fragile. In the quiet that followed, I began searching for peace, for grounding, for healing and a reminder that there is joy and beauty to be found in the everyday. A cut flower garden was new to us and felt like a great place for us to start connecting in with nature. Seems rather funny as I’ve been passionate about my perennials for quite some time but I’ve never considered growing a cut flower garden. What a beautiful gift to share with my daughters — something that would eventually lead to us finding peace with life’s transitions.
We soon jumped into a spring filled with seeds in trays, summer mornings spent with dirt under our nails and evenings walking rows of blooms lit by golden hour light. What started as a simple hobby became therapy for our hearts—a way to heal, to breathe, and to find joy again.
Seeing these flowers bloom with such vibrance, knowing it was our hands that sowed them with care and attention was magic. Being able to cut them, arrange them with creative flare and share them with our closest friends and family brought us so much joy. Having this experience led us to know, we were meant to start Driftless Daughters Flower Co. and connect with our community.
More Than Just Flowers…
As a mother, I knew I wanted to pass on something more than just the beauty of the flowers to my girls. It was important that we were able to connect into the lessons that being out in nature provided us. In the field, we found lessons worth sharing below and perhaps I’ll take more blog posts to dive further into these as time goes along.
Lessons from the field:
🌱 Patience brings rewards. Seeds don’t bloom overnight. Flowers remind us that the best things take time, and growth often happens quietly before it’s ever seen.
🌸 Resilience is rooted deep. Flowers bend in the wind, endure storms, and still bloom. Strength isn’t about avoiding hardship—it’s about standing tall afterward.
🩶 Every season has a purpose. Tulips shine in spring, zinnias in summer, dahlias in fall. Life has seasons too—rest, growth, bloom—and each is necessary.
🥀 Letting go allows space for growth. Deadheading dying blooms makes room for more flowers. Life asks us to do the same — let go of what’s finished so something new can flourish.
🌼 Find joy in the small things and the journey. Sometimes it’s not the biggest bloom that matters, but the tiny wildflower at the edge of the field. Beauty often lives in the little, overlooked places.
✨ Roots and light are key. Strong roots keep flowers grounded, but every stem still stretches toward the sun. Balance stability with the courage to grow upward.
In a world where life is moving so fast, childhood seems fleeting and technology rules the world, a summer growing flowers taught us the quiet power of nature. This experiment shaped the way my daughters were experiencing the world, teaching them values rooted in joy, hard work, kindness and hope. Let’s be honest, these lessons weren’t just for my daughters, perhaps in the stage of life I had come to, I needed them just as much.
Sharing Joy and Putting One Foot in Front of the Other
What began as a way to heal soon turned into something more. The joy I felt walking through rows of zinnias, peonies, and sunflowers was abundant and the pride of my girls knowing it was their work that grew such beautiful blooms was too big to not share. We started sharing our flowers with dear family and friends and it opened our eyes to something beautiful — the simple act of giving a bouquet could brighten a day, spark a smile, and remind someone that they are loved. And quite honestly, the creative process of arranging something unique was an experience I truly enjoyed.
Driftless Daughters was born from this and every bouquet we share carries a piece of our story, rooted in love. Before I knew it, I was filing LLC paperwork and ordering tubers and bulbs to be put in the ground this fall for next season.
Our Invitation to Slow Down
In a world that moves too quickly, our flowers are an invitation: to pause, to breathe, to get outside with nature and take time to reflect on what matters most. Whether you take home a bundle of tulips in spring or a wild bouquet in summer, we hope you feel the love and intention grown into every stem and it fills your home.
Because to us, flowers are never just flowers. They’re pieces of memory, healing, joy, and connection—reminders to live slowly and fully, rooted in what matters. Each day I’m out in my gardens, I see the monarch butterflies buzzing around our stems and smile. I say a quick hello to my dad, knowing his pride is beaming at the growth that has surmounted out of loss. His voice booms (because the man didn’t know how to whisper) with pride in his daughter and granddaughters growing something magical.
Thank you for being here at the beginning of our journey. We can’t wait to share the seasons ahead with you—one bloom at a time.
Much love from the field,
Erin, Finnley and Mila