Liz Fiedler always knew she loved agriculture. She grew up on a meat farm with brothers who raised show cattle. But unsure of her place in farming, she became a nurse practitioner instead.
“I didn’t want to be a traditional farmer,” she said. “I didn’t know where I fit.”
Fiedler and her husband bought his family’s original 40-acre farm outside St. Cloud as a hobby. They wanted to raise their children there, even without plans to farm full-time. But everything changed in 2020.
“I started a little flower stand at the end of our driveway,” she said. “Every bouquet I sold, I donated one to a nursing home. It was my way of helping during such a hard time.”
That first summer, she sold every single stem. Fiedler even foraged from neighbors’ bushes to keep up with demand. “Looking back, those bouquets were rough,” she laughed. “But we sold 200 of them.”
Tragedy struck months later. “On December 7, our daughter turned three,” she shared. “On December 9, my husband died of a heart attack. Then, the next week, I found out I was pregnant again.”
Those early weeks were dark. “I didn’t get off the floor for six weeks,” she said. “But I had to keep going—for my daughter and the baby inside me.”
Fiedler leaned into the flower farm as a lifeline. “People wouldn’t let me quit,” she said. “The flowers just kept growing.”
From there, the business bloomed. She shifted focus from part-time nursing to full-time flower farming. “My sales grew 28 times since year one,” she said. “But growth came with expensive mistakes and low profits at first.”
To manage risk, Fiedler created a model that worked for her. She grows flowers to order—pre-selling most of her crops in the offseason. “I don’t do farmers markets, I don’t make bouquets and hope they sell. I already know what’s spoken for.”
Her approach is working. She now designs wedding flowers and leaned into becoming the florist herself. “Weddings are emotional. Brides want to know where their flowers come from,” she explained. “They want that connection.”
Her central Minnesota location, near a population of 200,000, also helps. “People want the country experience. They visit our farm and let their kids run barefoot in the grass,” she said.
Fiedler is now expanding as she’s building a multi-use space. “It’ll have a walk-in cooler, farm store, and space for workshops or small events,” she said. “People already come to me for flowers—this just makes it easier.”
Beyond farming, Fiedler started sharing her journey through a podcast and an upcoming book. “At first, I just wanted to tell my story,” she said. “But now it’s about showing others that we all go through hard things.”
When asked how she kept going, her answer was simple: “You can stay bitter, or you can get better,” she said. “I chose better.”
Fiedler continues to grow—not just flowers, but hope, community, and purpose.
