Meet Ronda Foreman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ronda Foreman. 

Hi Ronda, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University on an Air Force ROTC scholarship. Though my degree was in aerospace engineering, I ended up as a pilot in the air force. It was a fantastic job, full of adventure and rarely dull, but after my son was born prematurely in 2002, I separated from the service to care for him full-time. 

The Air Force transferred our family to Beavercreek in 2005 where my husband convinced me that we needed our old farmhouse on 5 acres. It was a smart move because after raising my children and gardening for over a decade, I decided I should sell flowers to fund my constant landscaping purchases. It wasn’t unusual for me to order hundreds of tulip bulbs or grow loads of dahlias just to have flowers for my home and events at church. Why not try to recoup a little of the investment? 

The slower pace of pandemic life gave me extra time in the garden in 2020 and a flower business felt more doable. In 2021, I signed up for an online business course that walked me through set up, and by Mother’s Day, I had a flower stand up and running. It was a wild-ride learning-process kind of year. It had been a while since I’d been so new at something, and farming is a humbling experience. You grow pretty things, but you kill plenty of plants and deal with all manner of weather, weeds, and pests. I’m always looking to streamline my processes and capitalize on efficiency but often feel like I don’t know what I’m doing yet. 

One of the best parts of the whole business experience has been getting to know my neighbors and local community. People love to chat about flowers and I’ve found my people! 

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Ha! Not a smooth road. Social media might show the pretty highlights, but there’s plenty of grit and tears in the background. 

I didn’t realize that starting a business would require me to know tax law, marketing, website design, supply chain chokepoints, and so much more. I thought the hardest part might just be starting seeds or finding the best fertilizer for a certain flower. Turns out, growing the flowers is easier than updating inventory or setting fulfillment dates on your e-commerce platform. 

Also, we live in such a “next-day shipping” kind of world that thinking long-term about building soil structure and managing pests via natural predators, and building the right habitat to encourage the farm’s overall health is humbling. Sometimes you wonder if you’ll ever not be dealing with fungal disease on zinnias or Japanese beetles in July. But at the same time, I’ve developed some perspective on things and can accept setbacks without feeling like all of life is crisis. The sun will come up tomorrow! 

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I grow and sell cut flowers on about an eighth of an acre. We have 5 acres on our property, which used to be a dairy farm in the early 1900s. We built a self-serve flower stand that opens two days a week from May through mid-October. Customers can purchase hand-tied bouquets of flowers cut from the field just the day before. We grow many unique varieties that you won’t find sold in grocery stores or even the florists’ shop. You can’t beat locally grown flowers for freshness and beauty. They haven’t been cut weeks in advance or flown thousands of miles and shipped across country out of water for days. 

What do you like and dislike about the city?
I love having four seasons and mild summers. We fell in love with Greene County after moving here with small children. There was so much green space! We had all sorts of parks and trails and nature to explore, and we could eat outdoors. After growing up in south Texas, I thought people only ate outside in the movies because we would be sweating and swatting mosquitos trying to do that in the south. 

I think I’d love our city even more if we had more Tex-Mex restaurants and a Whataburger. 🙂 Miss those from childhood. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.flygirlflowers.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/flygirlflowers
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/flygirlflowers