Heather Smith sits on the ground next to a full lavender bush with dark purple buds and flowers just starting to open.
She explains how to properly cut the plant to make a lavender bouquet.
“The only thing is to cut it at the second set of leaves,” explained Heather. “You find the stem that you're going to want. Need to follow it down to the first set of leaves, and then you find the second set of leaves, and that is where you cut.”
Heather sells cut your own lavender bouquets for $10 at the farm she runs with her husband Bill in Tomahawk called Tranquil Acres.
“If you want to do a variety from all different plants, that's fine. We have over 2,500 plants. If you want to sit in front of one bush and just cut it, cut it back completely. That's not a problem either,” said Heather.
Heather will also make essential oils from the lavender to sell at the farm and every Tuesday at the Tomahawk Farmers Market.
While selling lavender bouquets and essential oils may be a straightforward business plan, the rest of the farm doesn’t operate on that model.
In addition to the lavender, the Smith’s also grow a variety of fruits and vegetables on about five acres.
“Mostly like the main staples, potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, beans, peas, onions, tons of onions,” said Bill. “Then the other garden is all winter squashes, pumpkins and squash and so that stuff is all more like fall.”
For that produce, the Smith’s encourage people to pick what they need and pay what they can.
“We just didn't want anyone excluded. We wanted to create a safe green space that anybody could have access to,” said Heather.
That wasn’t the intention when Heather and Bill bought the property in 2020—in fact, it was just about the opposite.
When the world was being upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, they wanted a peaceful space where they could isolate.
“We bought 37 acres in the middle of here and just hid. We hid for a whole year, and it was amazing,” said Heather. “After a year, we were like, this place is too awesome not to share. So then we came up with a plan to share it.”
The pandemic shaped that plan too as the Smith’s saw and experienced the sharp rise in prices at the grocery store.
“It's expensive to eat healthy. With what we're growing, we don't use chemicals on anything, so it's not the perfect size fruit or vegetables or the perfect color, but everybody can afford it if they come here,” said Bill.
Bill says a nice benefit of opening their farm to the public has been watching people, especially kids, become more connected to their food source.
“There's kids that run around here every week with eating just whatever they pull out of the ground, they're eating right in the garden, because it's just a cool experience to them,” said Bill. “They look forward to coming back and they know where the tomatoes are, the cucumbers, and, you know, they're pulling carrots and beans or whatever, and they just have a whole lunch while they're inside the garden.”
Creating a community space like Tranquil Acres hasn’t come without challenges.
Bill and Heather have never run a farm like this before, just a small garden at their old home.
It’s been a bit of a trial and error at some points. It’s also become a lot more work than either were necessarily intending in retirement.
“When we started this four years ago, I guess we thought we wouldn't continue to age,” Heather said with a laugh. “Our thinking was all straight from our heart. It's getting tricky to keep it afloat, financially and physically. It's just the two of us. We have volunteers from our garden community that come out and say, ‘Oh you're planting, we'd like to help,’ or ‘You're weeding, we'd like to help.’ We get those people coming and volunteering, and that's lovely. It's a big help.”
It’s hard work for Heather and Bill to keep the farm running, but they say the reward makes it worth it.
“The reward is when you get to see people experience this and be able to take groceries home that they picked themselves, and they're coming back. Then we have people that come every week like this is their primary spot. That's a good feeling,” said Bill.
The Smith’s encourage folks to come out and make a day of it, bring a picnic, hike the trails on their property, and hopefully find some tranquility.
Tranquil Acres is located off County Highway E in Tomahawk.
It’s open Friday through Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Mondays are reserved for people with special needs. People can call ahead to arrange.
They also have golf carts to help people with mobility limitations get around.
