Katy and Dale Ripp didn’t plan to become flower farmers.
But when the couple heard about a property in Cross Plains in need of some major work and a new owner, the seed of a big idea took root.
The pair and kids Miles and Madeline moved in, planted thousands of flowers and have cultivated Mad Lizzies Flower Farm into a blooming business.
“I didn’t realize this was a dream of mine until it began,” says Katy. “I’m not really scared of failing. I don’t have a green thumb but I love to research.”
Katy and Dale — who also work fulltime in member services for a Middleton health club and as a project manager at high-end home improvement company, respectively — grow tulips, daffodils, peonies, roses, sunflowers and more.
And Katy’s hard-pressed to choose a favorite. “Whatever is blooming is my favorite,” she says. “There is not a flower I don’t love.”
Dale, who grew up near his family’s dairy farm in Ashton, built a roadside stand, and Katy began by selling flowers at the Cross Plains farmers market. But when she’d sell out quickly, another idea blossomed. She and Dale launched a bouquet CSA, allowing customers to pre-pay and pick up fresh blooms all summer long.
And when sunflowers start popping up on the farm, visitors can pay $20 for a bucket and pick as many flowers as they can fit during “sunflower happy hours.”
Katy also uses flowers from the farm to enhance intimate events like elopements, and she has created thoughtful arrangements for funerals.
“I love what flowers do for people,” she says. “They’re part of their best day and their worst day.”
Katy and Dale appreciate the romantic side of flowers — and they’re well-versed in displays of affection. Just two months after meeting Dale in late 2002, Katy was called up to serve in Kuwait and Iraq.
“Dale he wrote me a letter every day I was gone,” she says. “We have legit love letters.”
Katy, who grew up in Middleton, is constantly coming up with new ideas and different ways to bring flowers into people’s lives. She often collaborates with other local businesses — such as Bloom Bake Shop and Feathered Arrow Photography, Katie Gardner Photography and Tumbling Sparrow Photography — on workshops and events. And Mad Lizzies grows for wholesale cooperative Fair Field Flowers.
“Idle hands get me into trouble,” she says. “My dad always told me if you want something done, give it to a busy person.”
Miles and Madeline, who will turn nine and six next month, pitch in with Mad Lizzies, too. They’ve learned a lot about flowers and hard work and what it’s like to follow a dream, watching their parents through the ups, downs and everything in between of running a business on their own terms.
“Somebody told us early on that a flower’s purpose is to grow,” Katy says, adding that her approach is reading seed packet instructions, giving plants what they need and letting them do their thing. “I talk to them and I pet them and they end up growing for me,” she says.
Photos by Feathered Arrow Photography.