Megan Rudroff has a love for flowers and she’s turned that passion into a side business that she shares with her husband, Layne, and their three daughters. While the Rudroff farm produces corn, soybeans, and cattle, like most farms in Osage County, it also produces beautiful cut flowers that Megan sells to a wholesale florist, by subscription, and at their roadside stand near Rich Fountain.

Rudy Lane Flower Farm specializes in two primary flowers, Peonies in the spring and Dahlias in the late summer and fall. Megan plants thousands of Daffodil and Tulip bulbs for spring and at least a couple dozen other flowers that she grows from seeds, including snapdragons, zinnias, and sunflowers. 

Megan has always loved growing things and she remembers vividly her mom cutting flowers and putting them on her nightstand.

“I do the same thing with my kids except they pick the flowers they like the best,” Megan said with a smile. “I’ll be sad when we have the first frost and I don’t have flowers on the table anymore.”

Megan loves being able to share her passion for growing things with her children. 

“That’s part of what drew me to the flowers, that I can do it with my kids,” Megan said. “My kids are little right now and they love helping me. When you work full time, you are already away from your kids too much, and then to add a side passion project, I couldn’t take more time away from them.”

Megan has made her cut flower business a family affair. She enjoys having the kids out with her, digging for worms, planting things, learning about growing things, and responsibility.

Megan’s favorite part of the cut flower business is the subscription service she offers on a limited basis to local customers. 

Customers sign up on her website and pay for a month’s worth of flowers. They then receive a weekly bouquet for four weeks that they can pick up at Joe’s Market in Westphalia or Serendipity Coffee & Tea in Linn. 

“I wasn’t sure how it was going to go,” Megan explained. “But it is so much fun. My subscription people get catered to. They are my priority.”

Megan only started offering the subscription service in August of this year but she plans to offer it again in the spring. The Dahlia subscription in the fall costs $80 per month. The spring subscriptions will be a little more expensive at $100 for the month but they will include a Peony bouquet at the end of the month.

The Rudroffs also offer cut flowers at their roadside stand off Rt. E towards Rich Fountain. There on a Saturday morning, you can find charming mason jar bouquets or you can make up your own arrangement from the cut flowers in buckets that are individually priced. Customers purchase flowers on the honor system, dropping cash or a check into a lockbox, or sending the money by using the Venmo app on their phone.

Layne and Megan bought the farm on the Gasconade River near Rich Fountain in 2010, and although the young couple farmed, worked full-time, and have three little girls to raise, Megan wanted to find a niche business that she could develop to add to the household income. 

“I looked at, studied, and even tried a few things with chickens,” Megan explained. “I thought about sheep and goats and even vegetables but nothing really clicked.”

Then one day she was scrolling through Instagram and saw a picture that she thought was pretty and realized that it was a cut flower farm in Oregon. 

“I always thought that flowers were grown somewhere else, like in South America or whatever,” Megan explained.

She began researching and found out that there was a resurgence of cut flowers farms all over the United States. Like a lot of products, customers were looking for locally sourced products, with fewer chemicals and pesticides. 

The Rudroffs use pesticides and fungicides on their flowers but they are very specific and follow a plan to try to specifically target pests. 

“We don’t just haphazardly spray,” Megan explained. “We make sure that we are being preventative so we can reduce how much we have to spray.”

In 2019, Layne tilled up flower beds and they planted some flowers. In the spring of 2020, they started selling cut flowers at their farmstead and to the wholesale florist. That first year, Megan and her husband planted over 200 Peonies. They have 11 varieties of Peonies and offer six different colors from classic white to magenta.

“Peonies are a perennial so the harvest will keep getting better,” Megan said. “The plants can last 50 to 60 years.”

Megan has found that the Peonies don’t have a lot of pests that want to eat them; her main problem with them is disease and insect pressure. Some of the flowers she has trouble keeping from deer, rabbits, and even groundhogs. The voles and squirrels go after her spring bulbs.

“I planted a type of flower that the deer just loved,” Megan said. “They just mowed them off.”

Megan tries to protect some of the flowers in raised beds near her house and then puts up chicken wire to deter the pests. 

Megan also plants hundreds of Dahlias, which grow from tubers and must be dug up and stored after frost each year. She digs up the roots, cleans them off, divides the bigger roots, and then stores them in her cellar until spring. Next year, she plans to plant 700 Dahlias. She plants the tubers in May and she has her first blooms by the Fourth of July although they are flowering their heaviest in August and September.

Megan also offers fresh-cut evergreen wreaths for the holidays. Made from fresh cedar, pine, and boxwood, wreaths are available at her farm stand in November or by special order.

The best way to hear about what is going on at Rudy Lane Flower Farms is to sign up for her email list on her website or you can follow her on Instagram or Facebook. Signups for the spring subscription will open in November and are available on the farm’s website at www.rudylaneflowerfarm.com.