URBANA - When I want to get inspired by my work with local small farmers, I make my way to Clara Joyce Flowers . There, farmer Drew Groezinger inevitably has something new going on. My visits have coincided with high tunnels being erected, a field of newly planted hemp, propagation houses busting at the seams with trays ready to be planted, preparation for social media launches, the creation of value-added products, and an innovative evolution of a farmstand. In my years of these ‘drop-ins’, the most dramatic change is the transition from colorful fields of vegetables to cascading seas of dahlias, ranunculus, sunflowers, peonies, and other specialty cut flowers. To understand Clara Joyce Flowers and the work that Drew and his team do is to first understand that it was not “always flowers but it was always going to be flowers.” As a seventh-generation resident of Jo Daviess County in the Driftless Region of Northwest Illinois, Drew grew up surrounded by rolling
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