Welcome to Angel Dawn Flower Farm.

My name is Nick Belles, and I’m the Chief Dirt Mover, marketing guy, weeder, and the extrovert. I grow flowers with my girlfriend Hannah (she’s the boss). I’m a Marine Corps veteran, proud dog dad, proud cat dad, and I spend most of my life working in the creative world of social media.

Hannah is the CEO of the farm and the brains behind this whole operation. Her love for flowers runs about as deep as her love for animals, and for those who know us, that’s saying a lot.

She’s one of the gentlest souls you’ll ever meet. She stops for turtles, picks up just about every lost dog or cat she finds, and somehow makes sure half the birds in Christian County stay fed through the winter.

We’ve been growing flowers for a couple of years now, but this is the first year we’re growing cut flowers for profit. The last few years have really been about building infrastructure and learning as we go on our little half-acre property in Sparta, Missouri.

What started as a dream is quickly becoming reality.

Like a lot of people, our story really started during COVID. We had just moved into our new house in December of 2019, and by spring the world had completely changed. People were stuck at home and life slowed down overnight.

Before COVID, we already knew we wanted a garden. What we didn’t know was how much that garden would end up changing our lives.

From 2020 until now, the garden has been the constant.

We spent evenings out there together talking about new ideas, figuring out how to squeeze in more raised beds, and dreaming about what the space could become. We sweated through Missouri summers together and watched everything go dormant in the winter.

The garden became a place where we felt close to each other. It gave us something to build together.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that it was becoming something even bigger for Hannah.

For a long time, Hannah struggled with mental health challenges. Something that still isn’t talked about enough. From the outside, I just saw her spending hours inside the little 4x4 greenhouse we bought or working out in the garden.

What I didn’t know was that she was healing.

Flowers gave her peace. They gave her purpose, routine, and something beautiful to care for. Looking back now, I can see that those moments quietly changed the course of our lives.

In the winter of 2022, Hannah ordered zinnia seeds from one of her favorite seed companies. Up until that point, I honestly couldn’t have told you what a zinnia was, let alone why we needed an entire 4x8 bed full of them.

I’ll gladly admit I was wrong.

That summer, when those zinnias finally bloomed, I understood. They were beautiful, and Hannah was absolutely obsessed. From that point on, there was no slowing down.

Over the next few years, Hannah soaked up every bit of flower-growing knowledge she could while I started my full-time corporate job working in social media. Every season brought new experiments, new varieties, and plenty of mistakes.

Some flowers refused to grow. Some got destroyed by disease. One year we accidentally planted so many seedlings we genuinely had no clue what to do with them all.

But every season taught us something.

By the winter of 2024, Hannah had completed the Floret Flower Farmer course. I watched parts of it with her, and it completely opened my eyes to the beauty, the skill, and the amount of work that goes into flower farming.

It also convinced me that it was time to rip out the raised beds.

We knew 2025 was the year we were finally going to give this thing everything we had, not necessarily on the selling side, but on the growing side.

We pulled out the raised beds and converted everything into rows. We added even more rows to the front yard, brought in compost and quality soil, and started building systems that could actually support a flower farm.

Missouri soil can humble you pretty quickly, so we wanted to start on the right foot.

We were behind schedule more than once because of weather, plant sales, and trying to build infrastructure at the same time. But once every flower was finally in the ground, it felt like we could finally breathe again.

As the 2025 season went on, I watched Hannah light up every time she harvested another bundle of flowers. At one point it felt like flowers were coming out of our ears.

We sold bouquets through our farmstand, supplied a local florist, and gave plenty away to friends and family.

That’s when I knew 2026 was going to be the year we officially launched the flower farm.

When it came time to name it, Hannah kept coming back to her roots; the people who stood beside her and encouraged her through all of it.

That’s how we landed on Angel Dawn Flower Farm.

Angel is her mother’s name. She lives just a few minutes down the road and has been one of the biggest supporters and helpers as we slowly transform our property into a flower farm.

Dawn was her grandmother’s name. She passed away in 2018.

Two strong women who helped shape Hannah into who she is today.

So with all of that being said, I hope 2026 becomes a year of growth, learning, appreciation, and plenty of hard lessons along the way. We’re excited to share the wins, the failures, and everything in between.

And if you’ve ever thought about growing flowers in your front yard, just freaking do it.

You never know where it might lead.

See you next time,

Nick