Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 22
Page 23
Page 24
Page 25
Page 26
Page 27
Page 28
Page 29
Page 30
Page 31
Page 32
Page 33
Page 34
Page 35
Page 36
24 Ag Families-Summer Love blossoms in business life STORY AND PHOTOS BYTONIW. RILEY On any Friday night from mid-April to frost the kitchen of Martin Farm is filled with buckets of cut flowers from gardens just across the Trigg County line. The owners David Martin and his wife Martha White will gradually empty the buckets and use their flowers to create unique bouquets to sell at the Downtown Hopkinsville Farmers Market. The story of how the couple developed Martin Farm and moved into flower farming is one where timing was everything. How two people with vastly different careers and personalities came together to develop a partnership in life as well as business could be described as serendipitous. David is quiet and reserved has a degree in horticulture from Oregon State University and has a masters in genetics and molecular biology from Purdue University. Martha is outgoing and talkative and has a degree in library science from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. In 2000 David purchased the property in Trigg County that would soon blossom into Martin Farm. He loved plant breeding and wanted to develop varieties of grapes and gooseberries that would be sustainable in the South. In 2007 he took a position as a research lab manager at the University of Kentucky with the intent of going home on weekends to work on the plant development. Martha whose husband died in 2005 lived in Columbus Ohio but took a position as a librarian at the Lexington Public Library in 2007. She and David met when they were teenagers visiting family in tiny Rugby Tennessee but lost touch through the years. When she moved to Lexington Martha wrote David at his grand- fathers address in Rugby to tell him she hoped to reconnect. The letter made its way to Gallatin Tennessee where Davids father lived and eventually into Davids hands.