My Story
Hello! Welcome to Rural Route Bulbs! I am Jody the owner, and I am so glad you are here! Let me tell you a little bit about how we came to be tulip farmers. Our you-pick tulip business started out as an experiment. The first time I have ever planted tulip in my life I planted 4,000 bulbs by hand! The year was 2020, oh you remember that wonderful year, when the world got a little scary and a little crazy. I crawled on the ground for 4 days putting tulip bulbs in the exact position they needed to be, tip up 6 inches apart. I actually measured out a wooden stake that we had from our corn plot and used it to make sure the bulbs were exactly 6 inches apart. My father-in-law, and our neighbor, was kind enough to fill the rows, that we trenched in when I was done planting. I planted and tried to stay as far away from my father in law as I could for 4 days of planting tulips because I had covid for the first time and didn’t want to get him sick! I did not feel good for the next couple of days. But, in the spring those tulips started to grow! After the foliage was out of the ground a little the deer started eating them! Town deer are just ravenous creatures! We discovered a couple of products that keep deer from eating tulips, thanks to a friend that owns Field Road Flowers. Those hairy little buggers like to eat the flowers riiiight before they are going to bloom. It was sad to see them bit off!
The tulips grew so well that we decided that we should plant another 12,000 tulips the next fall. You would think it would have been easier as I did not have covid that fall. However, I was pregnant. We crawled on the ground for a week putting tulips into those trenched rows! I say we because I had a few people that I will always be thankful to for helping me plant! It was a lot of work. After all that crawling on the ground I don’t think my body was right for about 6 months, but that may have also been because of my sweet little baby… The spring of 2022 the tulips bloomed beautifully! It was so fun to look out the windows and see those gorgeous flowers! The effort to plant them was definitely worth it. I would walk through the tulips and pretend to be taking “notes” on the varieties, but really I just liked being amongst them. As many of Rural Route Bulbs visitors have said this year “I didn’t know tulips could look like that”!
