My name is Chelsea Belle and I am a joyful and hopeful farmer. I have over fifteen years of experience tending to vegetables, flowers, animals, and temperamental farm machinery.

I sought to learn both the art and science of growing, taking the time to work for some talented growers on several diverse vegetable and flower farms in southwestern Virginia, the northeast, and abroad in New Zealand. While farming in southwestern Virginia I earned a Bachelor’s degree from Virginia Tech with concentrations in Horticulture and Civic Agriculture and Food Systems.

After years of studying and farming other soils and exploring mountains and rivers, I returned to my homeplace in Bluemont, Loudoun County, Virginia in 2014 to fulfill the dream of having my own flower farm. With access to a lease on the land that I was raised on, the seed of Bee’s Wing Farm was sown.

Later that same year, while farming part-time for another grower in the area I met Chris Griffin, a wandering musician with agrarian fantasies who had just returned home from some European travels. After planting across the row from each other for a couple of months we decided that we wanted to spend time together beyond planting and weeding. Many hikes, shows, and river swims later we are still planting across the row from each other.

Chris brings his steady tempo, deep patience, and mechanical mind to keep the irrigation system running, the tractor engines turning over, and our rickety farm buildings in working order. Chris has a degree in double bass jazz performance and is a bluegrass/old-time player and homebrewer.

In June 2020 we added a little boy named Wendell to our family and farm. Wendell has a lifetime of farm experience. He brings his sweet zeal to the farm in his delight of the outdoors, tractors, dogs, and blueberries. He loves driving tractors, making tractor noises, smelling flowers, pulling freshly planted plants out of the ground, calling for the dogs, and hand watering plants or really anything within range of his water wand.

We in partnership, are thankful to be keeping a small piece of Loudoun County open, and caring soulfully for its soil, waters, and the creatures both two and four-legged that share this place with us. We are truly grateful to have the opportunity to spend so much time together doing something we believe is bigger than ourselves-putting beauty back into the world and to be received so generously by our community.

** In December of 2022 we purchased twenty-eight acres in White Post, VA. Over the course of 2023, we will be moving our farm and family to White Post. We will miss our homeplace of Loudoun County but high taxes and steep land prices made our staying impossible. We will miss Bluemont but our flowers will still make their way over the mountain to be enjoyed by our Loudoun Community.