2nd Year Planting
When I told close friends and family members I wanted to grow lotus, half of them said “You’re crazy!” and the other half said “That sounds amazing!”
But the more I read about lotus being used for over 5,000 years as a delicious food, as a plant with tremendous medicinal properties, and with a flower recognized by over half the world’s population as the most sacred symbol of purity, the more I went further down the rabbit hole with this dream to start a lotus farm in North America.
Browse the early days on the farm
“ain’t no AI could dream up an origin story like this”
I’m tellin’ ya, there ain’t no AI that could dream up a back story like this one: Canadian boy from the big city, teenage adventures in the the Rocky Mountains, the prairies, and New Mexico, lived in China for 6 years, married a girl from Japan, did business in airborne (mapping systems) remote sensing technology for 19 years across all of Asia, went exploring in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ontario seeking out wild stands of American Lotus left over from the time when dinosaurs roamed the land, visited lotus farms in Japan, China, and S. Korea, bought a small piece of unwanted overgrown farmland from the county government in New York state, slept in a tent in the 600-foot long driveway with coyotes howling in the distance, worked the land by hand, planted lotus and failed, persisted and finally succeeded to become the self-proclaimed first lotus farmer in America.
Dig into the story through this photo journey. And check out the rest of the site to learn more about lotus as a healthy food and its ability to treat obesity, diabetes, and cancer - it even has anti-aging effects!
