,I was blessed to be asked to do my bio for a new website Called Unending Possibility, which is a networking website for women and women-owned business forum.  I am a former medical transcriptionist with 18 plus years in the field.  Bambi Feaster, the founder of the Unending Possibilty website, is also a former MT trying to reach out and help others in the field  as it comes to a close and declines. Bambi and I "met" through a Life After Medical Transcription Group where those of us out of the field try to help and mentor those transitioning to a new career field.  Many of these women were in the field of medical transcription for most of their adult working lives.  Most of us loved the field and it once afforded a great income to support our families.  Some of these women were employees, some independent contractors, and other small business owners with  15, 20, or even 30 years of experience.  Increasingly, they are now left trying to find a new career path with onset of outsourcing to medical charts offshore, plummeting wages, lack of work, and also with the advent of speech recognition and healthcare systems going to EPIC (healthcare software).  These women have tremendous skill sets, mad researching skills, and tremendous innovation.  In my humble opinion, the medical field has always undervalued the medical transcription field.   It takes great skill to type 75-80 wpm (or more), fix grammar and punctuation on the fly, and type from spoken word and make sure all technical terms, instruments, and procedures are accurate and correct.   

My bio is currently on the Unending Possibility website.  I would like to  reach out and share that bio and also Bambi's website.  I hope this will inspire people that they CAN make a career change at any age!  (I am now 50 and transitioned out of the field in 2014).  

My bio on the website can be found here

Here is an excerpt from Unending Possibility About page.  Visit the website here 

WHAT UNENDING POSSIBILITY IS ALL ABOUT
Welcome to Unending Possibility.  I’m Bambi Feaster, owner of the site. For the last 40+ years, I’ve primarily worked in health information documentation. In some circles, we’re known as medical transcriptionists, MTs, documentation specialists, editors. No matter what you call us, our world has slowly been blown up, leaving many of us wondering how to support ourselves. A large number of transcriptionists are over the age of 50, many single and self supporting. I’ve had this domain name for some years and was never quite sure what I was going to do with it.  A few weeks ago, it found a purpose.

I’m reaching out to any woman who may find herself needing a tribe, needing to network, or that place to go to that says, “Here, let me help.” My intention is not to reinvent the wheel. I am going to compile lists of job sites, will share whenever I hear of a good gig, and will try to share some education for jobs you might not have considered. So if you hear of a job you think I should list, please send it on to me (see our Contact page).

I’ll be blogging as well on topics that I think may be of interest and timely for the audience I’m trying to reach. While anyone is welcome, admittedly this site will be geared toward women 50 and older. I’ll try to cover a wide range of topics but all relating in some way to the Possibilities we have at this time in our lives.
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You will also find our Women-Owned Businesses page. I think the title is self-explanatory, but here I’ll highlight women who have left the desk and reinvented themselves, or found something totally different to do at the desk. Look for our podcasts coming soon! Until then, I will be doing written interviews with these women so others may be inspired
From ​https://unendingpossibility.com

 I just did a blog about availability of visits to our farm or "farmette" as I like to call it because we are a small lavender farm.  We are not set up for large argrotourism events.  However, we are interested in any garden tours that might be available for next season (2019) to share our fields and grounds.   

​This is a way we thought we could share our fields and also our natural wildflower meadow and other plants.  We are working towards turning grass into meadows!  We started a test plot this year and it has done amazing!  We'd be happy to show people how we dry our lavender and our drying racks and also will have some various products on display.  

If anyone has info on any such tours or garden clubs intersted in the Monroe County Michigan area please contact us through our contact form or email me at elaine@lavenderrosefarms.com.  We are looking to set up for next season. 

Keep in mind we are a smaller farm and will need to stagger visits, depending how large he group, to allow only smaller groups (possibly 10-15 people at one time).  Parking is limited, although we are across the street from a large park with parking.

More Info for Garden Clubs or Tours: 
I would like to let you know we have our own small lavender farm right on the outskirts of Monroe. We have over 300 plants of different varieties of lavender and also a wildflower meadow/zinnia meadow with more extensive planting for next year.

We fill another niche with our planting. We do a lot of floral design and weddings and are working on growing all our own flowers our dried floral arrangements. We have a very active online store for traditional lavender products and floral designs. We also are a vendor at the The Vintage Market Home in Downtown Wyandotte (new vintage retailer).  We were also featured on Toledo News 24 on Mother's Day!   www.lavenderrosefarms.com is our website.

We would love to be involved with any garden tours next season.  Late June to mid July is the best time to see lavender in bloom.  

Keep following us... I hope our journey inspires you whether you want a big agro-tourism type farm of your own or a small "farmette" like we have, or you  just simply enjoy gardening and flowers. God bless! ​

I have received more photos of the stylized wedding shoot by Joy Photography.  I just wanted to share them with you.  I think they look amazing.  This is our Country Meadow bouquet and boutonniere.  The colors look a little peachy due to lighting but there is a actually sage green, pink, yellows, blue and purples.  The listing can be found here.    I made a slideshow of the shoot since I received quite a few more pictures.  Thank you to Joy Photography for the beautiful photos! 

If photograhers are interested using using our floral design in a photoshoot please contact us at elaine@lavenderrosefarms.com, Here we worked with Joy Photography in Tennessee.  We donated the bouquet and boutonniere  and shipped to photographer.  She will return the bouquet after the shoot and used it in her stylized photos. In exchange for the boutonniere and bouquet use we get to use the digital copies of the photos in our marketing, listings for products etc.  We are open to working with other photographers.   Also we are happy to take photos sent from clients.  I have had several bride's provide a copy of pictures from their wedding with the floral design I created in the past. I always appreciate seeing our floral designs in use!  If interested in donating photos from your wedding,  I would suggest you send a photo with a credit to the photographer (printed on picture) so I can properly credit them. 

We use these types of photos in our listing for our shop so others can see the floral design used in an actual event! 

Thank you to Joy Photography for these beautiful photos.  Please look at our floral design page on our website.  We multiple pictures donated from photography studios and clients.  The rest of the photos not with wedding couples are credited to Lavender Rose Farms Photography (that's me! ).  Happy July and have a great Fourth of July! 

* The bouquet used is our Country Meadow.  The colors appears slightly muted in photos due to filter/lighting used.   The bouquet can be found here.  

**  Joy Photography (Trina Carnett Joy)  page can be found here

   On 6/14.2018, we posted some photos of our English lavender harvest.  I was a bit disappointed. While the lavender was beautiful, there was not as much as I had hoped.  We did get some bundles and dried them.  We had a lot of the English lavender eaten by our bunnies the first year and so most of the replants I did this spring were from that.  I replanted or replaced more than 20 plants.  Because of those reasons, the English harvest just wasn't as big as expected.  However,  next year I am hoping for a bit more.  All the plants look great and we have conquered the bunny situation finally.  

I have been anxiously awaiting the Grosso and Phenomenal harvest.  These are just second year plants and our first harvest.  We got so much MORE than I expected and I am thrilled!  I was really a bit edgy about planting Grosso, as I know it doesn't overwinter as well as English lavender or Phenomenal.  However, both rows of Grosso we planted not only survived, but have thrived and given us a terrific start to harvest.  We still have some plants that weren't ready to be harvested, but we harvested about 3/4 of the plants last night.  Hope you enjoy the pictures.  

Hey all!  We are getting info on some farmer's markets and some great suggestions.  We also have been contacted by a few markets as well to join.  Just wanted to update where we are.  We finally got the lavender field completely planted.  We are almost finished spreading rock.  I have harvested some English lavender and waiting on the Grosso and Phenomenal.   We started with the Vintage Home Market at 110 Sycamore in Downtown Wyandotte in June.  They don't have all our products but a sampling.  I will be taking more down in the next couple of weeks to stock up for the Wyandotte Street Fair/Art Fair.  The shop will be open during the street fair so please stop in and shop!

We have a few Vintage and Handmade  in person markets scheduled for fall and the holidays.  Those are posted on our Events page.  As far as this summer, we are not involved in any Farmer's Markets.  What we hope to do is make a list of the different markets we are interested in or have contacted us and go down and look.  

What we don't want to do is spread ourselves too thin.  I am the only full-time worker (farmer, product maker, floral designer, painter, web person, sales and market person and many other hats!).  My husband helps and supports me tremendously, but he works a full-time job.  He's not a full-time farmer yet!  My adults sons also help as needed but both work and one is in college.  So we are definitely being a bit choosy about what markets we go with to fit our schedule best as I will need some help from at least one family member to transport and set up products, tents, etc.  

Good news is we have some ideas for a couple of in-person farm events next season.  I am working on them and will announce when everything is worked out.  We are excited to be able have some people come out to the farm and see the lavender and what we are doing here.  

Hopefully soon I can add a few markets to the events page as well!  

It's a hot one - Happy Father's Day! 

Here Just a quick update to show you the start of our harvest.   Most of our plants are first and second year plants so they are not at maturity.  Next year's harvest should be larger. Today I harvested the English lavender that was ready.  There was Hidcote, Melissa, and Munstead varieties.  The Grosso and Phenomenal intermediate lavender, which we have quite a few of,  are not ready to harvest yet.  They come a bit behind the English lavender.  Here are some photos of the harvest today.  I was so happy that for our first harvest season since we moved to our property in Monroe that we got such nice bundles.