Vermeulen Acres

Vermeulen Acres Homesteading family & small scale flower farm in Zone 5b. Welcome friend, we are so glad you're here

We sell flowers, plant starts, and also offer education on gardening and how to preserve those delicious harvests.

More flowery things going on here at the farm❤️
08/30/2026

More flowery things going on here at the farm❤️

08/24/2026

Melons!

Trying to figure out when to harvest? It’s more straight forward than you think. We have tried the flicking, spot checking, feeling weight, and ultimately this has been our best judge of “readiness”.

We will post a photo of the inside once cracked open. This variety is called, “Sugar Baby”, known for its sweetness and more compact size.

It may not be cute, but if you’re sick of everything eating your flowers but still garden with organic methods, might I ...
08/21/2026

It may not be cute, but if you’re sick of everything eating your flowers but still garden with organic methods, might I introduce the organza bag.

Pop them on before the blooms open and no one will be munching those lush petals you’ve been waiting for. I myself bag my dahlias and roses❤️

Happy Gardening friends!

Let’s chat about canning quick! If you have canned for years, you know the name brand lids just don’t seal like they use...
08/20/2026

Let’s chat about canning quick!

If you have canned for years, you know the name brand lids just don’t seal like they used to. Might I suggest the For Jars company. No sponsorship, but we have used them for a little over 2 years now without a single lid failure which is impressive for how much canning we did.

I’ve heard good things about Superb as well, but it wasn’t my cup of tea. US made, For Jars lids actually have the amount of rubber like the old Ball & Kerr lids used to and work beautifully. We also like their jar vacuum sealer that comes with the pieces for regular and wide mouth jar sealing.

Jars also aren’t made as well or as thick as they used to be, and unfortunately are more apt to break (more so with pressure canning) than older jars that are in good shape. If you come across those lovely older canning jars that are in great shape for a good price or for free, snag them & treasure them!❤️

We’ve been pretty quiet on this page, but our lives certainly aren’t right now-ha. Canning, harvest, and school are in full swing. The dehydrator has been running almost nonstop, bags filled to be frozen, and jars carefully canned to enjoy later.

Food preservation is such a labor of love. But we appreciate knowing where our food has been grown, the soil health, organic practices, and every ingredient to what we have preserved.

Our favorite resource for safe tested canning recipes as always is the National Center for Home Food Preservation: https://nchfp.uga.ed

We also utilize Ball’s website for canning recipes or our Ball canning books.

Part of our year in flowers here on the farm. While I may be a seasoned vegetable gardener, flowers have filled my bucke...
08/17/2026

Part of our year in flowers here on the farm. While I may be a seasoned vegetable gardener, flowers have filled my bucket with so much joy this year.

Not only the beauty of them, but the joy of others when they receive their fresh cut bouquets too. (I really should take more photos of what all I make)

While plenty of work, and weather has been quite the challenge this year, I look forward to expanding more in years to come. We have continued to add more perennials, tubers, bulbs, seeds, &infrastructure to our humble farm.

All whilst working on our fixer upper farmhouse, raising our young men, and doing life. We may be busy but we are blessed & thankful. ❤️

Zinnias are quite easy to save seed from! However, if you’d like them to breed true to their parent variety, you’ll want...
08/13/2026

Zinnias are quite easy to save seed from! However, if you’d like them to breed true to their parent variety, you’ll want a lovely organza bag over those flowers before the bees get to them.

Once the bees have open pollinated between multiple colors, chances are you’re going to end up with some entirely new shades.

I bag a few to preserve parent colors, but it’s also fun to see what the bees breed for us too in the flower patch.

Happy Gardening friends!

Apple Butter things this weekend! We put up 2 gallons worth and the house was filled with the most delightful aroma. Som...
08/10/2026

Apple Butter things this weekend! We put up 2 gallons worth and the house was filled with the most delightful aroma.

Some tips for the best flavor include the following:

*taste the apples and make sure they’re good! If they don’t taste right, chances are what you’re making won’t either. This is a good rule of thumb for cooking in general.
*when you cook down your apples, use cider not water. Fresh pressed/juiced is ideal, but store bought works in a pinch too. We use a masticating juicer for ours but hope to restore the family cider press soon❤️
*other than stems, cook it down with peels, seeds, the core and all. That’s where the flavor is friends. Between that and the cider, sooo much flavor! You’ll strain the seeds and such out later yielding a buttery smooth texture.
*quality vanilla, we prefer using grade a vanilla beans in ours
*half of the sugar ideally should be brown sugar. That molasses gives it a lovely caramel note. 😍

There are many ways to make apple butter, this is just what works for our family and has become highly requested by anyone who has had a jar of ours. ❤️

We love using roaster pans or crock pots for hands off cooking while we work on other projects, and come back with an antique food mill with wooden pestles. These see a lot of action between any jams, sauces, fruit butters we make.

Any leftover pulp/skins from our juicer gets dehydrated and powdered to make teas, add flavor to any baked goods, or put into granola.

Nothing beats farm fresh flowers & I’m beyond excited to put together bouquets for this weekend’s sale!Pinching the appr...
08/06/2026

Nothing beats farm fresh flowers & I’m beyond excited to put together bouquets for this weekend’s sale!

Pinching the appropriate flowers at the appropriate times will give you those beautiful long stems perfect for bouquets. While that means a longer wait for color, it also encourages branching for more stems to harvest.

We are so thankful for cooler weather this weekend! After heat indexes well over 115F (my app said feels like 124F🔥), we...
08/02/2026

We are so thankful for cooler weather this weekend! After heat indexes well over 115F (my app said feels like 124F🔥), we were DELIGHTED with a cool 67F to clean out empty holes and replant for a fall garden.

First estimated frost for my zip is Oct 9! Just as we count backwards to figure out what to start when indoors, we count forward from today to the estimated first frost.

You are not too late if you still want to tuck in seeds. Keep in mind these frost dates are for frost tender items. There are many cool weather crops that thrive even with frost or snow and get sweeter with the cool weather.

We put in carrots, snap peas, kohlrabi, spinach, cilantro, more dill, salad greens, radishes, more green beans (squeaking out another big planting-will cover when needed and they’ll be fine).

We cleaned out some beds, shuffled some perennials around on the property, will put in some new varieties of Iris, and tulips 😍.

This year we have worked hard to be more intentional for flowers, tea gardens, herbs we cook with, medicinal plants, berries and keeping our pollinator friends happy too while working through our old farmhouse/school house.

It’s a labor of love, and hard work. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. ❤️

Be blessed!
-Melissa

Address

Oskaloosa, IA

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Vermeulen Acres posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category