|
CHERRY HILL FARM
&
Aunt
Willie’s Wildflowers
www.auntwillieswildflowers.com
Roy
and Linda Doan chose the colorful Bear Claw
pattern when Roy’s Aunt Willie’s (Willie Doan Deakins)
quilts were divided among family. Several old family
quilts had been stored in a trunk, and this one was
chosen because of its bright, friendly colors.
Willie, her sister Sue, and mother, Clara Foust Doan,
looked forward to “quilting days” held at the Homeplace.
Sue’s daughter, Barbara Sue Hickman, recalls as a young
girl the excitement of these special times. The
quilting frame was set up in the dining room and the
entire day was spent cutting, piecing, or quilting.
Aunt Willie’s farm and home were willed to Roy in 2001,
and he and Linda purchased the original farm and
Homeplace from his brothers Herbert and David and Uncle
Horace. Aunt Willie and her husband, John C. Deakins,
taught at Holston School from the late 1930s until the
early 1970s. Like his aunt and uncle, Roy also became
a teacher and recently retired from the Sullivan County
School System. When they acquired the farm (now Cherry
Hill Farm), Roy and Linda began growing cut flowers and
taking them to the Kingsport Farmer’s Market in 2006.
Thus, their business, Aunt Willie’s Wildflowers,
was born.
Aunt Willie’s love of flowers and eye for beauty was
evident in her well-designed and tended gardens.
Several of her plants were likely starts from her
mother’s or grandmother’s original plants. Linda chose
to use these plants as starting plants for Aunt
Willie’s Wildflowers. Willie’s planting journal
from 1939/40 includes entries describing flower
plantings that Roy and Linda attempt to duplicate when
feasible. Through Aunt Willie’s Wildflowers, it
is the Doans’ hope that “the love of all things wild
that grow and blossom will pass beyond these five
generations to any who would choose to share in all that
God graciously bestows.”
BRIEF HISTORY OF FARM: In 1860, Stephen Adams and
Barbara Galloway Adams willed the original 65 acres of
the now Cherry Hill Farm to Emmaline Adams, who soon
married J.W.P. Doan. In the 1860s, JWP, his dad and
brothers (all woodworkers) built the log barn and white
frame farmhouse (the Homeplace) which both still stand
on the property. While their house was being built, JWP
and Emmaline lived in a log house behind the barn. This
log house was later moved beside the well and used as a
woodworking shop where JWP made most of the furniture
for the house. JWP and Emmaline had only one child, Ed,
who married Clara Foust, and they raised their four
children, Willie, Sue, Horace, and D. Bruce, at the
homeplace. The farm was divided among these children
and then passed on to their heirs (the current
generation; current owner, Roy, is Bruce’s son).
In
the 1920s, Ed and Clara Foust Doan bought 68 adjoining
acres known as “the Akard farm.” This acreage included a
barn built around 1800, a double crib log structure.
Through the years the barn has been used for livestock,
hay, and storing small grain crops. To help pay for the
new property, the Doans grew strawberries on the new
land, loaded the berries onto a wagon and drove them to
Bristol for sale. On this additional property, Willie
Doan Deakins and John C. Deakins built their home in
1939/40. The barn and “Akard farm” was willed to Willie
and John C. in 1961.
Roy
and Linda plan to use the original barn for storing and
drying flowers, and “maybe a barn dance or two.” |
