Meet Kristiana Amberger! She was an environmental studies major at Dickinson and graduated in 2014. Food has always been important to Kristiana, but she did not become interested in farming until she had lab field trips out to the farm. Kristiana joined the Dickinson College Farm team as a student farmer her senior year and then continued working on the farm as an apprentice the following year. After the apprenticeship, she rented land from a couple in Carlisle, and ran a small farm with a ten member CSA and two weekly market attendances. The loneliness that came with running her own farm pushed her to start working at Roots Cut Flower Farm. Over her three years there, Kristiana fell in love with floral design. She finds it to be “the perfect combination of being connected to nature while also being able to create beauty.”

Kristiana is still living in Carlisle now with her husband Sinjin, their 2-month-old baby, Bodhi, and their Jack Russel Terrier named Spotty. In 2018, she started her own wedding and event floral design company called Wild Indigo. She has been self-employed for two years now and loves that she is still able to support local flower famers and the Carlisle community. In addition to floral design, Kristiana manages 3 airbnbs, and recently started a temporary storage business for Dickinson called Box it Up.

Kristiana has very fond memories of the farm. She always enjoyed the weekly lunches and has many stories of her time there. One memory that specifically sticks out to her is Matt and Jenn’s wedding. She recalls “the hay rides, the farm being all tidy, Bella running around, flowers being stuffed into all of the rain boots that have accumulated at the farm, it was such a special day. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house”. A different memory she has from working on the farm happened while she was working the stand at market. “I ran the stand at market for the DCF and we all know how much Matt and Jenn love to dress up for Halloween. Well… Jenn told me all the vendors would be dressed up for market. I came dressed as a carrot in an orange jumpsuit only to find that no one else was dressed… quite the giggle!

Aside from fun memories, Kristiana gained many other things from her time working at the farm. Yurt living helped her embrace tiny house living, and now she and her family live in a one room seasonal cabin eight months out of the year. She also credits the farm for her love of flowers. Even though she is not farming anymore, she is more aware of where her food and flowers come from. This awareness plays a role in how much she pushes her clients to use local flowers. In fact, she just recently had her first weekend of weddings during which all the flowers came from local farms!