The news got you down? Well, for the hate-filled times we’re living in, this gardening story may help. It does for me. It’s about gardening/farming entrepreneurs Kevin Graham and Dragan Kurbalija, shown here at their Gardening Gays Farm last weekend.

I first heard about Kevin and Dragan thanks to Kathy Jentz’s GardenDC podcast and was quite taken with them, so I decided to drive the hour south of DC to meet them on their King George, Virginia farm for their inaugural Farm Fest.  There, on 27 acres, they grow cut flowers, vegetables, 75 ducks, 300+ chickens and I don’t know how many sheep. Starting next season, they’ll sell fruit from the 350 fruit trees they’ve planted.

Instead of selling produce at a local farmers market, they opened their own farm store in an old barn they renovated themselves, thanks to the “University of YouTube,” they say. The store is open year-round.

The Gardening Gays Farm Store.

About the Name, their Rural Community

Kevin and Dragan once gardened around their townhouse near Washington, DC. where they referred to themselves the “gardening gays” of the neighborhood. And when I asked how the name has gone over in the rural community of King George, the answer was that the name guarantees that people know up-front who they are, and I was directed to the crowd of locals arriving at the Garden Fest. “They’ve always turned out for us.”

Indeed! Despite the prediction that their primary customers would be restaurants in DC, support from their neighbors has been so strong, they can hardly meet the demand, especially for fresh eggs. Turns out, there’s a lack of fresh produce in the area, where even at farmers markets the fruits and vegetables aren’t grown locally.

It may have helped that both Kevin and Dragan are SO personable, so friendly, and even – dare I say it – a great-looking couple? Or maybe, despite what I observed growing up in central Virginia, people are more open-minded than they’re sometimes given credit for.   

Background Story
I learned from Kathy’s podcast (and Leslie Harris’s “Into the Garden with Leslie” podcast, too) that Kevin grew up gardening, helping his dad in his landscape business, then pursued a career in journalism (which continues to this day). Dragan grew up on a farm in Croatia and established a career in hospitality. The couple grew as many vegetables as possible in their townhouse garden but when covid hit and there were shortages in the local grocery store, they decided to become more self-sustaining, sought more land, and settled on this farm in the fall of 2021.

I’m so inspired by the career change they made in their 40s!

Social Media 

So how did my podcasting friends ever find Kevin and Dragan? On social media, of course, where they’re quite prolific – on Facebook, on Instagram, on  YouTube and on Tiktok. They post weekly vlogs on YouTube. 

The Gardening Gays are big users of social media, too, especially Garden Answer on YouTube, which they credit with teaching them quite a lot.

Their farm store lauded by King George as a “best of the best”!