KailCee Harrison
Where Are They Now? | October 2024 | By Ashley Butler
Meet KailCee Harrison,
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Former Uintah FFA member who, after learning that 78% of all flowers and foliage are imported into the United States, founded Free Spirit Flora, a flower farm focusing on speciality blooms in the Uintah basin.
“I’m a huge advocate for American agriculture so it only made sense that my choice to pursue floriculture in a bigger way would include local flowers.”
Although KailCee considered herself ‘a livestock gal’ while in FFA, she did enjoy working with flowers when she had the chance and helping her grandparents at their floral shop and bookstore.
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However, it wasn’t until 2018 that she started back into the floral industry.
“I fell back into working with flowers by accident”, KailCee says.
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All thanks to a best friend’s destination wedding in Greece and a bouquet mishap!
Thanks to her floral skills, and some time negotiating with local florists, the help of google translate, and some olive branches and grassees on the side of the road, she was able to provide her friend with a beautiful bouquet! That experience led her to doing wedding flowers for other friends and their family. When she was ready to take her new-found hobby more seriously she did her research and built a business plan. One that made sustainable growing practices a priority!
In the spring of 2021 she founded Free Spirit Flora, which started out as selling arrangements directly to customers at her local farmers market. Since then, she not only provides floral workshops, and bouquet subscriptions, but also does wedding flowers and sells to local florists.
While flower farming can sometimes be a challenge due to providing for the needs of a variety of different customers, KailCee is dedicated to providing her community with what they want!
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“I have learned more about what flowers and foliage my customers love. I have fine tuned my crop rotation and color palette to fit what people in my community are looking for.”
That dedication has led to the most recent addition to Free Spirit Flora - Poppy, the flower trailer! The mobile flower shop has been a big hit so far and has allowed KailCee to host ‘bouquet bars’ and travel to farmers markets and events!
KailCee currently serves as the secretary of the Utah Cut Flower Farm Association where she has the opportunity to help teach other growers and advocate for local flowers on a larger scale. She credits a lot of her success to the association saying,
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“Joining the association helped me to build relationships with other growers and scale up my cut flower knowledge quickly!”
When asked what she enjoys most about being in the floral industry she said it’s spreading joy! Hearing a customer talk about her flowers in connection to memories about their grandmother, or commenting about how they had the same flowers in their wedding bouquet is what it’s all about. Flowers bring joy in a variety of ways and Free Spirit Flora is doing just that! She also shared how much she loves the people.
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“There is a large group of us here in Utah that are choosing community over competition which has allowed us to leverage each other's knowledge and flowers to create great experiences for our customers!”
Looking back, KailCee says that FFA served as the foundation for the personal and professional relationships that she has today.
“While in FFA I made friends with other members who would ultimately become my college roommates, local ag extension agents, and other farmers that I work with today.”
KailCee says the number one skill she learned in FFA was grit and gratitude. I lost many livestock shows, contests, and offices that I ran for in FFA and to be honest I’m better off because of those experiences. They taught me that it's okay to put in hard work, lose, and learn. At the time I might not have been grateful for those experiences but I am now.
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