Grayce Emmick Opens The Dilly Dahlia: A Family Farm Experience in Lewisport

Shelbie Grayce Emmick, 25, is an eighth-generation farmer in Lewisport, where she and her family grow soybeans, corn and wheat on their 800-acre farm. Earlier this month, she opened The Dilly Dahlia, a new farm attraction featuring a year-round weekend gift shop and seasonal outdoor experiences with games, farm animals and food trucks in spring, summer and fall.

“To the local community, I wanted to bring a space where people can come on the weekends and bring the kids, bring the family, or just come by themselves and have a fun little farm experience—nothing too serious,” Emmick said. “We have all kinds of stuff that I thought the community was kind of missing. I thought, I have this farm and I have this opportunity, and I want to give people a space just to hang out with friends and family.”

With a history dating back over two centuries, Emmick Farm once raised tobacco and livestock as well, but now concentrates on row crops. Located on Emmick Landing Road, the farm has plenty of signs directing visitors to The Dilly Dahlia. The gift shop is open year-round on the weekends, except during holidays. Outdoor activities are offered from late spring through fall. Hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and noon to 4 p.m. Sundays. The outdoor activities will end on Nov. 1, and will resume in spring 2026.

They held a soft opening Oct. 4 and a grand opening Oct. 11. Outdoor games include pumpkin bowling, tic-tac-toe, checkers, ring toss and cornhole. She said pumpkin bowling is especially fun and the children love it. The farm is home to a calf, two goats and two pigs that enjoy being petted and fed. There are also numerous photo spots for families to capture memories.

Visitors can pick their own flower bouquets from zinnias, cosmos and black-eyed Susans. Dahlias aren’t available yet, but Emmick said they are in the works for next year’s garden. The site also offers pumpkins, mums, cornstalk bundles and straw bales for sale.

The Dilly Dahlia gift shop features products sourced from small businesses, including homemade candles, lotions, soaps, laundry detergent, home cleaners, car air fresheners, dog treats and apparel. A free community library is also available.

“If anyone wants to come get some books, please do. It’s set up like take a book, leave a book. We have a little bit of every genre,” she said. “I tried to buy items made here in Kentucky. Some of them are made outside of Kentucky, but everything in my store is made in the U.S. We offer both feminine and masculine scents in our soaps and lotions. We have something for everyone.”

Next spring, she hopes to have a local food truck on-site every Saturday for visitors to enjoy while shopping, playing the fun outdoor games and spending time with the animals.

“In the future, I’d like to grow popping corn so that you can come out and pick your own popcorn,” Emmick said. “I thought that would be something unique that I haven’t really seen done before anywhere. Hopefully, we’ll have a pumpkin patch here as well. The idea came from my boyfriend, Gavin Spoor. He lives in Missouri and started growing popcorn a few years ago. He’s done really well with it. I thought the popcorn would be a cool idea just because a lot of people don’t know that popcorn is different from regular corn. I thought it would be one cool learning opportunity, and just something fun to bring the kids out to do.”

Spoor also helped Emmick create the name The Dilly Dahlia.

“I was on TikTok one day, and I saw a video of this girl talking about how she likes to just dilly dally. I sent it to Gavin as a joke,” she said. “Then when we were coming up with names for this place, he knew that I liked to dilly dally and wanted to grow dahlias at the farm, so he said, ‘What about The Dilly Dahlia?’ It fits—a place for people to come and just dilly dally and spend the day.”

She said she would be open to school children coming for field trips in the future but hasn’t planned anything just yet. She also is open to hosting children’s birthday parties by reservation.

“We’ve had a lot of families come out. From the feedback I’ve gotten, they’ve had a lot of fun,” she said.

Emmick and Spoor, 27, star together in “Dirt Poor,” an agriculture-themed TV show that offers more than just a window into farm life—it is a candid exploration of young farming ambition and relationship resilience. The show blends the rawness of dirt and sweat with moments of playful banter, inviting viewers into planting fields, seed cleaning facilities and machinery tours. The tone is simultaneously honest, humorous and inspiring, with unfiltered conversations between the two about passion, perseverance and the evolving nature of rural America. The series, streaming exclusively on AcresTV, mixes humor and heart as it follows their farming ventures in Kentucky and Missouri.

Before meeting, both of them had gained large social media followings by sharing posts of their day-to-day farming challenges and triumphs.

“The two seasons of ‘Dirt Poor,’ we filmed at both my family farm and his,” Emmick said. “We haven’t filmed anything lately. Gavin and I are five hours apart. The idea behind the show was just to showcase our long-distance relationship with the added factor that we both have farms that we need to work on. It’s about our relationship and the farms and kind of how we’re growing together on our farms.”

They continue to plan future collaborations between their farms but currently focus on helping each other when possible. Spoor’s farm is in Laddonia, Missouri. He grows corn, soybeans, winter wheat, popcorn and milo (grain sorghum).

“He’s actually the complete opposite of me. He’s a first-generation farmer, and farms 1,600 acres. His parents don’t farm. He grew up helping out with neighbors’ farms, and completely started from scratch on his own farm,” Emmick said. “We met a few years ago at the National Farm Machinery Show in Louisville. My friend Emma and I wanted to go but couldn’t afford a hotel for the week. So, we decided to rent an Airbnb and invited some of our social media friends and she invited Gavin. He’s been really helpful with getting The Dilly Dahlia started.”

Spoor brought the trailer used for pumpkin displays at The Dilly Dahlia, built a trailer to provide water for the animals and flowers since running water isn’t available yet, and constructed the animal fence.

“He’s done a lot for me. I wouldn’t be able to do it without him, that’s for sure,” she said. “The Dilly Dahlia is separate from the farm operations. There is a little piece of ground on the farm that I rented from my family so that I could start this. Literally, this past June it had been growing wheat. I don’t have electricity or water yet because I didn’t know how it was going to do. I have a solar-powered generator that runs the electric in the store. Other than that, that’s all we have as far as utilities go.”

Emmick began sharing farm life stories and personal wellness content in 2020. She has built a substantial following, with about 248,000 YouTube subscribers and over 55 million total views; nearly 600,000 TikTok followers with 9.4 million likes; and active Instagram and Facebook accounts. Her posts are authentic and spunky, spotlighting the daily realities of farming, machinery maintenance, crop planting and livestock care.

As a farmer, she leads mainly by example, and said girls and women have told her that she has been an inspiration to them.

“Sometimes people come out and ride with me on equipment just to see what it’s like. I haven’t really faced any discrimination against me because I’m a woman farmer. I think putting emphasis on the fact that I am a woman farmer is doing more harm than it does good. I don’t need to justify being a female farmer—I’m just a farmer, no different than any other farmer, no matter what their gender is. I think just posting online and showing that I’m out here doing it, rather than shouting from the rooftops that women deserve to be here is more effective. Leading by example is enough,” she said.

Emmick and her family farm 800-acres in Lewisport, and are dedicated to sustainable practices such as rotating crops every year.

“We all work together to get everything out. We each have our own ground that we farm, but we all do it together,” she noted.

She was active in Future Farmers of America while attending Hancock County High School, serving as vice president and regional sentinel. After graduating in 2018, she studied agribusiness for two years at Western Kentucky University. She has volunteered at the Hancock County Fair for the last three years, assisting with the princess, junior princess, teen and queen pageants. In 2023, she offered a “Meet and Greet with Farmer Grayce” at the annual Lewisport Heritage Festival during the Antique Tractor Pull.

Emmick said her family has also been extremely supportive in helping shape her vision for the new business on the farm and bringing The Dilly Dahlia to life.

“I have a full-time employee from Wisconsin named Brianna who helps a lot. My siblings and my parents also help a lot. My granddad, Butch Meriwether, has been very helpful as well. I want to give a special shoutout to my niece too, Blakely Rapp, because she runs the register sometimes and is very good at it—I’m very thankful for her. She’s 10 and loves it. My nephew, Miles Rapp, who is 4, has been very helpful also,” she said.

She is the daughter of P.J. and Dan Emmick. Her siblings are Kristin Rapp, Dylan, Prestyn, Landyn, Waylan, Hayden and Wyatt Emmick.

She said her entire family has always embraced and encouraged her interest in farming from an early age. They were really pleased that she decided to be involved in the family farming business.

“I started helping on the farm when I was a little kid, and it just kind of went from there. My family has been very supportive,” she said.

Emmick plans to create a website for The Dilly Dahlia soon to begin expanding online orders. Currently, the business has an Instagram page @the.dilly.dahlia where messages can be sent with specific questions. She also can be reached by email at [email protected].

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