N D DAILY NEWS
News
Mixing melodies
N I L G D R F O A A R W T E P Garrett Conway transforms his family’s horse ranch into the viral flower farm, Barnside Blooms.
Ball State music production team records artists’ upcoming albums.03
Taylor Smith Managing Editor What was once an empty patch of dirt now houses more than 16,000 sunflowers, each one with its head turned toward the sun, looking at the bright side — how Garret Conway did last spring. When Conway, senior law and public policy major at Indiana University Bloomington, answered a phone call in March and heard his internship was rescinded, this empty patch of dirt became the only thing keeping him from “twiddling his thumbs” in boredom in the midst of a pandemic. “At
Sports
A new perspective Lacy Wood is prepared to take the helm as the 10th head coach in Ball State Softball history.07
that point, a lot of the internships, especially the legal internships, had already been recruited,” Conway said. “It was harder with COVID-19.” Conway said he was left to his own devices to “fill in the gap” his summer had become, so he turned to his family’s farm — a horse ranch, an empty barn and a wide-open field. While Conway and his family discussed what to do to lift people’s spirits during an unusual summer, he said, the idea of turning their property into a flower farm received a lot of positive feedback from the Cowan community. “Me and my dad were talking about how we could be more self-sustaining here at the farm, and we were just sort of wondering what we could do from here,” Conway said. “[The flowers] brought life back to the barn. It’s a great second life that this barn has.”
See BLOOM, 10
Lifestyles
Studying the stars
Charles W. Brown Planetarium hosts Facebook Lives to share the history behind our constellations.09
09.17.2020
A bundle of sunflowers looks toward the sky Sept. 12, 2020, at Barnside Blooms. In addition to sunflowers, the farm also offers zinnia, celosia, cosmo and amaranthus flowers for visitors to pick. NICOLE THOMAS, DN
ballstatedailynews.com
@bsudailynews