Flipse Farm
First
The Flipse Farm was established in 1978 when Joe and Suzy Flipse moved their family of six from Daylight to Lascassas, Tennessee to build their family’s home and begin growing produce and plants on their new family farm.
Joe and Suzy built a wonderful life for their family of six in Lascassas, Tennessee. The Flipses ran a successful farming operation in Lascassass for nearly three decades on their little Lascassas farm. Mr. Joe was renown for producing high quality specialty vegetables, herbs, and plants for the community and surrounding areas. Together, Joe and Suzy cultivated and refined a variety of Thai chili peppers that was beloved by the local community. Joe & Suzy retired from active farm operations in the early 2000’s.
Fast forward to 2011, Andy Flipse, the youngest child of Joe and Suzy, reunited with his high school sweetheart, Jennifer Cooper, who had recently returned to Tennessee to teach English at Cascade High School. Both Andy and Jennifer were in pursuit of higher education when they reunited. Andy was bound for the University of Louisville’s School of Dentistry, and Jennifer was pursuing her Ph.D. in Literacy Studies from Middle Tennessee State University. Andy and Jennifer began a long-term, long distance, whirlwind romance. After completing his dental education, Andy returned to purchase a local dental practice, Implant and General Dentistry, where he provides excellent care to the commnunity of Murfreesboro. Jennifer used her doctoral degree to serve the local community as the assistant director and ultimately the director of the Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia at MTSU. Joe Flipse passed away in 2016.
&Then
The couple married in 2018 and their family settled in Mufreesboro to be close to both jobs. Andy and Jennifer began to grow vegetables in a small patch in Lascassas on the Flipse Farm out of a desire to eat well and know the produce they enjoyed was not covered with harmful chemicals. They began growing the Flipse family’s peppers again. The newlyweds were blessed to share their home with Suzy Flipse. She continued to delight in the beautiful produce that came in fresh from the garden, especially the Thai chile peppers she and Joe worked to refine. Suzy passed away in 2021.
Andy and Jennifer continued to garden. The garden grew larger every year, and the couple began to talk about bringing the farm back in operation. Andy has a lifetime of experience growing up on Flipse Farm, helping his mom and dad. Jennifer holds a bachelors degree in Agriculture from Middle Tennessee State University, completed the Master Gardener coursework in South Carolina, and has been an avid and enthusiastic gardener her whole adult life. Prior to beginning to grow vegetables, Jennifer concentrated primarily on landscaping plants and flowers.
& Now
Jennifer left MTSU in 2023 to begin to pursue the dream of selling plants and produce once more from Flipse Farm. Andy and Jennifer began to reestablish the farm’s capabilities and began construction on a greenhouse expand the growing season. Construction on the greenhouse was completed in early 2024, and Jennifer began offering plants for sale in Spring 2024. The farm now operates as Tzu Tsi Q’s Garden at Flipse Farm in honor of Joe and Suzy Flipse. The farm offers farm fresh produce, vegetable, herb, and landscaping plants, cut flowers. Jennifer offers free reading lessons on Wednesday afternoons to K-5 children.
Grown to eat.
Our farm fresh produce—vegetables, herbs, & flowers—are grown without herbicides or pesticides. We think that chemicals developed to kill, kill, so we don’t want those (any) chemicals that kill to touch the food we eat. We don’t want to handle those chemicals either. Only organic fertilizer, compost, and care are applied to or near all of our plants.
- Jennifer Flipse, Ph.D.