RIVER FALLS – Their friendship started out thanks to a barn. Now, a local River Falls businesswoman and farmer team up during holidays to bring a spark of joy to senior living facilities. Throw in the River Falls FFA and you have a recipe for rewarding community service.

Over Valentine’s Day, Tiffany Dux of Blooms for Happiness (a flower and gift shop on River Falls’ north end) and other local businesses created “love boxes” to be distributed to River Falls seniors. The boxes contained items such as chocolates, candies, suckers and coupons. Once they were put together, they needed to be delivered. That’s where farmer Tim Jennings and the River Falls FFA came in. They dressed up in Valentine-themed costumes and attire and brought the boxes to seniors in local nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Dux and Jennings have been teaming up on similar projects for years. They met when Dux was working as a florist at Family Fresh in Hudson. He came in to order flowers and they started talking.

“I was trying to find a barn for a display for Pig Month,” Dux laughed. “He came back with his grandpa’s barn that he had built for Tim and his siblings. Every time I come up with this crazy idea, he’s right there.”

Dux created a program called Blooms of Joy, which brought flowers to people in hospice through Adoray. It was such a success that she wanted to do more for the community.

“When we opened up the new shop (located at 1674 Commerce Court), I asked Tim, ‘would you like to go hand out flowers and gift bags to the seniors?’ I had been doing that at previous places,” Dux said.

Jennings was on board immediately. See, it fit in with perfectly with something he was already doing himself.

When he lost his job at a local John Deere dealership years ago, Jennings bought the family farm and began farming full-time.

“There was just enough work to do that it would be tough to work a full-time job,” Jennings said.

He found creative ways to fill that down time. He threw himself into volunteer work: Coaching trap, Pierce County Livestock Committee, River Fall FFA Alumni, and visiting area nursing homes.

“Somebody was telling me that that extra time was needed to be put somewhere else,” Jennings said. “So I began to do a lot of volunteer work.”

While he had slower times in the winter (when he wasn’t grinding feed, scraping lots or blow-torching frozen water lines for the animals), Jennings would dress up in silly outfits and surprise his wife at her Woodbury elementary school with flowers.

“The kids would get a big kick out of it,” he said.

One of the most popular costumes was Cupig (think Cupid+pig). Jennings thought nothing of donning pink tights, a pink tutu, pink gloves and socks and silly T-shirts to make people laugh. His costume collection grew to include the Love Bandit, Knight in Shining Armor, and a Hersey’s Kiss.

His mom and dad lived in long-term care for a while. His mom had cognitive issues, and the family couldn’t give her the care she needed; his dad ended up in Kinnic Health & Rehab for almost a year due to an infection in his artificial knees.

“An 80-year-old-plus farmer stuck in a care facility,” Jennings said. “It was driving him nuts.”

The flower delivery was a hit at his wife’s school: Why couldn’t he do that for his parents, he thought.

“When I was in there talking to Mom or talking to Dad or neighbors that I knew, it just became such an event for the residents,” Jennings said. “It wasn’t just Mom and Dad anymore; it was everybody around them.”

Over the years, his flower delivery visits became more and more popular. Friends would ask him to deliver flowers to their spouses. When he met Dux, her ideas for bringing joy to others matched his enthusiasm for brightening people’s days with his silly outfits and nursing home visits.

“Tiffany is an amazing woman without a doubt, she has a heart of gold,” Jennings said. “When she started her own business, I started getting flowers from her, dressed up weird. ‘OMG,’ she said. ‘We should have you do deliveries for us.’ At first, I thought ‘I just don’t have time.’”

But as his children grew and started helping, he had the idea of bringing the River Falls FFA kids into the mix. After all, they needed community service hours and Jennings is active in the FFA Alumni.

“I talked to the River Falls FFA kids and asked them if they wanted to do community service,” Jennings said. “The first year it was a few kids delivering flowers to the nursing homes on Valentines Day after school. We wore T-shirts and old costumes. It got to be so big that we couldn’t do it in one day.”

This year, the group shifted into delivering Dux’s “love boxes,” comprised of items from Blooms for Happiness, Tattersall, Jen Rivard Insurance, Great Clips, Sarah Jenkins Realty and Royal Credit Union. Jennings and the kids delivered boxes to all River Falls nursing homes on Feb. 12 and 13. Jennings had so many kids volunteer that it was almost overwhelming.

“One girl said, ‘I didn’t know FFA could be so much fun,’” Jennings said. “It’s about community, it’s careers; it’s not just holding the pitchfork like the Gothic painting on the wall.”

Jennings knows the cheer they spread is making a difference. He enjoys showing kids they can make a difference too. His “aha” moment came several years ago at Kinnic Health & Rehab. He stopped to say hi to a woman in her room and she was less than receptive. She said no one cares that she’s in the nursing home and that no one would be there to visit her. The nurse convinced her to let Jennings in to say hi; he was dressed as Cupig and delivering treats that day.

“I walked around the corner and her face lit up,” Jennings recalled. “She smiled, she just lit up. I talked with her, we took a picture together, and I gave her a flower and a cookie. I was damn near in tears. For two minute out of her existence, stuck in a bed in a nursing home, she forgot about all that. If nothing else ever comes out of this, that one time made it all worthwhile.”

The FFA kids are having similar experiences, Jennings said. This year, one girl wearing the Hersey Kiss costume walked into a room at Comforts of Home and a woman jumped out of her chair and hugged the giant inflatable Kiss that doesn’t even fit through a door.

“Now you get it,” Jennings told the girl, who was teary after the experience. “I’m such a firm believer in community giveback. If God has given me the extra time, I figure he wants me to share a little of it. I’ve got farm debts, we’re not wealthy. Prices and yields are down, but I have enough and that means I need to share. If I can’t share monetarily, then I will share my time.”

After last year’s Valentine’s deliveries, Dux received a call at the end of a long day. She was exhausted. But she answered. A man from the Kinnic had called to tell her how much it meant to him that young kids took the time to remember that there are people in the world who are in nursing homes, that they came in and shook his hand.

“They made a difference in someone’s life, and they will never be forgotten. That is the end game,” Jennings said.

Dux and Jennings, along with local businesses, teamed up at Christmas to hand out 500-plus carnation gift packages called “Santa Sacks” to seniors, and people on Main Street, in restaurants and grocery stores. They’ve also worked together to bring cheer to veterans and their families at the River Falls Armory. Dux has donated flowers to veterans’ families and Jennings pigs for pig roasts.

“Businesses want to contribute,” Dux said. “It’s getting more and more people involved in our community. Maybe there’s other areas in River Falls we can start touching.”