Emma Weiland says she has loved agriculture — and in particular growing flowers — all her life.

Horticulture and the craft of needlework are her two passions. They are the things she keeps to these days as she tries to stay busy.

For the past 15 years or so she's been doing just that, and winning awards in the process.

Weiland is a longtime exhibitor at the Butler Farm Show, where she has racked up an impressive run of first place finishes — 10 or 12 in a row, she said — for her dried flower arrangements.

The set pieces, which Weiland dries and arranges herself, feature two unusual plants: Chinese Lantern and Money Plant flowers, also known as Lunaria Silver Dollar plants — both of which are fairly unusual and not native to Pennsylvania.

The Chinese lantern plant, also known as the Japanese lantern or winter cherry, is easily identifiable by its papery flower, which is usually colored red or orange.

The Lunaria plant produces large, round white seed pods that resemble silver dollars.

Weiland combines both to create her arrangements, which she enters in the farm show's craft exhibitions and also keeps around the house to brighten up the rooms during the winter.

“I always look forward to it (creating the arrangements),” Weiland said, adding that she appreciates the humor associated with the money plant. “Grow money. I grow it on trees. It's a big joke.”

Weiland, despite being born and raised in Armstrong County's Sugar Creek, graduated from Karns City High School after her father, Augustine Glynn, petitioned the school board to allow her to attend.

She's been in Butler County ever since — for 66 years now.

After school it didn't take Weiland long to have her first brush with agriculture and the Butler Farm Show.

Before meeting her husband, Donald J. Weiland, she went to work for The Farm Credit, a loan company in the county that catered to farmers, for about three years.

Weiland would leave the company and go on to raise six children with her husband at their Bonniebrook Road home in Summit Township, but she's never forgotten the impression working at the agency made on her.

“It just seemed like it was a worthy cause,” Weiland said of why she went to work for the agency.

She said her job helped her realize how important agriculture is and how many people take it for granted.

All these years later Weiland, who is now 86, still keeps her home full of flowers. Her house-side plots are full of Chinese Lantern plants. Peonies adorn the edges of her lawn, and her porch is draped in hanging baskets full of colored blooms.

“I just love to plant a seed and see a flower grow,” Weiland said. “It sets me off, I guess. It seems like magic. But it's not. It's God's way.”

She said two plants in particular — Chinese Lanterns and Money Plant flowers — quickly became her favorite because they could be used to decorate her home in the winter.

Weiland was first introduced to the plants by a friend, and she worked for years nurturing root cuttings of the plants before they would bloom in her home garden.

She started exhibiting her flowers, which are harvested and then dried before being organized into decorative arrangements, around the year 2000, and said visiting the Butler Farm Show quickly became a high point of her year.

“There's a joy that God gave me the gift that I'm able to enter,” she said. “I don't have to win. I'm 86. I want to go (to the show). I don't want to give up.”

It took Weiland two or three years before winning her first blue ribbon. But then she went on a streak, winning the competition for 10 or 12 years in a row, she said.

Enthusiastic about her craft and her flowers, Weiland said she finds joy in participating in general, and thought she hasn't formed close ties with anyone in the show's arts and crafts departments, she does feel a broad sense of community and routinely donates her premium check — the winnings awarded to exhibitors whose entries place in the competition — back to the farm show.

Weiland said she hopes that giving back will help the show continue its traditions and attract younger people, who she worries are being wooed by less positive influences.

This year Weiland won third place, but said she's not concerned with competing or maintaining her run of farm show victories. She just wants to stay active and continue doing what she loves.

Now she is considering expanding her farm show entries to include her needlework.

“It's a good pastime for old people,” Weiland said.