Meet the Gardening Gays, a couple planting the seeds of LGBTQ+ acceptance

The sign is the first thing you notice. Planted along US-301, a major highway and I-95 bypass that tens of thousands of people travel every year between Florida and New England, it reads in large, unambiguous letters: Gardening Gays Farm. No small print. No apology.That sign, and everything behind it, is the story of Kevin Graham and Dragan Kurbalija, a married gay couple who left Washington, D.C., traded cocktail parties and nights out for 4 a.m. chicken chores and lambing season, and built something that conservative King George County, Virginia, did not know it was waiting for. They have been voted winners in multiple categories of the "KG Best of the Best" awards two years running, served on the county's Tourism Advisory Committee, received an economic development grant from the county board of supervisors, and become, in the words of the county's community engagement director, "a pinnacle member of our local agricultural sector." Their congressman has entered them into the Congressional Record.Related: Virginia farm owned by the 'Gardening Gays' was vandalized with medical waste and human fecesThey are also unambiguously and unapologetically gay, documenting their farm adventures to thousands of followers across social media, including on their vibrant YouTube farm vlog. In a county that votes Republican by wide margins, that turns out to matter less than the quality of their eggs. Kurbalija and Graham, aka 'The Gardening Gays,' on their Virginia farm.courtesy Gardening GaysKevin grew up the youngest of seven children in rural Florida, watching his parents work themselves to exhaustion. He spent 15 years as a fitness instructor before building a career in government. Dragan grew up in Serbia, the son of a father who leased him as child labor to neighboring farms. "I hated farming," he says without irony, sitting in the couple's living room, a cocktail and charcuterie at the ready. He went on to spend two decades in hospitality, eventually managing restaurants w