Four Generations, Planted in Succession

I am always touched when a customer is genuinely interested in my business and asks questions about how and why it got started.  One of the common questions I hear is this:  “So how did you ever get into this, anyway?”

A nervous laugh, a glance away, and I feel so silly, but I never know how to respond.  The truth is . . . I don’t know? 

“It kind of just happened, unfolded naturally . . . you know, one thing led to another . . .”

It’s a terrible answer.  And recently I was pondering how it was possible that I don’t have a better answer to that question.  I mean, I know WHY I started a business.  I know WHY I keep going.  But HOW exactly did it all begin?

If you lived inside my sarcastic brain, you would laugh at my knee-jerk response to myself as I tried to pin down a motive.  And since I know my mom will read this, I will share it with you.

I thought to myself:  “This is probably a subconscious rebellion of my childhood!” 

Ever since I was a baby, my mom had the most beautiful flower garden in the front of our house– lilies, bleeding hearts, tulips, clematis, and many more.  There was just one rule: DON’T pick the flowers. I wonder how many times I heard her gently remind me, “Look with your eyes, not with your hands.”  Those flowers were meant to stay in the garden, and picking them was strictly forbidden.  Let’s be real here:  I am (and always have been) a rule-follower.  I was a pretty easy kid to raise, right Mom? And so of course, I never picked her flowers, or even thought of it.  But it is pretty amusing that after all those years of NOT picking the flowers, that the path I eventually chose was one of growing flowers specifically for picking!

It gave my mom and I a good laugh, but it’s not the true answer to the question that I was looking for.  It did, however, get me reminiscing more about my childhood.  I realized that there are so many parallels between my life and my mother’s, that I’ve never before considered.  After high school, I went to college, earned a degree in education, got married.  When I had kids, I resigned from teaching to stay home with them.  Shortly thereafter, I started my own business– a cut flower business– and converted part of our basement into my studio and grow room.  Founded in 2019, Schell Farm Gardens grows and evolves every year.

My mom, too, went to college, earned a degree in education, and got married.  When she had kids, she resigned from teaching to stay home with us.  Shortly thereafter, she started her own business– a photography business– and converted part of our basement into her studio.  She photographed weddings, families, seniors, and everything in between for well over a decade in the 90s and beyond.

I mentioned this to her recently, and it’s funny how neither of us had ever realized the parallels until that moment.  It’s proof that sometimes you really need to back up to see the complete picture of what’s going on. 

Thinking about my mom and her small business got me thinking about my maternal grandmother, Elmyra (Toots) Short.  We called her Grandma Toots. She had an elaborate garden– meticulously weeded– and sold strawberries by the quart, and raspberries by the pint, throughout the 1970s.  My mom remembers a day that they spent in the raspberry patch when she was a kid.  She said they picked raspberries from sun-up to sun-down, stopping only for morning and evening chores, and to eat their meals. That day, they picked 55 pints of raspberries, which my grandma sold. One year, I remember hearing that my grandma used her berry sales to pay for a new set of beautiful dishes, decorated with intricate detail.  As a child, I remember being in the berry patch with Grandma.  Now, every time I taste a sun-ripened, just-picked strawberry or raspberry, I am transported back there.

And then there was Grandma’s mother, my great-grandmother, Lillian Pfuhl.  She sold plant starts and seedlings throughout the 1950s, right out of her backyard in Norwalk. Fertilized with horse manure, and made of old windows, she used what she called “hot boxes” to give her little plants (which she started from seed) a nice warm start until they were ready to sell.  Although I never met her, my mom remembers that Grandma Pfuhl sold her plants wrapped in newspaper, and by the dozen– although Grandma’s “dozen” was always thirteen.  One day in early June of 1956, she recorded having sold over 1,000 plants in one day!

I let all these stories sink in, and it hit me that I’m the fourth-generation female in my family to start a small business out of my home. This fact had never occurred to me before, but did give me some clarity.  I guess it does explain, in a way, how everything “kind of just happened, unfolded naturally . . . you know, one thing led to another.”  I think, when something is in you that deeply, it does just blossom on its own, without much explanation, and even without us knowing.

I still don’t have a great answer to that original question of how this all started.  But I do have part of the answer.  Aside from the fact that everything just unfolded naturally, it’s also knowing that those who have gone before me have had the courage to take what they love and turn it into something more.  That’s really what this business is for me. Gardening and selling flowers is something that I love.  And it became a business because . . . I guess you could say it’s in my blood. 

Just a final note: As I wrote this, I envisioned including photos Grandma Pfuhl with her plants, and Grandma Toots with her berries. I even thought I could dig up a picture of my mom with her camera or maybe in her flower garden that I remember as a child.

My mom and I looked through old photos, asked family members, searched high and low . . . and were shocked and disappointed to realize that there aren't any photos of these women doing what they loved so much. In some ways, I'm not surprised. They probably didn't think at the time that their ordinary, daily tasks were worthy of a photo. But it truly is the "every day" that becomes the fabric of who we are. So, if you get a chance today, capture yourself loving the little things, or the things that maybe don't feel glamorous at the moment. Future generations will appreciate it.