SEATTLE, WA © 2008 Barbara Adams www.BarbaraBerstAdams.com
Nancy Kristen Hayes was passionate about home gardening. And because of this, a unique micro-acreage flower seed cottage industry is now flourishing. It started with surplus seeds and a secretarial home business for this Missouri gardener. Eventually, the secretarial service gave way to the thriving seed (and now herb) business, and is the main occupation for Nancy. She started in her backyard with less than ¼ acre, and still today, most of her farm operates from this space.

In 1990, Nancy Hayes and her husband built a new home in Arnold, Missouri on a ¼ acre subdivision. She decided to plant the yard with wildflowers. By 1993, enough of the construction and a protective new fence had been built for the wildflower plantings to be safe and begin in earnest. With a few small bags of various wildflowers including Coreopsis, Mexican Hats and Cosmos sulphureus, the seeds were planted that summer, and came up fast and colorful. When the yellow and orange cosmos went to seed, Nancy was enchanted by how their seeds looked, how many there were, and their ease of harvest. She decided to gather and store them to plant again in spring. Within a few summers, her backyard was loaded with flowers, and she didn't need all the extra seeds for herself. Yet she still couldn't resist collecting and storing them. As this was going on, by 1998, she had opened a home business offering secretarial services. The number of flower seeds continued to mount, and she wondered how they could be incorporated into her secretarial business. "I remembered that 'Thank You' cards are a big thing in the world of business people," she states, "so decided I would somehow create handmade Thank You cards that would include my wildflower seeds, giving the person a "card and gift all-in-one" and all my collected seeds wouldn't be going to waste!" From this point of inspiration, Backyard Beauties™ and All-Occasion Seed Cards™ were born.

From backstage to main occupation

"When I had my secretarial business and I first offered my seed items as a unique service, I had more secretarial business (than flower seed business) at that time," Nancy says, "then as businesspeople realized how they could use my seed items for their clients so they'd always be remembered, I'd say my secretarial business dropped to half; and not long before I closed my secretarial business, my Backyard Beauties™ business had the higher percentage. I closed my secretarial business approximately six years ago," she says, "as I was having too much fun in my "outside" office taking care of my flowers and picking the seeds."

Nancy's story of slow transition from indoor secretarial work to full time value-added flower farming is a favorite one for aspiring farmers still working in other occupations, or those who need added income along with the current farm, and prefer to be working outdoors and at home. Whether they have always known they'd rather farm, or accidentally discover how much they like farming because of a new garden or farm-related hobby, they find themselves engaged in the new farming venture very part time, then they let it grow gradually and solidly while fading out the "day job" until the farm becomes the main occupation.

Marketing

The secretarial service seemed to be a good marketing jump-off for getting Nancy's flower seed card business known and on its feet. "When I had my secretarial business, I incorporated my flower seed note cards and customized flower seed packets simply as a unique secretarial service." Though many of us aren't skilled in the secretarial services like Nancy, we can learn from her insight about hooking up farmed and value-added products with the fast-paced non-farming business world and connect to it in other ways, as did another innovative owner of a cottage industry who took her home-grown gift baskets to a huge corporate building and rode up and down the elevator with a beautiful gift basket. The basket wasn't destined for anyone, but when businesspeople saw it (assuming she was delivering it to some lucky recipient), they were impressed, and asked for a business card, helping to launch her gift basket business.

Expanding

Today, Nancy still grows most of her crop in her backyard, although she occasionally uses about an acre of extra land about 40 miles away. She now sells a mix of annuals and perennials, including Amaranthus, Catchfly, Cornflower, Cosmos, Cypress Vine, Forget-Me-Nots, Gloriosa Daisy, Indian Blanket, Love-in-a-Mist, Mallow, Obedient Plant, Plains Coreopsis, and Tahoka Daisy. Cards are blank inside and come with planting directions. Their choices have expanded beyond Thank-Yous into Birthday Greetings, Anniversary Wishes, and "I Miss You," variations. Customers may also mix and match her products into boxed gift sets. Further, Nancy now includes packets of dried spearmint as part of her offerings, sold for customers' use in their own potpourris or sachets. "Around 15 years ago my husband brought home a sprig of spearmint that someone gave him," Nancy says, "All I knew about spearmint was that it's an aggressive spreader and it didn't have the kind of flowers that I like -- very colorful -- so I told him that I didn't want it. He planted it anyway and the rest is history!"

Though the spearmint wasn't initially invited to the backyard garden farm, Serendipity seems to "just happen" when you love what you're doing. "Several years ago," says Nancy about another fond memory, "a girl from the East coast ordered many of my seed cards to use as name cards at her wedding reception. The unique thing about this card order was that she was marrying a Spaniard and wanted the flower seed planting directions to be in Spanish as many of his relatives would be attending the wedding. Just a few weeks earlier, before she ever contacted me, I had the Cosmos flower seed planting directions translated into Spanish by a business friend. We were both members of a networking group and several members had asked me if my planting directions could be in Spanish as well as English."

Looking towards the future, Nancy plans to keep doing what she has come to love. "I plan on Backyard Beauties to be around for a long time. I do want to add additional seed items eventually to give people more of a variety to choose from."

Reaching out to the world and making a difference

Nancy has an attractive website that helps draw new customers and disseminate vital information for current customers. She tapped into a trend, and created a significant micro-acreage stream of income that sprung from her love for gardening and gradually filled her life with an enjoyable livelihood. Visit Nancy's business at www.Backyard-Beauties.com

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