We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emily Day a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Emily, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Day to day the world can seem like a tough place, but there’s also so much kindness in the world and we think talking about that kindness helps spread it and make the world a nicer, kinder place. Can you share a story of a time when someone did something really kind for you?
Purchasing land or, better yet, an established farm didn’t feel like a financial reality for me. It was the someday plan. It was two women I barely knew who connected the dots to make it a reality. In my former career as an event manager for a university president, a senior staff member pulled me aside during an event (I believe I was stuck collecting coats at the closet or catching a red wine ring on a marble table) and kindly asked what my career goals were. For whatever reason, I answered honestly- “I want to farm.” Fast forward about a year, with little conversation in between, she calls me to explain that she “found my farm.” Farmers who run a CSA (community supported agriculture) program that she was a member of were selling their late grandfather’s farm but with a catch, they wanted it to go to someone who planned to farm. She put me in touch with the sellers and my husband and I viewed it along with a number of other interested parties. Two couples made cash offers, but the seller was a woman farmer who but believed in my vision and accepted my LOWER financed offer, contingent on the sale of our current home. It was actually a terrible offer. The first woman, my former colleague, went out of her way to connect me to this farm property, supported my business while it was a side-hustle and continues to now that it is my full-time career. The woman-farmer likely lost a bit of money choosing to sell this farm to me, but she did it anyways. I was just a blip in both of their lives, but they otherwise changed mine and I’ll be forever grateful.
Emily, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m a flower farmer and florist on a small farm in rural central Massachusetts. I can’t quite articulate how I ended up here on a farm, surrounded by flowers, with a passion for surrounding others with flowers. The journey is a bit disjointed but my best summary is that it was the first hobby that grabbed my attention for long enough to unravel into a bit of an obsession.
I operate Bell Brook with a small team and my husband. We grow Christmas trees and specialty cut flowers for our design studio, farm stand, CSA program, and for wholesale to industry professionals. Our design studio specializes in weddings and events and is closely intertwined with our farm. Our studio work is highly influenced by the farm, and reciprocally, our design eye greatly influences what we grow.
Our designs aim to balance relaxed rural aesthetics with artfully romantic character. We strive to capture the location, seasonality, and eclectic personality of each individual client and celebration. We practice sustainable floristry by prioritizing locally grown flowers and hard goods, repurposing or choosing vintage vessels over new, and limiting waste wherever we can.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Helping in the garden, picking out plants for window boxes, growing veggies, harvesting greens to decorate for Christmas and routinely putting flowers in a vase were activities that were part of my childhood that stuck with me. They flowed in and out of my life while following other career paths. I’d help my florist cousin with weddings from time to time, I’d pick up work at a local flower shop when they needed an evening flower processor or bucket washer during peak holidays, and I always always tried to grow things – even if just in pots when I lived in a city apartment. It was my husband who suggested we sell Christmas trees when we lived in the city, so we did. That tree lot moved with us to a couple of new locations as our lives changed and ultimately helped us fund purchasing the land where we grow them now. I folded in floral design and gardening in every moment that I wasn’t working my day job. In 2017 we bought the farm and I officially formed my business. I continued to set up the farm with early mornings and late nights, funding infrastructure with my salaried job, and taking wedding clients or freelancing for other designers on the weekends. In 2021 when my workload continued to increase for both Bell Brook and my day job, I had to take the leap. I knew at that point that I could at least cover my salary with clients I had booked for the following year, and I knew that my drive to make it work finally outweighed my fear that it wouldn’t.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
We’re always working on building our reputation but, I will say, in the past couple of years have started attracting more of our ideal clients and partners, which is promising! I think this is happening for two reasons. One, we care a LOT about the details and the experience as a whole when working with us. I don’t want people to buy anything that I’m selling as checklist items. When someone stops at our farm stand for a simple bouquet, I want them to feel pride in supporting a small farm business, when a guest views a centerpiece design on a table in a function space, I want them to feel connected to nature. When someone picks out a Christmas tree, I want them to feel some sense of nostalgic happiness.
The second is my honesty. Bell Brook is unapologetically me, my team of humans who care a lot, and a presentation of the style and things we love. We might miss a trend (or skip a trend intentionally), we might not choose to work with a client if their style doesn’t mesh with ours (even though we want to pay the bills), we might not choose to learn ANOTHER new social media marketing trick, but we’re striving to present an authentic Bell Brook, even if it’s playing a long game in terms of marketing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bellbrookfarmMA.com
- Instagram: bellbrookfarm
Image Credits
Serena Burroughs Photography Novella Photography