Feature | O.Henry Magazine

The Gentlewoman and Happy Farmer

THE GENTLEWOMAN AND HAPPY FARMER

The Gentlewoman and Happy Farmer

Margie Benbow bought the farm

By Cynthia Adams • Photographs by John Gessner

Margie Benbow did not grow up on a farm. But the easygoing former urbanite says, “I wanted to be a ‘country’ Benbow.”

And so she is, living contentedly in a traditional, white clapboard farmhouse nearing a century old. One with generous porches and a wide-open view to acreage planted in fescue and flowers.

Wearing a denim dress with overall straps, Crocs sandals and a red bandana holding back her blond hair, you might guess she has known nothing but life on a Summerfield farm. But you’d be wrong. She is a scientist, lawyer, auctioneer and artist — now farmer — joining the ranks of 24,160 women farmers in North Carolina, where the percentage of women jumped 90% in recent decades.

She’s downright Jeffersonian in her wide-ranging ambitions, not only practicing law while farming, but simultaneously making a serious run at political life last year. No matter that she lost her race for the North Carolina House of Representatives; Benbow maintains a natural sunniness, a goodwill that makes even her losses look like wins.

This is decidedly her super power.

If any of her dreams were easy, she probably wouldn’t even have found them very interesting.

Nine years ago, Benbow said goodbye to the din of traffic and all that comes with it, having lost her physician husband, Dr. Hector Henry, to cancer. Court dockets no longer ruled her calendar — just before the pandemic, she had settled into a rural rhythm largely dictated by Mother Nature.

She acquired not one, but two farms — another is a leafy drive away in the tiny community of Bethany, population 362.

Summerfield, by comparison, is practically a bustling suburb of over 11,000 residents. This, she laughs, is her city residence.

Wandering into the kitchen to prepare a ginger tea, Benbow appraises the space, which is open and oriented to the farmland behind the house. Even inside, she can keep watch on her crops from the dining room table.

She came of age in a pleasant Winston-Salem neighborhood as a “city” Benbow, with three sisters and a brother, relishing visits with the family’s “country” kin. She confides having always envied the life of her counterparts.

She ruminates about the reasons she is smitten with being far from the maddening horde.

“They had a pond. Since I was 4, I’ve wanted this life,” she declares.

Now she, too, has a pond of her own at the Bethany farm near a log cabin where restoration is underway. As further proof of self-reliance, Benbow has tasked herself with learning to make a split-bamboo fly rod — should she ever want to cast off. Online tutorials are daunting. But, then, that probably just whetted her appetite to learn.

In Summerfield, she has created a sunny, happy haven, the rooms dominated by whimsical, colorful art.

“This is my city house,” she teases, nary a neighboring house in sight. “My country house is 4 miles down the road.” She first bought the Summerfield house and 20-acre farm in 2016. The second farm, bought in 2020, sold at auction. Benbow was the top bidder. Land, she explains, is an addiction.

Then, the pandemic struck and a lockdown ensued. She realized she was going to have more than a small amount of isolation, even in what she calls her “city” house because of its proximity to Summerfield. She admittedly binge-watched Netflix and ate popcorn.

But also, she got busy.

As an avid artist, Benbow weighed the overall aesthetics of the house where she had moved. “It had amazing bones.” The kitchen, centrally located and serviceable, made sense to leave much as she found it, preserving the existing layout. The space includes four sets of doors making it light-struck and airy.

But Benbow explains that the farmhouse was a less daunting project than the restoration of the farmlands whereupon it sits. Much had already been accomplished in the house when she acquired the property, she says. Essentials, like replacing windows. But some things were neglected, like the disintegrating fireplace bricks.

Then she considered ways she could inject her own style. The cosmetics could use some help, she decided. Benbow ripped out the kitchen tile, designing and crafting her own backsplash tile at the Sawtooth Center in Winston-Salem. A hefty butcher’s block, repurposed as an island, required six people to move in as well as joist reinforcement. But once in place, it looked as if had always been there.

The open kitchen, now suitable for a serious cook, features a professional range. But when questioned about cooking, she laughs. “It looks like a cook’s kitchen.”

Cooking? Not her thing.

Benbow points out the most-used “fancy” appliances, giving a throaty laugh: a toaster, a popcorn popper, a Ninja juicer and a coffeemaker.

“That’s about it.” Still, she agrees. The range looks great.

As a rule, where Benbow found original farmhouse details, she kept them. But the ugly and unoriginal popcorn ceiling and cheap light fixtures had to go. Mostly, she “just made it pretty. Calmed it down.”

Since moving here, she has accomplished a lot, steadily ridding the surrounding land of tangled overgrowth. In order to grow flowers (focusing upon pollinators, a passion) she tackled clearing the fields of seven years of tree growth.

Afterward, she used the sawdust from removing all those trees, recognizing it as a compatible medium for planting zinnia. But a storm made short work of her investment in seeds, fertilizer and lime — all laid to waste.

Undaunted, Benbow acquired her second, 50-acre farm using new auctioneering skills from Mendenhall School of Auctioneering. A slew of projects came with the parcel — outbuildings, a log cabin, even a country store. She keeps horses there in a fine new equestrian barn. A mare, she says proudly, recently foaled.

The dream, however, follows a personal tragedy. She and her late husband were birds of a feather. The doctor, medical professor and long-time member of the city council in Concord, was a Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves Medical Corps. (He made headlines volunteering for multiple Middle East deployments when well past retirement age.)

Benbow reminisces about their meeting at Duke when she was a graduate student working in a lab and he was doing morning rounds as a pediatric urologist. (She nearly went on to medical school.)

Henry had surreptitiously “scoped her out” as she demonstrated to residents how to do cell cultures.

Initially, she was reserved, questioning how he obtained her number when he called her. He thought she might be an ice princess.

Before dating, she grilled Henry.

Had he ever done drugs? Was there another woman that would mind her having dinner with him? And, out of curiosity, what was his age?

“He answered no to the first two.” The age difference didn’t matter.

Three months later, they were engaged, marrying in 1992. She muses about the fact that only one of her four siblings didn’t pair up with a doctor.

Seemingly indefatigable, Henry died on Thanksgiving Day in 2014 at age 75 due to complications from a rare blood cancer. Her smile fades. For seven months following, she describes being “spiritually diminished.”

With Henry’s death, Benbow was forced to begin anew. She literally replanted herself.

Behind her Summerfield farmhouse, a colorful vista unfolds in summer. While she isn’t particularly good with flowers, Benbow shrugs. “I just try.”

Benbow has walked each furrow and hillock.

“Goldfinches, butterflies, all did well,” she muses, pleased that pollinators are appearing — even as she worries about their general decline. She is consumed by the need to support pollinators and began beekeeping, but lost her hives this past winter during severe cold. Still, there are emotional victories. It was a special moment watching deer wading into the sunflowers she had planted.

For someone who was first a scientist, she explains farming, too, is process dependent.

“You have to get into the process, and pray for the outcome. ‘I hope it works,’” she jokes, but is also serious.

Benbow recalls telling Rotarians just how humbling and uncertain it is.

“If you want to find religion, sit on a tractor thinking about those seeds you just spent $4,000 on,” she says, adjusting herself in her chair as if sitting atop a tractor: “You sit on that thing [hoping]. ‘It’s going to work. It’s going to work.’ And pull in all the good vibes of the universe.”

Last year, she lost both sunflowers and corn crops to drought. Losses are a piece of the human condition, as she is acutely aware. As for the romantic culture of growing what you eat and farm-to-table fantasies, she also understands how hard it is. Even basic crops like tomatoes, planted in the same place again and again, lead to soil depletion. Crop rotation is essential. She quickly outgrew the first farm — so acquired another.

With hands thrown up in a gesture of surrender, she laughs about how her best tomatoes are often volunteer plants randomly emerging from the seeds of tossed-out tomatoes. “With no memory of a potential pathogen there,” the science-minded farmer explains. The tenuous balance of earth and farming is a constant seesaw.

If enduring disappointment and difficulty prepare one for the unpredictability of farming, Benbow’s own childhood easily predicted the success of her marriage. Battling adult polio at age 25, her father endured 13 months in an iron lung when his wife was pregnant with their second child. Later, he adapted to walking with leg braces and refused to be a victim. He went on to create the first computing department at R.J. Reynolds.

He was never self-pitying, Benbow recalls.

Her mother, Jane, was a cartoonist in college yet skilled in math. Her father, William, was a poetry-writing engineer. A single thing didn’t define them.

She inherited both left- and right-brain talents from her polymath parents. And — a happy resilience that seems indomitable.

For a time after Henry’s death, Benbow was adrift, listening for an echo that was no longer there. Coping with not being part of a duet is painful.

“Much like in The Magic Flute,” she explains, “when the songs echo.” She confesses to “having leaks” when something triggers tears.

Alpha Awareness Training by Wally Minto led to recovering herself.

“It was basically saying, ‘What did you do as a child, and where was your joy?’ If you get back to the child in your past, you’ll find it.”

In surrendering herself to becoming lost, Benbow reliably found her way back.

Even as she kept her law practice and farmed, she explored further, attending auctioneering school and earning an associate’s degree in visual arts. “I’m a serial learner,” she playfully argues when accused of being a serial degree earner.

She insists she is a happy person, if a struggling farmer — and “even a happy lawyer.” But Benbow questions if Henry could have thrived here.

The problem was, Henry was a “bug magnet,” she jokes. Sensitive to mosquito bites, he was therefore never as keen on the country life. Plus, she would never have asked him to give up his multidimensional life.

A pensive Benbow looks outside towards the recently planted fields where flowers grew last year. Her mother often quoted a line attributed to Emerson. “The Earth laughs in flowers.”

“We had laughter in the house,” she adds wistfully.

“If you went into Mom’s house, it had a lot of energy,” she says. “Every surface was decorated with something she had made.” Each room of the farmhouse contains some of Benbow’s artwork. Her art is charged with color; exuberant, zestful.

Suddenly sheepish, she looks around her home, and adds, “This is turning into that!” After a beat, Benbow yelps.

“I’m turning into my mother!”

Behind her, the cloud cover breaks. Suddenly, sunlight drenches the fields, which seems to undulate, newly golden, where seedlings have barely emerged.

Benbow swivels, orienting her perspective to better see. Tender beginnings, which, if luck holds, will bring vigor, growth and maturity. If temperatures don’t swing madly, if there is rain and not drought, if pestilence stays at bay, there will be harvest and not heartbreak.

“Flowers are more beautiful,” she murmurs in a low register, her whole face softening into a hopeful smile.

Of course. She already sees the flowers.

Paper Tales

PAPER TALES

2025 Feature Paper Tales

Lessons in Husbandry

LESSONS IN HUSBANDRY

Lessons in Husbandry

In Pleasant Garden, Drew and Lacey Grimm are perpetual students and teachers

By Cassie Bustamante • Photographs by John Gessner

About a half-mile from Hagan-Stone Park sits “The Schoolhouse,” a rustic, tiny home with a vibrant barn quilt hanging above its front door. A vintage roadside marquee sign that has been lettered with “Happy” greets passing cars, its arrow pointing directly to the house. Upon entering, it’s easy to imagine something straight out of Little House on the Prairie — a blackboard at the back and benches where children would sit, lunch pails tucked under the seats. “If you don’t tell people it wasn’t a schoolhouse, they’d think it was,” says Lacey Grimm, who owns the property with her husband Drew.

Keep following the gravel drive past The Schoolhouse and you’ll reach the family homestead, where Drew and Lacey are raising and homeschooling their four children: Naomi, 20; Leviah, 16; Eliza, 14; and Abraham, 9. Drew and Lacey have been the kids’ educators from the start. In fact, when they first moved to Greensboro two decades ago, they began their first farmstead — a small, “urban farm” near Four Seasons Mall, where they had bees, chickens and a yard overtaken by garden. They called that little project “Schoolhouse Farm” because they were homeschooling, but also because Lacey had a blog called “Life Is a Schoolhouse,” where she imparted the lessons they’d learned through homesteading.

In 2012, seeking more land and farming opportunity, the family moved into their Pleasant Garden “foreclosure in the woods,” as Lacey calls it. Plus, she says, their family is Jewish and “a lot of the Jewish tradition is agricultural,” and much of their faith’s ancient approach to husbandry is rooted in sustainability. “You can’t do it if you don’t have a farm,” she notes. So, taking the Schoolhouse Farm name with them to the new place — a 10-acre plot with a ranch that needed a total overhaul — they dug in.

“It’s not what the dream was — the old farmhouse — but now that we have this,” says Lacey, waving her hand around The Schoolhouse, “it sort of scratches that itch.”

But don’t let the name fool you. What the Grimms have hatched is much more than a schoolhouse. And you won’t find reading, writing and arithmetic within these walls. Instead, you’ll find a place that this pair of homegrown, serial entrepreneurs cultivated with care, a hive of free enterprise built around their own fascination in modern homesteading and farming. The Schoolhouse, appropriately, has grown into a community space, where like-minded people congregate to learn about how the Grimm family is embodying the latest in the back-to-the-Earth movement.

“I feel like we’ve got a dream life compared to most people,” says Drew. “A lot of days, we don’t have to leave the homestead. We have everything.”

But this little one-room building on the ’stead wasn’t theirs for the itch-scratching until 2018. When they moved into their house, the 900-square-foot home and its surrounding 5 acres wasn’t on the market and was being rented. As luck would have it, a “For Sale” sign eventually went up. The Grimms imagined what they could do with that added acreage.

“Where are we going to come up with $100,000!” Lacey recalls wondering, their primary income coming from her sales of dōTERRA essential oils and related products. But within two days, the owner came down significantly on the price and, Lacey quips, “It turns out people will give you loans really easily on the internet.” Before they knew it, $50,000 cash was in their hands, enough to make the purchase. And, Drew notes, he’d just sold a business, so they’d be able to pay back the loan almost immediately without worrying about exorbitant interest rates.

As soon as their names were on the deed, the Grimms pushed up their sleeves and got to work. The home had seen better days. “I can’t believe anyone was living here,” says Lacey.

“We took it down to the dirt floors and rebuilt it,” says Drew, a baseball cap resting atop his long, gray-and-brown hair, his full beard a mix of the same. He sits in a wooden cricket chair that echoes the 1940s era of The Schoolhouse.

In the process of gutting the home, they learned a little about its history and ties to the land. Their next-door neighbor, an elderly gentleman well into his 80s now, regaled the couple with tales of the home’s construction. The lumber, he told them, was all sourced from trees on the property itself, and he and his father sawed, hammered and built it from the ground up. Of course, he also claims that when he was a small child, he was lowered down to dig the nearby well. “Like any good country man, I am not sure how much of it is tall tale,” Drew says, chuckling. “But it is kind of cool to have that connection to the house and to the land — and to the old guy!”

Knowing the building’s past, they set their eyes on the future, picturing a place where they could bring people together. “If we are going to have a community space, it’s got to be ‘The Schoolhouse,’” Drew recalls saying.

For Lacey, that meant getting down to the nitty-gritty details. She insisted Drew move the front door over, only about 3 feet, so it would be centered on the facade. The kitchen was rearranged so that the sink sat underneath a window, where sunlight streams in. The ceilings were torn down, exposing the original wood and beams, but a loft was added to create sleeping space.

As for the decor? “She is a thrift master,” Drew says proudly of his wife. Nearby, Lacey, her sandy brown waves cascading past her shoulders, sinks onto a mustard-yellow, vintage velvet sofa. As it turns out, she helped her mom stock a vintage store before her kids were born and has an eye for pieces with history. The kitchen island? It came out of an N.C. State lab. The retro brown refrigerator, “Oh, it was just in our garage,” says Lacey.

Although Lacey claims she was just “hodgepodging together” The Schoolhouse furnishings, the overall look is cohesive and homey. Guests often tell her they feel as if they’ve been here before. “It’s a familiar feeling,” she says.

“I get a little choked up because it’s like, you know, you have a vision and it slowly, over time, becomes more than you could have expected it to,” says Lacey wistfully. “And now we have a schoolhouse.”

What was once barely livable is now a place of gathering, community and education. Lacey points to a painting on the wall. She decoarated the canvas in a recent workshop she cohosted here with artist Rebecca Dudley, who owns Triad Mobile Art Academy. The participants painted flowering medicinal herbs while also learning about them from Lacey and noshing on local wines and cheeses. The Grimms have also hosted a tasting with a local chocolatier as well as a four-course, farm-to-table Valentine’s dining experience led by their friend and chef Steve Hollingsworth.

“For the food club group, we had a trout dinner,” adds Drew, where Ty Walker, owner of Smoke in Chimneys, a sustainable fish hatchery in Southwest Virginia, cooked trout three ways.

Food club? Lacey explains that The Schoolhouse food club, which they call ComFoo for “community food,” is “sort of like a Costco situation.” Members order goods curated by the Grimms from farmers, keeping it as local as possible, including tough-to-find-so-close goods such as Cape Hatteras salt and rice from Wilmington.

Once every other week, food club orders are ready for pickup and The Schoolhouse bustles with life. Their members, Lacey says, have all gotten to know each other. They come for the food, but stay for the conversation and connection. And, each time, the Grimms welcome one or two producers to offer samples and education about their goods.

“We’ve always been passionate about the teaching aspect,” says Drew. Drew, Lacey notes proudly, recently became certified by the Savory Institute as a regenerative agriculture educator. With this under his belt, he’s able to help others make their own pastures more productive while remaining sustainable.

Plus, Lacey notes with a laugh, others can learn by “skipping some expensive mistakes” they’ve made. Mistakes such as goats.

On their original 10 acres, excited to try their hand at livestock, the Grimms brought in goats. Do they still have those goats. “No!” They answer emphatically and in unison. Goats, the Houdini of livestock, often hop fences and escape. Or, notes Lacey, their goats would get stuck in the fence multiple times in one day and they’d spend their time untangling horns and hooves.

They said goodbye to goats and brought in sheep next. “And we didn’t even have a dog, so we were just human herding these sheep,” Lacey says. That, too, got to be too much for them. Step one, she notes, is getting a sheepdog, which they’ve since done. “Maybe we will get more sheep eventually,” she muses.

The Grimms finally landed on cows and own two breeds: Dexter, a small variety, which Lacey feels is safer around kids; and Swiss Linebacker, a heritage dairy breed. Comparing the bovine’s disposition to their previous livestock, Lacey says, “Their vibe is just much slower and more easygoing.” Currently, the couple has five cows “and two on the way, any day now!”

With cows being the endgame livestock for them, Drew is currently in training to become a shochet, a Jewish butcher who has been specially trained and licensed to slaughter animals and birds in accordance with the laws of shechita and can certify kosher meats. His hope? “To be able to provide the Jewish community with sustainable, high-quality food.”

Still, educating others in their ways of life remains their focus. A nursery, says Lacey, “feels like a good idea to me.” Would she sell her plants? Absolutely, but they’d come with a side of education.

“She wants to talk,” adds Drew, grinning widely. “She’s a plant lady.”

“I can’t just sell you a plant,” says Lacey. “Come here and I will tell you all about this plant.”

Her light blue eyes glint as a memory crosses her mind. “Have you ever been to John C. Campbell Folk School?” she wonders aloud. “I went for basket weaving and I just fawn over the catalog every time it comes,” Lacey says. “So I would just love to have a space where that is happening all the time — like classes and workshops.”

As for if and when that will come to fruition? Lacey says that with young ones still at home, she’s in no hurry. “There is space for that down the road,” she says. And she could mean that quite literally.

2025 Feature Lessons in Husbandry

The Great Wagon Road Odyssey

THE GREAT WAGON ROAD ODYSSEY

A pilgrimage half a century in the making

By Jim Dodson

Not long ago, during a breakfast talk in a retirement community about my forthcoming book on the Great Wagon Road, I was asked by a woman, “So, looking back, what would you say was the most surprising thing about your journey?”

“Everything,” I answered.

The audience laughed.

The first surprise, I explained, was that it took me more than half a century to find and follow America’s most fabled lost Colonial road that reportedly brought more than 100,000 European settlers to the Southern wilderness during the 18th century. As I point out in the book’s prologue, I first heard about the GWR from my father during a road trip with my older brother in December 1966 to shoot mistletoe out of the ancient white oaks that grew around his great-grandfather’s long-abandoned homeplace off Buckhorn Road, near the Colonial-era town of Hillsborough.

The first of many surprises was the discovery that my father’s grandmother, a natural healer along Buckhorn Road named Emma Tate Dodson, was possibly an American Indian who had been rescued and adopted as an infant by George Washington Tate, my double-great-grandfather, on one of his “Gospel” rides to establish a Methodist church in the western counties of the state.

A second surprise came during the drive home when the old man pulled over by the Haw River to show my brother and me a set of stones submerged in the shallows of the river — purportedly the remains of G.W. Tate’s historic gristmill and furniture shop.

“Boys, long ago, that was your great-great-granddaddy’s gristmill, an important stop on the Great Trading Path that connected to the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road that brought tens of thousands of European settlers to the South in the 18th century, including your Scottish, German and English ancestors.”

This was pure catnip to my lively eighth-grade mind. Owing to a father whose passion for the outdoors was only matched by his love of American history, my brother and I were seasoned explorers of historic Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields.

“Can we go find it?” I said to him.

He smiled. “How about this, Sport. Someday I’ll give you the keys to the Roadmaster, and you can go find the Wagon Road.”

I searched for years but found only the brief occasional mention of the Great Wagon Road in several histories of the South, but nothing about where it ran and what happened along it. The road seemed truly lost to time.

Forty years later, however, the Great Wagon Road found me.

On my first day as writer-in-residence at Hollins University in Virginia in 2006, I took a spin up historic U.S. Highway 11 — the famed Lee-Jackson Highway — and was surprised to come upon a historic roadside marker describing the “Old Carolina Road” that was part of the 18th century’s “Great Philadelphia Wagon Road.”

The sweet hand of providence was clearly at work, for the next day, while browsing shelves at a used bookshop in the Roanoke City Market, I found a well-worn copy of a folksy history called The Great Wagon Road: From Philadelphia to the South, by Williamsburg historian Parke Rouse Jr. I purchased the book (originally published in 1973 and long out of print) and read it in one night, taking notes. I also attempted to track down author Parke Rouse Jr. but discovered he’d been deceased for many years.

Still, the cosmos had cracked open a door, and I began collecting and reading all or parts of every history of America’s Colonial era that I could lay hands on for the next decade, eventually building a personal library of more than 75 books. About that same time, I purchased a 1994 Buick Roadmaster Estate station wagon from an elderly man in Pinehurst, almost identical to the one owned by my late father in the mid-1960s. Pinehurst pals playfully nicknamed it “The Pearl,” which turned out to be among the last true “wagons” built by Detroit before they switched to making SUVs.

I suddenly had my very own wagon. Now all I had to do was find the most traveled road of Colonial America to travel in it.

Eight years later, thanks to the late North Carolina historian Charles Rodenbough and other history-minded folks, I discovered that I wasn’t alone in my quest — that, in fact, a small army of state archivists and local historians, genealogists, “lost road” experts, various museum curators and ordinary history nuts like me had finally cracked the code on the road’s original path from Philly to Georgia.

By the spring of 2017, I and my traveling pal, Mulligan the dog, were ready to roll when another big surprise — an exploding gallbladder and a baby carrot-sized tumor in my gut — required surgery and a four-month recovery.

Finally, on a steamy late August night, I began my journey (minus Mully, alas, owing to her age and one of the hottest summers on record) at Philadelphia’s historic City Tavern, which claims to be the birthplace of American cuisine. As I enjoyed a pint of Ben Franklin’s own spruce beer recipe and nibbled on cinnamon and pecan biscuits from Thomas Jefferson’s own Monticello cookbook, I eavesdropped like a tavern spy from Robert Louis Stevenson on three couples having a rowdy celebration of matrimony and a game of trivia based on American history that kept going off the rails.

At one point, a young woman called out a question in clear frustration: “Where and what year were the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first constitution, adopted?”

None of her mates answered.

So, I did. “I believe it was York, Pennsylvania, in November 1777.”

Her name was Gina. She gave me a beaming smile and scooted her chair close to mine. “Correct! How did you know that?”

“Because it happened on the Great Wagon Road.”

What ensued was a delightful conversation about a frontier road that shaped the character and commerce of early America, the historic Colonial road that opened the Southern wilderness and became the nation’s first immigrant highway — the “road that made America,” as my friend Tom Sears, an Old Salem expert on Colonial architecture, described it to me.

Gina was thrilled to learn about it and apologized that she’d never heard its name.

I assured her that she wasn’t alone. Most Americans living today have never heard its name spoken, yet it’s believed that one-fourth of all Americans can trace their ancestral roots to the Great Wagon Road in one way or another.

Charmed and fascinated, Gina wondered how long it would take me to travel the road from Philly to Augusta, Georgia.

I mentioned that settlers took anywhere from two months to several years to reach their destinations depending on the weather and unknown factors like disease, getting lost or encountering hostile native peoples or wild animals.

“I plan to travel the entire road in three or four weeks,” I said. “I’ve spent years researching it.”

Silly me. God laughs, to paraphrase the ancient proverb, when men make plans.

A third big surprise came at the end of my third week on the road. I hadn’t even gotten out of Pennsylvania.

On the plus side, I’d met and interviewed so many fascinating people who were passionate keepers of their own Wagon Road stories, I realized I’d just tapped the surface of the trail’s saga.

Instead of writing an updated history of the Great Wagon Road, as originally planned, I borrowed a strategy from my late hero Studs Terkel and decided that the real story of the Wagon Road lay in the voices of the people living along it today, keeping its stories alive — the flamekeepers, if you will, of the “road that made America.” If it took a full year to complete my travels, so be it.

Instead, subtracting 12 months for COVID, it took six years and counting.

My focus on the storytellers proved to be deeply rewarding, introducing me to a broad array of Americans from every walk of life and political persuasion whose vivid and often untold tales about the development of a winding and once forgotten Colonial road (originally an American Indian hunting path that stretched from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas) carried our ancestors into the Golden West and shaped the America we know today, hence the book’s main title: The Road That Made America. Unexpectedly, their voices and stories ultimately restored my faith in a country where democracy — and civic discourse — was supposedly in short supply.

Looking back, this was the nicest surprise of all. For what began simply as an armchair historian’s quest to find and document America’s most famous lost road ended as nothing less than a powerful, emotional pilgrimage for me.

At the journey’s end, while I was heading home through the winter moonlight on a winding highway believed to be the path Lord Cornwallis took while chasing wily Nathanael Greene to the Dan River, I had a final revelation of the road’s impact on me:

. . . a true pilgrimage is said to be one in which the traveler ultimately learns more about himself than the passing landscape.

Perhaps this is true. But for the time being, it’s enough to think about some of the inspiring people and stories that gave me hope in a nation where democracy is said to be hanging by a thread: an old Ben Franklin and a young Daniel Boone, the Susquehanna Muse, real Yorkers, the candlelight of Antietam, a Gettysburg living legend, an awakening at Belle Grove Plantation, Liberty Man, the passion of Adeela Al-Khalili, good old cousin Steve, a lost Confederate found, a snowy birthday in Staunton, and final road trips with Mully.

Without question, my life and appreciation of my country have both been enriched by the people and stories of the Great Wagon Road.

This was the nicest surprise of all.

2025 Feature The Great Wagon Road Odyssey

For the Love of the Game

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME

For the Love of the Game

A baseball academy teaches all the fundamentals - especially character

By Ross Howell Jr. • Photographs by Tibor Nemeth

Scott Bankhead, a former Major League Baseball pitcher and founder of the North Carolina Baseball Academy, threw his first pitch for his Little League baseball team in Mount Olive when he was 7 years old.

“I enjoyed everything about the game,” Bankhead says. “I loved throwing the ball. I loved hitting the ball.”

Back then, there weren’t many professional games broadcast on TV during the summer. And there were hardly any special coaching camps.

But Bankhead was encouraged along by his older cousins, who played for a regional American Legion Baseball amateur team.

Bankhead went on to throw a lot more pitches — first, for his elementary school coaches in Reidsville, where his family moved when he was 9, then for the Reidsville Senior High School baseball team, then as a collegiate player at UNC-Chapel Hill, and finally, pitching for the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Mariners, Cincinnati Reds, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees during a 10-year professional career.

After his retirement, Bankhead felt a real passion to pass along his knowledge and affection for the game and dedicated his post-professional baseball life to mentoring young players, both on and off the field.

Bankhead saw a need for better instruction at all levels of the game. He wanted to provide a resource for players of all ages and ability levels, a place where he could have a positive influence on them as athletes and as individuals.

The result?

NCBA, established by Bankhead in 1998.

Located near the Piedmont Triad International Airport, the academy’s facilities are impressive. The campus comprises 12 acres and provides students with indoor- and outdoor-training areas for both baseball and softball, an instructional center, a weight room, indoor pitching mounds with retractable batting cages, performance stations, an artificial turf running track, and a pro shop for equipment.

Students even have their hitting and pitching stills analyzed by Rapsodo and Blast Motion, the same technology used by all 30 MLB teams and 1,200 colleges.

“The philosophy here is to teach the fundamentals of the game,” Bankhead says. “That’s what we do day-to-day at the facility.” And then adds, “Our goal, first and foremost, is to enable players to do well in school, so they will be able to get into college.”

While state-of-the-art facilities and technology are important, the character, quality and experience of the academy’s instructors are essential.

And NCBA coaches have strong Greensboro ties.

Jeff Guerrie, assistant director of NCBA, moved from Florida to Greensboro during his senior year and played baseball at West Forsyth High School before playing for Greensboro College. He coached at Page High School before joining the academy and combines traditional coaching with his expert use of modern baseball training technology.

A graduate of High Point Central High School, Colin Smith played college baseball at North Carolina Central University, Southeastern Community College and Guilford College. He served as head coach of the Lexington Flying Pigs in the Old North State League and teaches NCBA students at all skill levels.

Shane Schumaker played baseball at UNCG and professionally in independent leagues. He returned to coach at UNCG, and later coached both baseball and softball in California. He was an associate scout for the Atlanta Braves before joining NCBA, where he teaches baseball and softball skills — including softball pitching.

A former baseball player at Grimsley High School, Winston-Salem State University and Guilford College, where he completed his degree, Saunders Joplin works with players of all ages, specializing in hitting, catching, pitching and basic skills.

Devin Ponton also played his college baseball at Guilford College. He is currently the head junior varsity baseball coach at Southwest Guilford High School in High Point. With years of baseball experience and knowledge, he coaches players in any area of the game.

To all these instructors, Bankhead drives home the point that personal attention is key to the academy’s success.

“We treat each player as an individual,” says Bankhead. “We help them learn to enjoy the game and to understand that hard work in baseball can lead to success in other endeavors.”

Players can sign up for one-on-one lessons with a coach by appointment. These sessions are tailored to the player’s specific needs — including hitting, pitching, catching, fielding and basic skills.

Coaches also lead training camps throughout the calendar year that offer instruction, drills and practice routines mirroring professional baseball training methods. The goal is to help players gain knowledge, skills and confidence to take them to a higher level.

Finally, there are the NCBA Golden Spikes teams.

The academy’s Golden Spikes program is recognized as one of North Carolina’s premier player development and college prospect initiatives.

Teams are selected through tryouts and bring together the region’s top talent to compete against some of the strongest teams in the nation.

There is a development program for elementary and middle school age players and a college prospect program for high school age players.

“Since the inception of our team program in 2002,” Bankhead says, “we’ve placed more than 100 players at the college or professional level.”

Producing that number of elite players certainly gives Bankhead bragging rights.

But he’ll tell you that’s not the endgame.

Recently, he was out on the golf course and ran into a former NCBA student he remembered well.

This one had gone on to play college baseball and then earned a medical degree.

“Now, he’s a vascular surgeon,” Bankhead says with a smile.

“Sure, we like to see our students reach the highest levels of professional baseball, if that’s what they want,” he adds. “But we’re also a resource for the future doctors of the world.”

2025 Feature For the Love of the Game

It’s Her Churn

IT'S HER CHURN

It's Her Churn

For Shafna Shamsuddin, cardamom is the spice of life

By Cassie Bustamante

Photographs by Bert VanderVeen

Dessert is just a way to tell the stories,” says Shafna Shamsuddin, creator of her own cardamom-infused and globally-inspired ice cream company, Elaka Treats. Even though she’s inspired by the Indian traditions of her childhood, she’ll tell you with a laugh that her own story doesn’t begin there.

“My story started at Williams-Sonoma,” Shamsuddin admits with an easy smile. Born and raised in United Arab Emirates by Indian immigrant parents, Shamsuddin, as well as her siblings, came to America for college. She began her studies at Purdue University in Indiana, studying psychology and Earth science. From the time she was a child, she had her sights set on becoming a psychologist. However, she was matched with her husband during her undergrad years and relocated with him to Gastonia. In the end, she earned her bachelor’s degree from UNC-Charlotte. From there, her plan was to enroll in a clinical psychology graduate program at Duke University. “But due to personal reasons . . .” she trails off, preferring to look forward instead of into the past.

After a moment, she picks back up. Pressure from her community was overwhelming and first loneliness and then restlessness followed. “Everyone advised that I should focus on my marriage,” she says. “I am not Indian enough for Indians because I am not born and raised there,” she says. “And I am not American either, so, it’s like, where do I belong?” So she put her goals on the back burner, “hoping that one day I could pick it up and go back.” But, little by little, she began throwing herself into all sorts of projects: “plumbing, electrical, carpentry — I’ve done all kinds of stuff.” She found herself often wandering through the glimmering displays of kitchen-and-entertaining merchandise at Williams-Sonoma. “The kitchen tools and gadgets really fascinate me,” she says.

But there was one small appliance in particular that she kept coming back to. “I used to see the Cuisinart ice cream maker and that always caught my eye.” However, she says, the price tag was too much for her wallet. After years of gazing at the machine in wonder, she says, “finally, one day, I was like I am going to make the splurge.”

That small and mighty Cuisinart has long since been retired, but it got Shamsuddin’s wheels churning. Her first endeavor with it was kulfi ice cream, a traditional frozen Indian treat flavored with pistachio, cardamom and saffron. While kulfi is generally a no-churn dessert, Shamsuddin gave it a whirl in her ice cream maker.

But all of that tinkering didn’t ease her homesickness. She started dreaming of the anything-but-frozen unnakai, a sweet treat from back home, “especially where my parents are from in India, from their home state of Kerala.” The labor-intensive dessert, according to Shamsuddin, is made of a mashed plantain that’s been stuffed with coconut, cardamom and cashew nuts, then deep-fried. And while the flavors indeed melt in your mouth, it was the ritual around it, tea time, that she was missing.

“I was really craving having that experience of not just having the treat, but the experience of getting together with people and family and relatives, and just sitting and chatting over tea and tea-time snacks,” she says wistfully. But, she adds, “I felt that it was really sad for me to go through that process and eat it alone.”

Shamsuddin wondered how she could take the unnakai flavors and create a frozen dessert that she could enjoy. An idea hit her: Use plantains as the base. “I knew I had something here,” she says.

She began testing out her confections on friends when she’d host dinner parties. The result? “Everyone loved it.” Shamsuddin found gratification in serving others. And watching people savor her creations filled her cup. “It’s something that gives me a lot of pleasure.”

Plus, she says, the Indian tradition she learned from her own mother is that, when you entertain, you make everything from scratch as a way to celebrate your guests’ presence at your table. As her dinner-party pals spooned in bite after bite, they confirmed what she’d suspected — she was indeed onto something.

By the early-2010s, Shamsuddin and her husband had settled in Greensboro and later that decade welcomed their only son, Zahin. But that desire to make her confections into something bigger kept nagging at her. The only problem was she had no idea how to start a business. And she knew that she’d be on her own in this endeavor.

In Greensboro, Shamsuddin began to find her way. She joined a training group at Club Fitness, but she got much more than she expected out of those gym sessions. Her workout comrades and trainer also became her support system, her social circle and her laboratory, allowing her to test samples on them. “My gym buddies, they were really my everything,” Shamsuddin says.

As luck would have it, her trainer coached another client, Lindsay Bisbee, who had launched the homemade pickle brand Kyōōkz. He connected the two women, and Bisbee, in turn, introduced Shamsuddin to the Piedmont Food Processing Center, aka PFAP. The 10,000-square-foot building in Hillsborough offers commercial kitchen space as well as support for food entrepreneurs.

But the biggest thing Shamsuddin picked up at the gym wasn’t the heavy weights, nor was it the connections. It was confidence. Shamsuddin, who describes herself on LinkedIn as a “Rule Breaker,” learned, she says, “I am physically strong and mentally strong, so what is holding me back? Nothing, I can depend on myself.”

With a new-found belief in herself, Shamsuddin began her production in 2019 at PFAP, where executive director L. Eric Hallman provided her with the guidance she’d desperately needed. “It was Eric who kind of gave me that first big missing piece of the puzzle,” she says, laughing about how basic those missing pieces were — business registration, insurance, scheduling inspections.

Registration meant Shamsuddin needed a business name, which was something she hadn’t even considered. Elaka is what people in the Indian state of Kerala call cardamom. Every confection Shamsuddin offers features the exotic flavor — a warm, aromatic spice known for its peppery and piney palate. So, she decided, why not call her business Elaka Treats? Officially in business at PFAP, Shamsuddin learned how to navigate a commercial kitchen, essential in the ice cream business. After months of back and forth between Greensboro and Hillsborough, often hauling Z with her and hiring a babysitter there, she scheduled her Department of Agriculture inspection for March, and, a week later, was due to officially launch at the 2020 RiverRun International Film Festival, held in Winston-Salem each year. “And then COVID hit, cancels the RiverRun International Film Festival, cancels my inspection,” she says, “and I panicked.” In tears, she called her brother, feeling as if she’d brought the pandemic upon herself. “You think the whole world is going through a pandemic because you decided to run a business?” he asked her. She laughs now at the memory, but, at the time, she answered him with a resounding, “Yes.” After her momentary meltdown, Shamsuddin picked herself up off the floor and trudged onward. “I wasn’t ready to give up. I’d barely started.” While inspections were on pause, Shamsuddin says, “I found out that if I can convince the Department of Agriculture that I am going to do everything per code and my product is safe to consume, then they will give me a letter that says . . . it is OK for us to be in business.” She was able to obtain the approval letter and, like many businesses in 2020, made a new plan.

“I started thinking, How did Coke create a market?” Salesmen originally went door-to-door, coming face-to-face with potential customers, she says. And now? “There isn’t a soul on this planet that if you tell them ‘Coke,’ they don’t know what it is.”

Shamsuddin, donning a mask, began peddling her pints at farmers markets, everywhere from Raleigh to Charlotte, and at The People’s Market in Greensboro. She ran pop-up shops, even setting up where it all began — at Friendly Center’s Williams-Sonoma.

Farmers markets opened doors, allowing Shamsuddin to take steps toward her goal of eventually adopting a business-to-business (B2B) model. At the Chapel Hill Farmers’ Market, Vimala Rajendran, owner of Vimala’s Curryblossom Café, introduced herself — and, soon after, Shamsuddin had her first wholesale account.

Since then, she’s grown to having a dozen wholesale accounts. “It’s been a slow build,” she admits. But that pace has given her room to expand her small but mighty part-time teams. She’s also relocated her operations to the much more conveniently located Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship, where she rents an office and a warehouse-style storage space, and utilizes the shared-use kitchen, which is managed by Out of the Garden Project, for production.

Her menu has grown, too, including a half-dozen collaborations with local brands. She’s added a variety of cream-based flavors as well as vegan options and says that every flavor has its own story. Z’s lemonade, a flavor her son requested on his fifth birthday, is popular among the kiddos.

Zucchini orange blossom resulted from the purchase of a giant zucchini. “It was really big, more than my whole family needs,” she says, and it was the last remaining piece of produce a young girl had under her People’s Market tent. With no idea of what to do with it — she just wanted that young vendor to have the satisfaction of a sold-out day — she bought it. Zucchini, which she says “doesn’t have much of a flavor,” is popular in Middle Eastern cuisine, as is orange blossom, which tickles the tongue with hints of honey and citrus. Shamsuddin blended a cream base with the two, plus, naturally, her signature cardamom.

And then there’s the time that she added dates to ice cream. Working on a batch of plantain ice cream, Shamsuddin knocked the last of her plantains onto the floor. In an attempt to save the rest of her ingredients, she grabbed some dates to use in their place. “Sometimes it’s accidental!” she quips.

One day, Shamsuddin would like to see Elaka Treats stocked in national grocers’ freezers. In fact, her desserts are under review at Whole Foods currently and she feels hopeful. “It’s a global brand, that’s what the dream is.” And the cherry on top? That would be to see Elaka pods, self-serving freezers, in every cultural space.

“Initially, Elaka was about me. It was about telling my story,” says Shamsuddin. Over the past six years, it’s grown into something else. It’s about community, belonging “and how, through food, you can see how we’re all connected.”

2025 Feature It's Her Churn

A More Beautiful Greensboro

A MORE BEAUTIFUL GREENSBORO

A More Beautiful Greensboro

The Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs continues planting for the future

By Ross Howell Jr. – Photographs by Lynn Donovan

Gail Hill is proud that the Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs, where she now serves as a trustee, has been active in our community for 95 years. Not a bad run for a local civic group.

But because of changing family structure and lifestyles, Hill is concerned about its future.

Soft-spoken as Hill is, you’d probably never predict that she would have one day become president of the Garden Club of North Carolina.

But she did. And she’s played a key role in the GCGC’s longevity.

“I grew up on a tobacco farm in southern Guilford County,” Hill says.

Her grandmother “could poke a stick in the ground and it would grow,” she tells me. And her father inherited his mother’s green thumb.

“Dad was always out working in the garden, propagating some flower or other he’d started from seed,” she says.

While she enjoyed farm life, Hill spent enough time pulling suckers from tobacco plants to know that she didn’t want to marry a farmer.

So she married a businessman — her husband, Wayne, now retired. They moved around a good bit regionally for his career.

And Hill found herself becoming more involved in garden club leadership.

Back in 2005, Hill — along with the council historian and council secretary — compiled an award-winning history of the Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs to commemorate its 75th anniversary.

She was especially drawn to the history of the council, because her father — the man who’d inherited the green thumb — served in the U.S. Army Air Forces in WWII. He had been stationed where the Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs had been very active — the O.R.D. (Overseas Replacement Depot), where troops trained, awaiting orders to ship out to war.

While Hill was working on the council history, she was also serving as council president pro tem and director of District 5, the South Atlantic Region of the National Garden Clubs — comprising Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

She was elected president of the Garden Club of North Carolina in 2015.

“I served two terms as president,” Hill says. “It was a lot of work and travel.”

Hill explains that, as president of the state garden club, she was responsible for eight geographical districts. Her duties included personal visits to each of those districts once a year.

Think of it. Our state comprises 100 counties reaching from the mountains to the sea.

“So I saw a lot of North Carolina,” Hill says with a wry smile. “But everywhere you went, the people were so enthusiastic.”

“It was wonderful,” she adds.

But times change.

In 1930, there were 11 neighborhood garden clubs that met together to create a citywide council with the objective of creating “A More Beautiful Greensboro.” While there are several neighborhood garden clubs today, there are just three clubs that participate in council meetings.

Hill believes that even neighborhood garden club memberships have fallen. The traditional model of afternoon meetings during the work week just isn’t practical. In most young families today, both husband and wife are often working, and if the couple have children, they must devote big chunks of time to their kids’ activities as well.

“We encourage young people just starting garden clubs to have meetings at night, have them on weekends,” Hill says.

These days, there are two types of fundraising programs that are the GCGC’s staples.

First, there are the ever-popular spring garden tours.

This May, the council’s “2025 Garden Tour” included home gardens in Irving Park, Fisher Park, Westerwood, Sunset Hills, Starmount Forest and Hamilton Forest, along with a tour of the hospice garden at Beacon Place on Summit Avenue.

“This fall, we’ll be finalizing our plans for the spring 2026 tour,” Hill says.

The second staple is a day of public educational seminars — one program in fall and one in spring — held at the Greensboro Science Center.

In March, the “Spring Gardening Seminar 2025” was held in the Sail Room at the Greensboro Science Center. Presentations included “Edible Landscapes” by Jeanne Aller, Master Gardener; “Flower Designs for Your Lifestyle” by Clark Goodin, owner and floral designer of Plants & Answers in Greensboro; and “Favorite NC Plants” by horticulturist Mike Trivette of Statesville.

Plans for the “Fall Gardening Seminar 2025” are currently underway.

Hill believes that educational opportunities hosted by the council are essential to the future of garden clubs.

“When we have these seminars, we have lots of young people come,” she says. “We can see that they love to plant and they love to grow flowers,” Hill adds. And often, she tells me, she signs up new members.

She reflects for a moment.

“A lot of us older members are just aging out,” Hill says.

“In the spring, my husband and I like to ride down Dogwood Drive to see the blossoms,” she continues. “And I think about the Greensboro Council and the Jaycees.”

Some of those trees were planted in 1954 during “Operation Dogwood,” a joint effort by the GCGC, the Jaycees and neighborhood garden clubs to plant 10,000 dogwoods throughout the city.

“Now the trees are too old,” Hill says. “We need to plant new seedlings.”

Then she smiles.

“The council is a wonderful organization,” Hill says. “It’s done itself proud.”

Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs

The lovely urban environment we take for granted has been shaped by years of dedication and selfless hours of service by generations of GCGC members. Noted here are a few of the markers in a timeline of achievement. Unmentioned are the sustaining funds provided to landmarks like Blandwood and the Greensboro Science Center; gifts to parks, gardens, schools and museums; and scholarships and community programs for young gardeners and gardeners who are young at heart.

1930 GCGC founded, Mrs. Charles (Anne) Hagan named president

1930-1932 First civic planting, Japanese cherry trees on E. Bessemer Avenue

1934-1935 Assisted development of Latham Park

1942 Called for “adequately housed farm produce market,” 12,000 people petition city

1943-1944 Gift to Red Cross for blood plasma at O.R.D. (overseas replacement depot)

1945 Planted 8,000 pansies on O.R.D. hospital grounds

1950 First home and garden tour

1954 “Operation Dogwood,” 10,000 dogwood seedlings planted in neighborhoods

1955 Planted 12 acres, Lindley Park Anniversary Garden (now Greensboro Arboretum)

1960 Planted Coliseum Memorial Court and purchased fountain

1967 Began sustained funding for City Beautiful (now Greensboro Beautiful)

1968 One of the founding sponsors of Greensboro Beautiful

1971 First Christmas tree display at Friendly Center auditorium

1971-1972 500 rose bushes planted in Anniversary Garden

1974 Major gift for creation of Bicentennial Garden

1980 Purchased sundial for Bicentennial Garden

1983 Major gift to Greensboro Beautiful for arboretum landscaping plans

2001 Construction and landscaping completed for GCGC building, Lawndale Drive

From “The Greenboro Council of Garden Clubs, Inc. History 1930-2005,” Gail Hill, president and Inez Ryals, historian.

2025 A More Beautiful Greensboro Feature

Long Gone Avalon

LONG GONE AVALON

Long Gone Avalon

A what-if of what once was

By David Claude Bailey

In 1977 while I was working at the Winston-Salem Journal as a cub reporter, Ola Maie Foushee sent a signed, self-published book to my dad: Avalon, a Pictorial and Sentimental Journey. The book joyfully heralded the happy, idyllic days of the now-abandoned mill town 2 miles from Mayodan. And there, on page 14 of the introduction, was my father: “Claude Bailey, a little boy next door, was my constant companion. We . . . made mud pies from dirt we mixed with water.” But sometimes there were no hand pumps or mud puddles to get water from, and my dad, Claude Colonelue Bailey, being a resourceful lad, had an idea. Ola Maie recalls, “When I needed water in a hurry, I considered him my most convenient source.” But not without consequences. “My father looked out the window just as Claude performed his favor,” she says, “And I was called home and given a good switching.” Ola Maie made no mention of my dad’s punishment, although, remembering my grandfather, Walter Fletcher Bailey, a no-nonsense, stern overseer at the cotton mill and a pillar in the Moravian Church, I suspect my father ate standing up for a few days.

The picture Ola Maie painted of Avalon, as she emphasizes in the title, is sentimental — to a fault. “Avalon was truly a fairyland,” she writes. “Spread over an apron-like bluff on 100.33 acres of rising land, it overlooked the winding Mayo River, the Norfolk and Western railroad, and the new cotton mill — its raison d’être.”

Ola Maie fondly remembers free-range children and chickens roaming up and down the streets among the 62 newly built houses, many of which had picket fences with roses and morning glories climbing them. She shares her memories of Easter egg hunts at the company-built Moravian Church, Sunday afternoons with the Avalon baseball team at play, summer picnics where watermelons cooled under the tables as cakes, pies and country ham biscuits spread out on tablecloths, boys swinging from grapevines into the river while couples courted along its banks. She tells of families cooking meals over the hearth in their company mill houses (provided at a rent significantly lower than in Mayodan or Madison), of out-of-towners coming to visit in the 11-room company hotel, of bowling and roller skating upstairs at the country store, and of town folk square dancing as old-time music echoed off the four-story-high cotton mill. At its peak, 400–500 people lived in the village.

I remember my family and relatives poring over Ola Maie’s book, finding a photo of dad looking like a young 5-year-old ruffian; another of my granddad grimly posing as a foreman on the factory floor with the workers he oversaw; and a picture of the Bailey house, where my dad was born, sitting proudly next to the hotel. Although my father’s fame as Avalon’s most infamous mud-pie maker was short-lived, it inevitably came up at Bailey family reunions.

Avalon Mills was incorporated in 1899 by tobacco tycoons R.J. Reynolds and B.N. Duke. Leading the charge was a relatively young upstart, Colonel Francis Fries, who, by the age of 45, had already helped establish the Roanoke & Southern Railway, of which he was the first president, as well as Mayo Mill in Mayodan. When Avalon Mills went into operation in 1900, it was not only a “modern,” state-of-the-art operation, but the largest textile mill in the state. By 1910, the mill employed 250 workers, a quarter of them under the age of 16 and some even younger than 12. To her credit, Ola Maie does not gloss over the issue of child labor in the mill, along with low wages, but I’ll get to that later.

Spoiler alert. On June 15, 1911, 11 years after the mill opened, John Richardson was overseeing some spinning frames on the mill’s fourth floor. It’s worth pointing out that all the mill’s machinery was driven by leather belts that ran all the way down, floor-to-floor, to the mill’s river-driven turbine, so all the floors of the mill were open to one another. It was around 6 p.m., quitting time, when John smelled, and then saw, smoke. A bucket of water he threw on the fire proved to be too little, too late. Layers of machine oil, lint and dust covered almost every surface, and with the wind blowing through open windows, flames soon engulfed the fourth floor. In minutes, the flames spread to lower floors via the leather belt system. Although two teenage brothers ran down the stairs, screaming “FIRE” at the top of their lungs, workers heading for supper and home decided it was a prank. By dusk, all that remained of the mill was a ghostly shell, with a hulking six-story tower looming over the ruins. Miraculously, no one died, although several of the mill’s overseers had to be rescued via fire ladder. A state-of-the-art sprinkling system never activated because a bearing in the 1,000-gallon-a-minute pump failed.

Initially, the mill’s owners talked about rebuilding, but, in the end, families lost both their jobs and their homes. The houses they had once rented were rolled atop logs by horses and mules to Mayodan, where some still stand, including the house my dad was born in. Even the church was disassembled and sold off piece by piece.

“Like bands of gypsies or displaced persons, Avalon families trudged along the road with their possessions,” Ola Maie laments. “None of us wanted to go. We were like one big family.” Many of the workers took jobs at other mills operated by Fries or found work in the plethora of mills that had sprung up along the Piedmont’s rivers. Inexplicably, my grandfather decided to go back to farming tobacco. Why, I’ve always wondered, did Walter Fletcher Bailey, in the prime of life at age 35 with five children, choose to go back to the unpredictable and back-breaking occupation of dirt farming? A foreman in the mill before it burned down and a chairman of the board of the Moravian Church, surely he would have been offered a job. My aunts and uncles had no clue.

I think maybe I do.

As someone who covered business working for O.Henry’s sister pub, Business North Carolina, I have, by choice and occupation, become something of a student of what mill life was like in the South. An excellent website, Avalon: Documenting the Rise and Fall of a Cotton Mill Village, provided me with a keener insight into the town and mill. But my eyes were really opened when I read Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World, UNC Press’ landmark compilation of oral histories gathered from mill workers all across the state. BNC’s publisher at the time, David Kinney, whose mom worked in a mill, required every new hire to read the book. While many remembered a community that was, in fact, like a family, it was definitely a dysfunctional family, with an often overbearing and often heartless “father.” While former workers, like Ola Maie, waxed nostalgic about church and baseball teams and close-knit neighborhoods and picnics, mill workers interviewed for Like a Family were quick to paint a picture of life in the mill as harsh, dangerous and monotonous.

The hours at Avalon were from 6 a.m. in the morning until 6 at night, five days a week, plus nine more hours on Saturday. Lint and dust filled the air, and the atmosphere inside the mill was often almost unbearably hot and humid. The pace of work was unrelenting and overtime was common. Pay at Avalon reflected what was generally paid statewide in 1911. It ranged from $1 a day to $2.50 a day for the highest paid workers ($37–93 in today’s money). Workers who showed up minutes late could be docked from a quarter day’s work up to a full day. Children, who made up a quarter of the workforce at Avalon, were often tasked, because of their size, to crawl atop the machines or into their inner working to fix snags and snafus. They were paid $.20–.30 cents a day ($7.31–11.27). Unskilled women were paid the second-lowest wages, $.30–.75 ($11.27–28.18). So wages ranged from about $44 for a six-day week to $558 a week for the highest paid employees.

Admittedly, housing was provided at a very reasonable rate, but if you lost your job, you lost your home, encouraging workers to go with the flow. Injuries, like losing a finger, hand or arm, often meant both unemployment and homelessness. The houses, though newly built, were 600 square feet, with some accommodating four families. Plumbing was outdoors, of course, and the houses didn’t have electricity, though the mill did. Cooking happened over hearths, with no cook stoves.

Of course, life on a farm in that era was, arguably, even more grueling — harsh, dangerous and unpredictable. Crops failed and prices went unpredictably up and down. The hours were just as long as, if not longer than, in the mill, and you worked outdoors in the blazing summer sun or freezing winter weather, unlike mill work. And anyone who’s ever worked on a farm will tell you that child-labor laws don’t extend to farm families.

My father and my aunts and uncles painted a sometimes grim picture of life on the farm, but they also had warm and loving memories of rural living. I found it interesting that none of the five boys turned to mill work, with all of them distinguishing themselves by following other successful careers. My granddad was his own boss and with, eventually (God bless my grandmother), nine children, he had a captive workforce. He didn’t get rich, but made a good living and, from my memory, they sure ate well, with country ham, fried chicken and biscuits aplenty.

Over the years and little by little, I came to appreciate why — I imagine — my grandfather decided to go back to farming.

If my father had worked in the Avalon mill as a child, I’m certain he would have told me, along with the many stories he spun about the mischief he and his brothers got up to on the farm, all about mill work. And maybe the course of history, in Avalon at least, might have been altered if he had. What if, on that fateful day, he had worked on the fourth floor and had been standing by with his “most convenient source” of water?

2025 Feature Long Gone Avalon

Among the Wildflowers

AMONG THE WILDFLOWERS

Among the Wildflowers

A 1950s Sunset Hills charmer blooms anew

By Cassie Bustamante • Photographs by Betsy Blake

Making your way toward downtown Greensboro along Friendly Avenue, a burst of fiery red and vibrant purple might catch your eye as you pass through Sunset Hills. Wildflowers — poppies and Larkspur, to be exact — bloom along the fence line of a 1950s rancher. The seeds were sown just last year, although this particular house has been a colorful source of comment for years. In fact, if you drove by five years ago, its teal-and-purple exterior would have surely grabbed your attention.

Formerly, the single-family house was a duplex, says Rachel Azam, who currently shares the home with her husband, Najib, their 3-year-old daughter, Zaara, and her 18-year-old stepson, Khalil, who attends the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and will head to UNC-Chapel Hill in the fall. And let’s not forget Sophie, the family’s blue-eyed Aussie, a glutton for belly rubs. Originally from Pleasant Garden, Rachel recalls often cutting through Sunset Hills when she was a child. “I grew up watching this house change color,” she muses.

In August 2020 at the height of the pandemic, the once likely Charlotte Hornets-inspired home was sold, flipped into a fresh, gray-and-white, clean slate, and put on the market right after the New Year holiday. Almost immediately, the Azams put in an offer.

Rachel, barefoot, stands in her bright, white kitchen, wearing relaxed, barrel jeans and a cropped white T-shirt. Her chocolate-brown eyes peer out from underneath a Duke baseball cap, her thick, brown hair hitting just below her shoulders. A warm, homemade breakfast quiche, fresh from the oven, fills the home with a toasted, buttery, come-hither smell. A bowl of oranges sits on the island counter next to a vase filled with fresh flowers in oranges and pinks. “We have a dance party in here every morning per Zaara’s request,” says Rachel.

As if on cue, Zaara twirls into the room, dark curls bouncing, and shouts, “Play ‘Cruel Summer!’” Rachel notes that most mornings it’s Broadway tunes, Wicked or Taylor Swift.

“T. Swift don’t miss,” quips Najib with a glint in his own brown eyes. He’s on his way to the Research Triangle, where he works in risk control for UBS, an investment banking company, but not before giving his wife and daughter each a kiss. “Bye, Zaari!” he says as Zaara demands a second hug from Daddy.

While the couple originally met as high schoolers training to be counselors at North Carolina for Community and Justice’s Anytown camp, they didn’t really get to know each other until much later. Najib, who grew up in nearby Jamestown, attended undergrad at UNC-Charlotte and went on to earn his law degree from UNC. Rachel graduated from UNCG with a B.S. in nursing. Mutual friends brought them together eventually. Nick, Najib’s best friend from college, is the older brother of Rachel’s own childhood best friend, Sarah. But Rachel remembered Najib, who is a couple years older than her, from those teen years at camp because his name was unusual. And he’s told her, she says, “I definitely remember you, wink wink.”

In the fall of 2018, the couple first exchanged vows right here in Greensboro. “We are a multicultural household,” says Rachel. Najib is Arabic and his family hails from Bangladesh, “so we had our big Bengali ceremony and reception in October 2018.” Less than a year later, in June 2019, the couple, with photographer Ellie McKinney and their loved ones, hopped the Atlantic Ocean and held an Irish ring ceremony, honoring Rachel’s heritage, in the seaside town of Galway, Ireland.

While still in their honeymoon phase in November 2019, Rachel took a new position working in pediatric endocrinology, specifically in diabetes, within the Duke University healthcare system. The work was particularly meaningful to her. At age 11 while studying dance at the UNC School of the Arts, she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Although she returned home after the diagnosis, dancing has always held a special place in her heart. Granted, the job meant a big commute from their Charlotte condo, but Rachel loved the work.

Soon after starting her new position, the medical world was turned on its head when the COVID pandemic descended upon America in March 2020. Rachel began working a hybrid model, often doing telehealth appointments with patients and caregivers. Thankfully, she says, the technology has come a long way from when she was a child living with diabetes. Now, remote monitoring is available. “My senior year of high school was when I got my first insulin pump. It was life changing.”

Suddenly, in 2020, both Rachel and Najib — like most of the world — found themselves at home much more often and in need of an outlet, and, she quips, “You can only do so many at–home workouts.” Rachel, who’d arranged her own wedding flowers both stateside and in Ireland, found joy in floral design. Still in Charlotte, she’d visit her local farmstand and would come home with “buckets of blooms.” A seed was planted and, before she knew it, grew into Flower Barre, a bespoke floral design company named with a nod to what she calls her first love, dance.

To get a change of scenery, the Azams ended up taking an extended stay at Najib’s parents’ Jamestown home, often wandering through Greensboro neighborhoods as a diversion. Though they’d seen themselves as never returning to the area they grew up in, the more they walked, the more they thought, “We could live in this area.”

And when the adorable 1,600-square-foot house situated on the corner of East Greenway and Friendly popped up on Redfin, they wasted no time. That offer they submitted was readily accepted.

As it turns out, the timing was impeccable. Just a week after going under contract, the couple found out they were expecting. Naturally, the first room they tackled was Zaara’s nursery, which has since transitioned into her “big-girl” room. The walls are a soft, ballet-slipper pink, the windows are flanked by tonal pink, floor-length drapes, and the bedding features blooms in rosy pinks and golden yellows with stems of sage green, lady bugs scattered here and there. On her corner bookcase, overflowing with board books, a vase holds a bouquet of dried wildflowers, special to Rachel because they’re from the arrangements she made for Zaara’s first birthday, where the theme was “Wild One.”

While the home was a move-in ready, blank canvas, the landscaping was a clean slate — there wasn’t any. The couple poured their time and energy into their front yard. Rachel’s “jack-of-all-trades” dad, who raises beef cattle on a Pleasant Garden family farm, shared his skills and knowledge. With Najib, he carved out a pea-gravel pathway and installed French drainage.

The couple began planting beds, amping up the home’s curb appeal. Next came the backyard. “It was a bamboo forest,” Rachel quips. She has plans to keep adding here and there, year after year, starting with hydrangeas and echinacea this year.

Inside, they’ve put their personal stamp on their home bit by bit with splashes of color, mostly blue-greens. Rachel says those shades remind her of the ocean; they have a calming effect.

For the kitchen bar area, Rachel selected a blue-and-gold wallpaper featuring whimsical stems of wildflowers. She found sturdy wooden shelves on Etsy. Najib installed both the wallpaper and the shelves. But the nook’s pièce de résistance is framed artwork, swirls of red with splashes of green and purple. “That’s one of Zaara’s first little finger paintings,” says Rachel proudly.

Rachel’s most recent touch to the home interior is a bold and vibrant floral wallpaper hung by the back door. The colors mimic that of Zaara’s bedding, though more saturated and with hints of Rachel’s second-favorite color, magenta. She painted the adjacent door in a dark teal shade, though, she notes, “It’s got some scratchies because of the dog — you know!”

A drop zone already existed near the back door with hooks and cubbies for shoes, but next to it was a blank wall — wasted space in a small home. Rachel reached out to her pal, Emma Millard, who, she’d noticed, was offering design work in addition to working in real estate. The two had met at the first big wedding Rachel had done as a florist, where Emma’s best friend was the bride. Emma and Rachel, both pregnant, bonded quickly and their daughters were born just a month apart.

That once blank wall is now a functional built-in. Emma maximized the limited space, designing cabinetry custom-made by Greg Van Wyk, owner of Foxbury Woodworks in Oak Ridge. Greg installed and painted it — blue-green, naturally.

From here, Zaara can be heard singing along to Moana 2. She dances in front of the TV screen, lost in her own Hawaiian reverie for the moment, but happily takes a beat to show off her modern dollhouse in the corner of the living room, where goldenrod pillows add a warm touch.

Sophie expectantly sits nearby, whimpering for attention, her little bum wiggling in anticipation. Rachel translates: “Hi, I am here, in case you forgot about me. And this is my toy basket.”

In the entry, a painting of a woman wearing a blue-and-white striped dress holding a little girl’s hand as they walk through a field of poppies and larkspurs hangs in a gilded frame. The artist’s initials? “N.A.”

“This is Zaara and I,” says Rachel wistfully. “Najib painted this for me for my birthday.” The family had visited Dogwood Farms, a you-pick flower farm in Belews Creek, and, unbeknownst to her, Najib had snapped a photo to use as his inspiration. Rachel is in awe of how he can use both sides of his brain, though she herself toes the line between science and artistry on a regular basis, too.

As a high schooler, it turns out, Najib took lessons from local artist Anne Kiefaber. During the pandemic, she opened her home studio to budding artists as long as they wore masks. Like Rachel, Najib had needed his own outlet. “So he and Khalil started going together to art class once a week,” says Rachel. Now, almost five years later, he’s still going and currently working on a piece for friends of theirs.

A moss-covered fairy house decorated with purples and oranges sits on a table below the painting. Najib’s friend, Nick, gave Zaara the kit for Christmas. “It’s just too good to put outside,” quips Rachel, “so it’s just part of the home decor!”

“We love fairies, don’t we?” she asks her daughter.

“There are three little girls down the street who had a couple of fairy houses outside in the front yard,” she says. “We couldn’t walk past the house without stopping to play with the fairies.” The little girls took notice and began writing letters to Zaara from the perspective of River Lily, the fairy who lives there. This year, the girls have expanded into an entire fairy village that has little Zaara enchanted.

Back in their own yard, they’re working their own magic. Soon, the poppies and Larkspur along the fence — her cutting garden — will be replaced by new flowers. Last year, she planted heirloom zinnia seeds “and they actually worked!” She was able to supplement purchased stems with blooms from her garden.

Of course, there are a few blooms that hold a special place in Rachel’s heart. She loves vibrant blossoms that lend to her style, which she calls “a little wild and a little funky,” naming Dahlias — “most of them look like an amazing firework — and lisianthus. “I love the poppy,” she says. “They’re quite magical in that they come up and they are super, super tight in their pod and then they just emerge and they have these beautiful flow-y petals and really dynamic shape.”

These days, Rachel buys most of her blooms through a Winston-Salem wholesale company that supports North and South Carolina farmers. Where she expected to face competition, she has been pleasantly surprised. “We all pitch in and are helping each other,” she says. She even rents space occasionally from fellow florist Joneswell Flowers, which happens to be conveniently close to Zaara’s preschool.

And Zaara, whose name means “blossoming flower” in Arabic, loves working at the shop by her mom’s side, plucking green leaves from stems or sweeping up petals. Rachel daydreams of a future where they can work side-by-side as Flower Barre florists. “It may sound silly, but her little creative brain and the way her mind works, it would just be amazing to be able to create with nature as art with her.” The seeds are planted. And now, she waits, she waters and she watches as her own blossoming flower unfurls.

2025 Among the Wildflowers Feature

Growing Season

GROWING SEASON

Growing Season

Under the Bertrand family, a 42-year-old flower farm continues to flourish

By Dawn DeCwikiel Kane

Photographs by Becky VanderVeen

The Bertrands’ home can be busy, and sometimes a bit cramped and messy, much like that of any other young family.

“This is our life currently,” Carrie Bertrand says, as she walks through the living space she shares with husband Patrick and their children Ayla, 12; Silas, 10, and Ellie, 6.

The family of five, plus three cats and a dog, live in a camper on Maple Grove Flower Farm, which they own and operate. (And let’s not forget the family’s pet frog, who doesn’t enter the camper, but resides in a terrarium in a building next door.)

For now, home is a 2008, 38-foot Cedar Creek Silverback, a heated and cooled fifth-wheel camper. It’s large enough for Ayla and Silas to have separate, small bedrooms, while Ellie’s bed is in another area of the camper. There’s also a primary bedroom.

They hope to soon replace it with a newer, larger living space. But for now, their camper has become not only a home, but a homeschool and home base for their flower farm on Wild Turkey Road in rural Whitsett, 15 minutes east of downtown Greensboro.

Their flowers bloom in 13 commercial-scale greenhouses covering 32,000 square feet of indoor, irrigated growing space. Nearby, on their 7.5 acres of land is a 2,500-square-foot barn built in 1913.

The Bertrands grow ornamental plants in pots, flats and hanging baskets that they sell primarily to garden centers. They grow only chrysanthemums outdoors.

They don’t sell cut flowers, or plants for eating.

No sign announces the spot just yet.

By mid-morning on this March day, Patrick and Carrie have already been out on the farm for a few hours.

“So many people have no idea about this side of agriculture,” Patrick says from a building adjacent to the camper, wiping the sweat from his face while Carrie eats a yogurt-and-granola snack and the kids build a fort.

Patrick, now 47, grew up in Greensboro, the youngest of two sons of radiologist Margaret L. Bertrand and anesthesiologist Scott A. Bertrand. He graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a B.A. in economics. Carrie, 42, grew up in a small town outside Columbus, Ohio. She studied elementary education at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia.

The couple met at the Church on 68 and married there more than 13 years ago.

Carrie taught school. They owned a landscaping business. But Patrick gradually realized that the work would grow increasingly strenuous.

The couple looked for something that would involve the whole family.

“Patrick was gone from sun-up to sundown most days, and we wanted a change from that routine,” Carrie recalls.

That routine indeed has changed. The family lives together — and works together.

The children help. Ayla maintains plants with three high school girls who work part-time. Silas enjoys fixing small machinery with his dad. Ellie is in the kindergarten-grade level and “excited about it all,” her mother says.

After dinner, the Bertrands enjoy typical family fun. Patrick might take Ellie to dance class; twice a week, Carrie drives them to American Ninja Warriors in Thomasville to prepare for competitions or takes Ayla to rock-climbing. Wednesday nights are for church. Tuesday nights are typically free, so they might cuddle in the camper to watch a movie.

Life on Maple Grove Flower Farm begins at 5:30 a.m. Carrie makes breakfast in the camper and teaches their children for three hours or more. She also manages the farm with Patrick, doing greenhouse work and accounting.

Although the camper has a bathroom, the family primarily uses one of two bathrooms in the adjacent building that they call the “head house.” The head house doubles as a family kitchen and a break room for the small staff. And of course, it’s home to the family frog.

In a separate section of the head house, they stage carts of plants that will go into pots.

The flower farm has two growing seasons.

The Bertrands and a handful of employees plant 40-plus varieties of tiny begonias, geraniums, zinnias, salvia, sedum, and other annuals and perennials, and grow them for six to eight weeks. All in all, they plant about 200,000 plugs — tiny plants — for spring sale, Carrie says.

For fall, they plant about 25 varieties of pansies, chrysanthemums, violas, snapdragons and dianthuses — plus poinsettias for the holiday season.

They sell the plants wholesale, primarily to garden centers in the Triad and beyond, from Winston-Salem to Raleigh and into southern Virginia — much like original business owner and grower Greg Welker did before them.

Among their customers are Guilford Garden Center in Greensboro, Saviero’s Tri-County Garden Center in High Point, Southern States in Chapel Hill and Asheboro, A.B. Seed at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market in Colfax, and Logan’s Garden Shop in Raleigh.

“We would love to also be selling directly to some of the landscapers,” Carrie says.

“But we felt there was so much to learn just on what he [Welker] had built already,” she adds. “He had a very successful business and had amazing relationships with the garden centers in the area. We certainly want to do what he has been doing with excellence before trying to add a bunch of new stuff.”

By one recent survey for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, North Carolina ranks 10th among the 50 states in floriculture, both in terms of dollar sales and number of operations.

Their floriculture business has nearly tripled in volume from the landscape business they had previously owned for almost 18 years. “Triple sales, probably triple expenses,” Patrick says.

They feared they would lose a significant customer when New Garden Landscaping & Nursery closed its retail side in December after more than 50 years and focused on its commercial and residential landscaping. But in March, Guilford Garden Center put down roots in a second location, the Lawndale Drive shop where New Garden’s retail and garden center space had once thrived.

Stephanie Jones, who owns Guilford Garden Center with her husband, Elliott, understands what it means to run a small family business. “We have to look after each other,” she says.

Maple Grove Flower Farms’ humble beginnings took root with Greg Welker.

A native of Washington state, Welker started the flower farm in 1983, when he had finished a year-long horticulture program at a botanical garden on Kauai in Hawaii, followed by a year-long program at Ball Seed in Chicago.

His grandfather, Dan Welker, had purchased the land in 1956 and eventually passed it on to Welker’s father, Raymond Welker. Welker used that land to grow the flower farm, naming it for maple trees that stand across the road.

“It was hard work,” Welker says. “But at the end of the day, I got to walk to the greenhouses and see all the beautiful flowers, and I knew that everything I sent was going to make people smile.”

A chance encounter with Patrick blossomed into a sale.

When Welker opened the back of his 26-foot enclosed box truck one fateful day in fall 2022, Patrick’s eyes widened at the sight of vibrantly colorful ornamental flowers in trays of pots on shelved carts.

Patrick admired row after row of planted fall flowers — giant pansies in purples, yellows, whites and burgundy, cabbage and kale in hues of green, white, purple and pink.

“He seemed to have a library of plant material in the back of his truck, beyond what was dropped at our stop,” recalls Patrick, who had closed his landscaping business and was working for another.

After that tailgate meeting, the entire Bertrand family visited Maple Grove Flower Farm.

Patrick and Carrie remember Ayla, from a young age, picking early blooms from azalea bushes at their former home to make floating bouquets or other artwork.

“We didn’t need to sell her on the idea of moving to a flower farm,” Patrick says.

Believing that they would buy the farm, he went to work for Welker in January 2023 as an apprentice.

In May 2023, they sold their cul-de-sac home on Oak Hollow Lake in High Point.

“We would love to say that it was smooth sailing, getting from one place to another,” Carrie says. “But it was a process that tested our patience and our faith.”

They finally got a loan from the Small Business Administration to buy the flower farm, sealing the deal in July 2023.

Welker still worked there two days a week that first fall “to get us into the groove,” Carrie recalls.

He is now 63, retired and living in Chapel Hill.

“He built everything on this property from the ground up, so he knows how to fix everything,” she says. “And Patrick has had to learn, because you can’t call somebody every time you need something fixed when you have an operation like this going on.”

At first, Carrie knew few of the flowers’ names. She could identify a petunia, but didn’t know a pansy from a viola, especially with the variety of flowers that they planted and sold for spring.

She learned fast.

For four to six weeks in the winter cold and the summer heat, they get breaks from farm work, but order plugs for the following season through Ball Seed, from farms in West Virginia, Illinois and New Jersey. Winter brings maintenance work.

That gives them time for family trips.

Cold affects the wallet when propane field heaters need to run.

This past winter, several irrigation lines burst in empty, unheated greenhouses and had to be repaired.

In late January, they began planting for their second spring season.

Within a few days, they filled 6,100 pots with potting soil to have ready for the first shipment of plugs that arrived the following week.

They want flowers to look picture perfect when they sell. They ensure that they are tagged with plant names, and are clean and free of pests. They pinch off each head so that they become fuller — just as customers prepare to buy them.

Mid-March brought the first sales of their second spring season. Patrick delivered flowers in a truck four to five days each week.

Patrick and Carrie talk of the future.

Last December, they converted one of the greenhouses into a winter wonderland.

They hosted events there that featured Santa and Mrs. Claus, a life-size Candyland game, cookie decorating, and hot cocoa.

Carrie hopes to eventually plant sections of flowers where parents can bring their children and both groups can learn.

They envision welcoming school groups for field trips.

They would like to open a small market on the land where they sell leftover items they grow, plus goods and produce from local artisans.

“We want to add some community involvement,” Patrick says.

They hope that at least one of their children someday will run Maple Grove Flower Farm. “Either our daughters or son will have the opportunity if they would like,” Patrick says. “I have a feeling at least one of them will want to continue building the farm, from the flowers to the community outreach.”

Want to schedule a visit to Maple Grove Flower Farm? Email maplegroveflowers@gmail.com, or call or text 336-209-3607.
To learn more, go online to maplegroveflowerfarm.com or to the Facebook page for Maple Grove Flower Farm.

2025 Feature Growing Season

Category: Feature

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GROWING SEASON

Growing Season

Under the Bertrand family, a 42-year-old flower farm continues to flourish