Flower Farmer Chat

Cath Schut

Cath Schut, Cathy Lafrenz and Fred Howell converse about starting their farms, evolving over time, marketing and more.

When Catherine (Cath) Schut left her corporate job 10 years ago, she decided to start something that would root her more deeply in her rural community. By 2023, her path had led her to start Hive and Petal, a 3-acre farm in Prairie City, Iowa, where she grows flowers and keeps bees.

To learn how others have built long-term success, she sat down for a conversation with two seasoned farmers: Cathy Lafrenz, who’s run Miss Effie’s Country Flowers and Garden Stuff for 25 years near Donahue, Iowa, and Fred Howell, who for the past 40 years has run Howell’s Greenhouse and Pumpkin Patch in Cumming, Iowa.

Cathy Lafrenz

Note: The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and style.

Cath: I’ve been looking forward to meeting you both. Can you tell me a little about your backgrounds?

Cathy: My husband, Cliff, and I started Miss Effie’s Country Flowers on our 1.67-acre property after we both lost our jobs. He was an engineer; I worked as an interior designer at a lumber yard. We decided to make the land work for us. I said, ‘I want to grow flowers,’ and he said, ‘OK, let’s do it.’ We began with a 20-by-20-foot patch and became the first you-pick flower farm in Iowa.

My husband passed in 2020, so I rely more on paid help these days. But I’m not quite ready to quit!

Fred: Before the farm crisis in the 1980s, we raised hogs, cattle and Christmas trees. Then we heard about a woman near Madrid, Iowa, who was earning good money growing dried flowers on a small plot. We gave it a try with a quarter-acre of annual statice and strawflowers – we didn’t even know what they looked like until they bloomed.

Flowers hung up to dry. Photo courtesy of Fred Howell.

At one point, we were drying 10 acres of flowers. Life was good. Then, our blooms went out of fashion. We tried strawberries and asparagus, then built our first greenhouse. Eventually, we added a gift shop and began focusing on agritourism.

Now we raise 3 acres of flowers, 18 acres of pumpkins and an 8-acre corn maze. We’ve got play areas, a bathtub train and even goat cuddling. Families come for fun, and couples come for date night. The rest of our 800 acres are leased for grazing and row crops.

Cathy: Cath, what about you? What’s your background?

Cath: We purchased our homestead 10 years ago after I left my corporate job. I quickly realized I needed a project and that’s when we started the farm. It took two years, but we’re finally in a place where I am growing flowers and can do some of the things I’ve hoped for, like having bees. We have 3 acres on the homestead, and my husband’s family land, down the road, is leased to row crop farmers.

Cath: What are your main business outlets?

Fred: Our business depends on people coming to the farm. They pick a bouquet or a pumpkin, or they come for entertainment. We see hundreds of people a day [who come] just to cuddle goats! Adding alcohol sales brought in new customers too. Everyone who visits passes several grocery stores to get here, but they come for the experience.

Cathy: We focus on you-pick flowers, on-farm “hers” markets, small events and photo shoots. The photo shoots cover my property taxes every year. We’re becoming more of a place to entertain and educate.

I also partner with another farmer, Connie King [owner of Prairie Belle Flowers in Dewitt, Iowa], on a “blossom box” – a mix of starter plants for people who want to grow their own cut flowers. The box brings in about as much as a customer who visits the farm several times a season.

A big part of my current audience is young women, often ages 16 to 22. They come in groups, pick flowers, take photos and share them online. It’s a new type of customer!

Fred: Same here! We have people coming to the farm to do TikToks while balancing pumpkins on their heads.

Cathy: Flower farming can go so many different directions – wholesale, you-pick, farmers markets, weddings, seed sales. You can’t do them all. When designing your business, think about your personality and what you want from your life. Everyone is different and you’ll need to determine what works for you.

Howell’s Greenhouse & Pumpkin Patch. Photo courtesy of Fred Howell.

Cath: How do you handle staffing?

Cathy: People often suggest hiring teenagers, but in my experience, they spend more time petting cats than picking flowers. I have a farm manager, Brooke Baker. I’m 71 and have arthritis in my neck, so I need help keeping up with orders and events. We plan seed-and-plug orders together. I also have two part-time employees and a retired engineer who volunteers when he can.

Fred: In the early days, I hired local high school kids to pick flowers after school. We’d start with the dark blue statice and finish with the white so we could still see at dusk. Now I have 15 employees, four of them full-time. One manages events, another runs the shop, another oversees the greenhouse. I also have a retired farmer who helps out.

Cath: What marketing approaches have worked best for you?

Fred: When I started, there was no internet. I once paid $60 for a tiny classified ad in Florists’ Review. Over the years, we tried postcards, TV ads and newspapers. Now we focus our energy online – a website and Facebook. We even work with a guy that uses all the tools to creep on people who are talking about dried flowers on the internet.

Cathy: I started mailing postcards in 2002, then began blogging in 2006. That grew into my weekly Substack. Since my business is small, I rely on close relationships with customers. They know what’s happening at the farm because I share openly, and that builds trust and great word-of-mouth.

Cath: Educating customers about prices and seasonal availability while keeping and building relationships has been a delicate balance. Do you see that too?

Fred: Definitely. We still get people asking for fresh asparagus in October.

Cathy: Yes, our modern inability to grasp seasons is one of the hardest things to explain to a customer. Even to florists! Many people are several generations removed from farming. Helping customers reconnect with the seasons has become part of our job as farmers.

Cath: What advice would you give beginning farmers in the PFI network?

Cathy: Don’t lose yourself to the farm. Make sure you maintain your friendships and family because some of that can disappear. It’s easy to get wrapped up in all the work that needs to be done and miss out on good times.

Fred: Don’t quit your day job until you’re established. Be ready to evolve with your customers. It’s taken me 40 years to build my business – I started with $500, a used tiller and a lawn sprinkler. I’ve tried, failed and tried again. We change something every year to keep the farm profitable. Our farm is always evolving!

Hive and Petal Farm. Photo courtesy of Cath Schut.