Janet B. Smith, the Director of Allied Health at Marshall Community and Technical College has a Master’s degree in Adult Education, but she’s still a student down at the farm. About the time she began teaching and supervising classes in health information technology, she also started a greenhouse business, Still Meadows Farm, on the sixty-five acres surrounding her home in Roane County. While preparing Huntington adults for the business world, she has managed to create her own business as well.
Originally a Parkersburg native, Janet had moved to Crosslanes with her husband from Roane County. “But it was too much traffic and noise for us, so we bought a place about thirty minutes north of Charleston with a two story, 100 year old farm house, which, of course, is in a constant state of renovation!”
So is Still Meadows Farm. Janet’s keeps adding, expanding and improving the products and property. They started with a single greenhouse and now have three. Their inventory has grown from annuals and perennials, to include vegetable plants, shrubs, trees and bedding plants.
“We wanted to have a working farm. I just didn’t know at the time how much work it was going to be!” Janet says, “ We were dumber than dirt when we started. We had both gardened and canned but we didn’t know about greenhousing. We contacted the Roane County Extension agent and he gave us a lot of help. It’s just far more work than anyone realizes.”
One of the most time consuming activities is starting seeds, “because they require multiple transplants as they grow.” Janet says she has had many, many learning experiences in the past nine years of growing the business. “You can kill just as many plants by over watering them as by under watering them. Plants are temperamental, like kids, and you have to learn their personalities so you can nurture them.” It has been a seasonal enterprise, but Janet is turning it into a year round business.
Although they still raise geraniums and other annuals Janet says “Perennials are the wave of the future.” The other trend is that “Potted plants are replacing plants in flats.”
Last fall, they built the 1800sq.ft. Still Meadow Farm gift shop which sells crafts, West Virginia foods and products, primitives, grapevine products and custom gift baskets. “We also sell locally made wood furniture. The rocking chairs are a big favorite.”
She says buyers are surprised at how competitive the Still Meadow Farm prices are, even compared to big discount stores. “We could have sold twice as many mums this year. Once people found out how much they could save buying from us, they kept coming back for more.”
Janet says her six year old supervises and she has plenty of company with the cows, horses, sheep and donkey on premises. “We also have a Great Pyrenees, a beagle, a dachshund and a few rascals of mixed ancestry, so no one can get lonesome.”
One of the reasons they added the gift shop is that Janet hopes to make Still Meadow Farm a destination site. “I want people to see it because it’s so wonderful. I never mind driving an hour and a half to work each day because it’s like heaven when I get home.”
For more information, visit stillmeadowsfarm.com.
