THE WONDERFUL GROUP AT GREEN HOPE FARM

"Thanks for the wonderful Essences - they have been such a strong presence, I felt as if I had company - very powerful and benevolent company - in the house with me when they arrived."  A.K., Boiceville, NY

I live in the company of wonderful Angels, Elementals, master teachers, a marvelous family and a great group of co-workers. I awake each day, filled with awe and gratitude that I get to live in this incredible spot with such companions.  Our farm is set on a beautiful hilltop.  This gives the place a feeling of expansiveness.  However, it is also encircled by greater hills, giving the place a quality of being protected. So too, life here has been an experience of bold adventure and nurturing love and guidance. 

The Angels have been here always. To begin with, I knew only a few treasured friends. I worked along side this inspiring group in the gardens. These Angels gave me the master plan for the farm. They gave me the designs for every garden each growing season. During those early years, I also received precious help from Angels of healing. When the garden Angels encouraged me to make Flower Essences, so many more Angels came to help in this wonderful adventure. Now, Angels guide us inside the office as well as out in the gardens. When you ask for suggestions for you and your animals, we talk to your Angels as well as ours, so we meet a lot of new Angel friends in any given week. And we love your Angels! Meanwhile, the Green Hope Angels protect our Essences.  They overlight our shipping process. They make each Essence with us, and then explain their nuances. They hold the divine plan for everything here. They restore us and lift us up when we get confused or weary. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Angels are the best co-workers a person could have.

Other compadres around here include the Elementals. They take the Angels’ plans and make them realities. They are the ones that show me how to lay out the gardens when the Angels’ geometries are so complicated I cannot figure out how to measure out the configurations. If I have any other kind of logistical problems, or issues about sourcing something, or seemingly impossible snafus afoot, the Elementals unravel, solve, and deliver often in wildly imaginative ways. Because they manifest all form, Elementals are the logical friends to ask when we need something. However, their skills at manifestation never cease to awe and delight. There are so many gifts brought to us by the Elementals. One gift I particularly treasure is their humor. Their efforts to lighten us up do not end with the vibrations of the Essences they hold in manifestation. They encourage, charm, play jokes, and set up humorous situations that keep us all laughing.

The people here are a wonderful spirited bunch as well.        

Even as a child, Deb set the bar high for sartorial splendor

Debbie Cardew joined us in the fall of 2001. She brought a warm tray of lemon squares to our first staff lunch together in the Arbor Garden. Frankly, we have hardly let her out of our sight since. Debbie grew up in London and spent her early adult life in Cornwall, England. Destiny brought her to the village of Cornish, NH just down the road from here. This is where she makes her famous Cornish pasties and other delicacies for the town farmer's market and where she lives with her two children, Sophie and Tom. Not only is Deb the best cook I ever met, but she also has a very incisive mind and quick wit, much needed in an office where it sometimes appears the rest of us have permanently misplaced our left brains. With this guide, I particularly want to thank Deb for having run the office during my extended time out when I broke my arm in the summer of 2008. When I finally returned to the office, Deb had sorted out so many pre-existing problems and business bottlenecks that I told her, “I should take to my bed more often.”

A contemplative moment for Sophie in her childhood home in Cornwall, England

Sophie Cardew came aboard in the spring of 2006. One of the most cheerful people I have ever met, Sophie does all the restocking, most of the shipping, and helps me in the gardens. Mulch could now be HER middle name as well as mine.  Fifty may be the new thirty, but we still need her twenty something verve and the window she gives us into the modern world. Our lunchtime walks are now punctuated by dozens of text messages and we shamelessly pump her for information about her busy social life. That she is patient with all of us luddites is a testament to her wonderfully sunny, nonjudgmental nature.

Teddy visits the pigeons in Venice

Teddy on her family’s farm, Wolfe’s Neck, in Freeport, Maine

Teddy Grobe retired from working here many years ago but she bops in enough so that we don’t feel entirely bereft of her company. Teddy’s zest, her glamour, and her joie de vivre give us a stunning model for life in the ninth decade. Thank you Teddy. I will love you always.

Polly Lazaron an energy healer and visionary artist from Virginia, has been a beloved Green Hope Farm friend for over a decade. We have long enjoyed her healing bath salts and mists and admired her beautiful art and gorgeous handwriting. When we redesigned the labels in the fall of 2008, we asked Polly if she would be willing to help Lynn with the enormous task of writing all new labels for our collections. With her Sophia cat keeping a watchful eye on her, Polly has pitched in to help us, writing thousands and thousands of beautiful labels for us.

Jess, our own much loved Easter bunny

Jessica Miller, a lovely young woman, joined us in the fall of 2008.  She is the one responsible for so many improvements in our systems that it makes me weep with gratitude. She even survived eight zillion meetings with me as we designed new logos and labels for all the Flower Essence collections. As this edition goes to press, she is deep into a total reinvention of our web site.  Jessica is also here shipping, emailing, and answering the phones two days a week which means we increasingly turn to her with our technology problems, sparing Ben Sheehan at least half of our technology nightmare phone calls.

Ben having an intuitve moment about how much the Flowers will expect from him in the years to come

Ben Sheehan, a high school history teacher at Kimball Union Academy, is also a big fish here or rather, he is in charge of the big fish in our koi pond. He solves our endless technology problems, manages the web site, works construction projects with Jim, and drags us kicking and screaming into the 21st century with patience and grace. The Green Hope Farm staff has come a long way with our computer skills thanks to Ben, but he deserves sainthood for how many times he has had to tell us the same things. 

Even then, a fan of dresses

Elizabeth Sheehan works here in between other jobs and I am grateful for her generosity with her time. She is one of our bottling wizards and is also a key player in the gardens. In 2008 she was a whirling dervish in the Red Shiso as well as on the pilgrim trail to Santiago de Compostela. I am particularly grateful for her contribution of two amazing Flower Essence collections, the Camino Collection from her pilgrimage in Spain and the Desert Collection which she added to during a visit to the Mojave Desert and Death Valley in the spring of 2008. I can’t wait to see where the Angels send her to next. It is always good news for Green Hope Farm Flower Essences when they get her to pack her bags for an adventure.

Emily, ever a fan of farm animals, visits with a beloved chicken friend

Emily Sheehan is in college now, but I am eternally grateful for her willingness to work here during her vacations. During the summer of 2008, when my broken arm made bottling impossible for me, Emily became the chief bottler for the whole season. She also became my left and right arms in the garden. Our times in the Flowers were my favorite moments of that whole bone mending summer.  I would flop in a comfortable chair, Emily would weed nearby, and we both grew closer as we chatted away. I can’t wait for next summer when we can plant and weed side by side.

Jim as a sixth grader contemplates his future as a sixth grade teacher

Jim Sheehan, my husband, teaches sixth grade during the school year and does farm construction during the summers. Our farmhouse, barn, Red Shiso building, potting and tool shed, wood shed and Flower Essence building are here because of Jim, who has not taken off his nail belt since 1986. Jim is also the CFO, which means he spends a lot of nights doing paperwork. If I am the person in our duo that leaps off cliffs when the spirit moves me, Jim is the person that ties on the parachute and then runs to the bottom to dust me off with kindness and nary a single, “I told you so.” God Bless Jim.

Usually an outside the box thinker, here Will has an inside the box moment

William Sheehan can always be counted on to fill in with restocking the office or shipping orders when we get into a pinch. He now fills the role vacated by an adult Ben as Jim’s official right hand carpentry assistant. Nowadays, when talk turns to knocking out a few walls or building a new storage facility, I know it will be Will at Jim’s side, hammering for the Flowers.

The self described naughtiest child on Bermuda, Lynn strikes an angelic pose for the portrait artist

Lynn Tidman has worked here since day one and remains our lady of the labels. She was here when we bottled at our kitchen sink, when we shipped from the playroom, when we stored Essences in the pantry, and when we did the invoicing in the living room. Her wonderful sense of humor keeps us laughing at ourselves. Lynn has a great affinity for animals and frankly, the animals love her so much that we think she was a very attractive dog in her last life.  Our farm goldens greet her each week with moans, licks, and smiles that last longer than love scenes in most movies. If you ever get her on the phone, ask her anything you've ever wondered about your animals. She will tell you she knows nothing and then she will hit the nail precisely on the head. You could ask her to tell you some funny stories about me too. She will know just the one to tell you!

Eternal Thanks to darling Baba and Mehera.

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