Day One, Week One, Month One, Year One

I have been telling myself (and a few other people) that I was going to blog about this project. I love writing, and I thought the Local Farm & Market project would make for interesting reading. So here I am, feeling a little bit silly, writing my first blog post while my kids play outside.

First, to establish a little background to the project: My family owns and operates (with the help of many fabulous employees) Southwood Landscape & Nursery Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's one of the biggest retail garden centers in Oklahoma, and we also have a full-service landscape design and installation department, and we grow a lot of our own plants at a greenhouse range about a mile from the nursery. As family businesses go, it's pretty awesome.

For the past 10 years, I have worked part-time as my dad's administrative assistant. Dad - Joe Schulte - and Mom - Ginny Schulte - started the business when I was 5, which would be 1982. Mom and Dad are brilliant and fantastic, and hopefully readers of this blog. They divorced in 2007 but remain good friends and business partners, which was quite a feat, and would not have been accomplished without a lot of integrity and effort from both parties.

Also in the mix is my handsome husband, Joe Baird, who for several years served as the assistant production manager. Basically, he helped to start and run the greenhouse facility where we grow our plants to sell at the store - mainly annuals (flowers that you plant every year, like begonias, impatiens, pansies, etc.) as well as roses, garden mums, grasses, ground covers and many more. We refer to this facility as Delaware - because it is located on South Delaware Avenue in Tulsa. Clever, huh?

And most recently, we have celebrated the return of my sister Margaret, who has honed her business skills as a CPA at the private equity firm the Carlyle Group in Washington D.C., which she followed up with an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. And lucky for us, she is now our Marketing Manager at Southwood - creating waves of genius and creativity in the marketing department formerly headed up by Dad and me.

And last but most certainly not least, there are my two daughters. Audrey is 8 and Catherine is just about to turn 6, and they keep us all on our toes and remind us daily what really matters in life. This is not their story - I love me some Mommy Blogs but this is not one of those. But of course, my role as a Mommy will always and forever influence the decisions I make in life, and this project will be no different.

So that's my crew. And together we are embarking on this new project we are calling Local Farm & Market. It will be a division of our family business, but will ultimately have a very different vibe than Southwood. I hope you will enjoy reading about it, and contribute comments as to what kind of place you would like to bring your family to visit.