Bucolic Butterbee Farm Helps Pikesville Bloom

Before finding her life’s calling,Laura Beth Resnick spent a lot of time indoors, mostly in academic settings.

“I was miserable being inside all the time,” says Resnick, who studiedflute at the New England Conservatory of Music and East Asian religion atBarnard College. “I didn’t know it at the time but I needed to be outsidefarming.”

Today, Resnick and her husband, Jascha Owens, are the foundersand owners of Pikesville’s Butterbee Farm, which grows and sells flowers from aroundthe Chesapeake Bay region. Their farming methods are sustainability-oriented,focusing on using permanent raised beds to minimize soil disturbance andcultivate rich, healthy soil.

Butterbee, which opened in2014, has almost seven acres under cultivation and includes a heated greenhouseand another greenhouse under construction. Butterbee cuts hundreds of thousandsof diverse stems every season, ranging from well-known annuals like dahlias andzinnias to perennial foliage plants like winterberry and ninebark. Aside fromResnick and Owens, the farm employs one full-time farmer, two part-timers andtwo interns.

Laura Beth Resnick opened Butterbee Farm in 2014 with her husband, Jascha Owens. (Photo courtesy of Butterbee Farm)

Butterbee sells stems wholesaleto florists and designers in the Baltimore-Washington corridor, as well asproviding bulk flowers to do-it-yourself wedding clientele. The farm also offersa small flower community-supported agriculture program through which customerscan pick up bouquets every two weeks during the summer.

Located at 500 Tristam Lane,Butterbee is not open to the general public and does not have regular visitinghours, but the farm welcomes people for scheduled events such as its popularfarm tours.

“The farm tours are a fundate opportunity,” says Resnick. “The farm is so beautiful with everythingblooming, and people get really excited to craft their own bouquets using ourstems.”

Resnick, who grew up outsideof Annapolis, first discovered her passion for farming the summer before hersenior year of college.

“I started farming because Ibelieve in the work,” she says. “It makes me feel strong, and as a feminist Ilike breaking down barriers. I like doing work that makes me feel like I can doanything.”

After college, Resnick workedon a farm in Pennsylvania. She subsequently decided to start crafting abusiness plan for running herown farm.

While working at a local café, shemet Ellen Frost, owner of Local Color Flowers, a Baltimore-based floraldesigner known for supporting local growers. The two discussed the floralarrangements for the wedding of Resnick’s sister, but their conversation soon veeredtoward farming. Frost recommended that Resnick grow flowers, so she partneredwith a community farm in a Baltimore neighborhood.

But Resnick decided shedidn’t enjoy growing flowers in the city. “It was so close to the street, and Ihad people constantly trampling my plants or stopping to talk with me when Iwas trying to work,” she says.

Resnick started looking forland to grow flowers, but found prospective properties were either tooexpensive or too far away.

One day, she met up with apair of old friends, Bob and Barbara Roswell, and told them about herdifficulties in finding an appropriate place to grow flowers. “Wait a minute,” Bob Roswell said toher. “What if you farmed part of our property here in Pikesville?”

Resnick was intrigued; she hadfond teenage memories of Alto Dale Farm, the 80-plus-acre farm owned by the Roswellfamily. The property, which was once owned by the founder of Goucher College,was being leased to conventional grain farmers, but the Roswells had longsupported a more sustainable approach to land stewardship and were happy togive Resnick an opportunity to grow on a portion of the land.

“They’ve been tremendouslysupportive,” Resnick says. “Barbara comes out to weed in her spare time. Bobhelps out building greenhouses. The older caretaker, Mr. Bill, actually wentout and just bought us a piece of equipment one day after watching uslaboriously creating raised beds with a shovel.”

Laura Beth Resnick: “I started farming because I believe in the work.” (Photo courtesy of Butterbee Farm)

Owens says his primary objectivefor the farm is the restoration of ecosystems and landscapes, as well asbuilding human-animal relationships.

“Our fields are full of life— butterflies, hummingbirds, pollinators of every stripe as well as snakes,frogs and toads,” he says. “You really feel the difference when you walkthrough the cornfields surrounding Butterbee — they are eerily silent. In ourfields, you hear a cacophony of life.”

Frost praises Butterbee andits owners for what the farm has achieved during the past five years.

“In just a few short years, [Resnick] hasestablished herself as one of the leading growers in the Mid-Atlantic region,”Frost says. “She is helping to reshape the local flower industry in Maryland bymaking locally grown flowers available throughout the winter with her newheated greenhouses. As a florist who sources all ofour flowers locally, working with a farmer as professional as Laura Beth is apleasure and a privilege.”

For information, visit butterbeefarm.com.

Joshua Rosenstein is a Baltimore-based freelancewriter.