Brian and Priscilla St. Louis of Sunrise View Farm are happy to be celebrating their 30 year anniversary since starting the business this July.

The farm itself dates back to the 1890s. On a flyer given out during a 2009 Rangeley Friends of the Arts Home Tour I found out that what used to be a dairy farm encompassing 500 acres of land has been owned by some of Rangeley’s founding families including Nile, Garrigues, Toothaker, Oakes, Bubier, Brackett and Pawlowski. No longer a dairy farm, Sunrise View Farm is now known mainly as a full service florist and landscaping business. Nowadays however the couple prefers to do less outside work so they can stay on the property and take proper care of both their farm and their customers.

Both Brian and Priscilla seem to have inherited their green thumbs from their folks. Although Priscilla’s family comes from a very long line of farmers first and foremost, (Goodwin Farm of Benton, ME has been around for 200 years), both her mother and grandmother were avid gardeners. Brian’s parents and uncle were skilled gardeners as well, raising tea roses among other things. In addition to that upbringing, they also took a master gardeners course. Furthermore, Priscilla used to take all kinds of workshops with the Shakers at Sabbathday Lake and so has shared her knowledge over the years by offering a wide variety of workshops herself. The couple were also founding board members of the McLoughlin Garden Foundation in South Paris.

Enjoying gardening for decades, Priscilla was the one who started the June Bug fair in the early 1970’s to help raise money for the elementary school kids at Rangeley Lakes Regional School. During those early years she would also make a little money for herself selling her cut flowers and plants at places like the Blueberry Festival where she sold her own homemade blueberry jam as well. “My first big thing was I sold everything on my table to Country Living Magazine because they were doing a shoot down on Mooselook.”

Although Priscilla had owned the property that is now known as Sunrise View Farm since 1976, it wasn’t until the two got married in 1990 that they opened the business. They officially opened on July 4th weekend of that year.

Sunrise View Farm in the fall.  

Priscilla spotted an old milk bottle with “Sunrise View Farm Rangeley” on the top and was happy to gain permission to use it as a logo.

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A student at Bates college who knew her son Jonathan drew the Sunrise View Farm property with the old logo that they still use today.

Right from the beginning, Priscilla sold the flowers and Brian did the landscaping, although they didn’t do it full time for several years. Brian was working at Saddleback as the outside manager so he could only work their new business on the weekends. Priscilla too was working full time at the school (where she worked for 43 years, only recently retiring) and so was only able to devote her time to it after school and on weekends as well.

She recalled how they used the honor system back then by leaving a little green pot outside the little shop.

The original flower shop was really little then. Not the building you see straight ahead of you when go down the driveway, but the cute little place on the left. The small cottage was built at Haines landing over a 100 years ago and served as the guide’s camp. It was later moved to the Chamomile Shop on Stevens Road and became the “spinner’s cottage” before Priscilla purchased it for around $1200 and had it moved on a flatbed to it’s current location where it holds antiques and collectibles.

What started out as a hobby became a way for Priscilla and Brian to earn money.

Brian-“It’s kind of the sink or swim method. Quit my job, rebuild the building, had seven years of Bates College all in a row at the same time.” (By that he meant the college tuition of both children Jonathan and Heather.)

I sat with them on their front porch where they took a brief break to chat with me for a little while. “I had mostly herbs when I first opened. It was pretty good. We got excited earning fifty bucks a week.” Priscilla laughed.

Brian and Priscilla St. Louis on their front porch. Stephanie Chu-O’Neil

She recalled the first job Brian got landscaping as well. “Our first garden that we landscaped was Nancy Morton’s house.” I asked how they could start from scratch with no credentials (assuming Nancy Morton was just being nice), but Brian assured me they were known for keeping a nice garden. “People would stop and say, ‘Could you do that at our house? So there was a bit of a track record there.”

As we sat on the porch for the interview, cars continued to drive in only to turn around realizing a little too late the shop was closed. Priscilla explained, “This is the first year we decided to have one day closed just because it takes a lot to do everything and with the virus we didn’t want to hire a lot of extra people.” Furthermore Priscilla mentioned that they had decided to meet the needs of the customers by physically staying at the farm so that both she and Brian could answer the many questions that go along with selling all of their many offerings. Priscilla and Brian both expressed to me their attempts to streamline. “There’s a lot of customers” exclaimed Priscilla, “…we’re trying to spend more time here.” Brian added “Focus on the farm.”

Stephanie Chu-O’Neil

 

Stephanie Chu-O’Neil


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