Interview with Selena Wilkes, August, 2021

Interview with Selena Wilkes, August, 2021

Selena Wilkes, Co-owner, Elmwood Farm

Allison Aldunate

Bridging the Antietam

August 2021

Selena Wilkes, Allison Aldunate

MP4

English

Moving Image

Selena_Wilkes_Interview_August_2021

Williamsport, Maryland

.MP4

Lore Kuehnert, Alicia Drumgoole

Transcript of Interview with Selena Wilkes Allison Aldunate: Can you tell me a little bit of the history of the farm. Selena Wilkes: Okay the history of Elmwood farm bed and breakfast goes way back, so you just let me know when you've got enough because that's a lot of writing material in itself.  So the history of Elmwood farm—it was built in 1855 by a very wealthy senior canal merchant out of Baltimore. Back then the wealthy, uh, acquired a lot of land so Elmwood farm back in that time was part of Conococheague Manor, okay? Now going back to the beginning of Williamsport in 1700 George Washington, General Arthur Holland Williams the founder of Williamsport was part of that Conococheague Manor, and um John Dall who built Elmwood with part of that and, . . . he had thousands of acres it went from here to the river. Now, amazingly today I only have seven acres because land kind of gets sold off as roads are being built in the states and things like that over the years, but this is a very important, vital, integral part of the farm here because the original summer home was sitting right here—this original summer home. The farm across the street was the working farm and during the Civil War that was a hospital for the injured coming out of Antietam. This part of the farm where the B&B is, is where the healthy guys were ready to fight on and they camped here for five days before crossing into Virginia (which is now West Virginia)—that's crossing the Potomac River. So amazingly from the history of it we find a lot of artifacts dropped, meaning that where they camped you'll find buttons you’ll find bullets that were never fired and we actually had a musket that was left and the musket is in the basement on the mantle. And then on the other side, the west side of the house, there were some skirmishes because they came, the soldiers came through here two or three different times. You had, obviously, Antietam, and you had Gettysburg so it wasn't a one-time thing. So it came back and forth—so another time they came by the west side, you had skirmishes on that side, so the artifacts that you find are fired and it tells the story because when a bullet is fired you can trace back about how far it traveled—and that's where they were. So that's all part of the Battle of Falling Waters, um, so we have that part of the history. Now as far as my family history goes, I’m. . . my sister and I, Lettie and myself are fifth generation here. So our great-great-grandparents were here after John Dall and the two other families. They purchased the farm and um we've been here ever since.  And, it's a dairy farm, it's been a dairy farm over the years and in the last seven years we're no longer a dairy farm. Um, we just don't have enough acres for that, we're down to seven acres, but that's perfect for what we do here. We're now a wedding venue, event venue, a bed and breakfast, we also have a gift shop. We do have 14 alpacas so that helps bring that farm. . . brings it all together. You have to understand, a lot of people don't realize how much money it takes to keep a farm profitable. Animals are a key—the more head you have, the more milk you have or the more product you have. So when land is taken away you don't have the crop to feed and maintain the animal, that changes the whole farm dynamic.  At the same time this is a historic preservation type of a home and setting—so having that allowed me to have a vision: let's preserve and repurpose what we have and make it profitable. That's where the bed and breakfast came in. Everything here is original hardwood floors, original, light fixtures from 1908 and we have the original hearth, the doors, so there's a lot of features here that have not changed. However we upgraded with modern amenities. We don't want to be a museum, this is my home too, so anybody that comes here I want them to feel at home. My, our number one rule here is you make yourself at home, okay, and. . . so that's, that's how the farm has gotten to where. . .that now. Our goal is to make this a destination. Every out building on the property—we have quite a few—the goal is to repurpose, upgrade it make it. . . you know fix it up and making it profitable. So, and that's our goal, and we have done that and we're at our last phase and that’s making the milk . . . , the original milk parlor into a distillery. So when you see that transformation, everything tying together, working together at the end you actually have a destination. So being real close to [interstates] 81 and 70 in an old historic river town—why not? It's a perfect destination for people to travel north and south, east and west and you're giving people a reason to stay. Not just come by for an hour but to stay; and that's really important when you look at, when you're looking at tourism and uh bringing revenue in. I’m talking business now, but that's coming into revenue for the county or where you live and that's a very vital part. So we're . . . for me personally the history is a very important part of tying everything together and sharing it with others to learn about the history and learning from the business aspect and also sharing it with others in our country when they come by and visit. [Okay, can I stop you there and just make sure the recording's still going properly. We had a few snafus. Okay we're good.] Allison Aldunate: What motivated you like to, to like work like side by side with your sister and like with uh continue with the family, like business even though you like changed. Like it's not a dairy farm, it’s a alpaca farm—what motivated you? Selena Wilkes: Okay so that's a great question—you asked me what motivated me to, to do this project from a dairy farm to um, right now, an alpaca farm.  That's a, that's a couple, that's a two-part question. I’ll tell you I grew up here being fifth generation: we didn't live in the house, our great-grandparents did. My grandparents did but we were always on the land. We've been around the cows, we've been around the alfalfa, the corn all those things. Farming is a great , uh, industry, it's a great career path, but in our time in this area it's shrinking and it's unfortunate in a lot of ways. We need our farmers, but we have resources other areas and this area. But during the situation in my family, my grandmother and my grandparents were getting older and they couldn't maintain anymore and my mom and her brother are in different career paths she's a teacher, he's a civil engineer. That's their career, they grew up farming, but they knew they didn't want to be farmers at the end.  So I say that because that's, the same holds true for my sister and I. We were very athletic: part of farm life made us strong and showed us responsibility. We instilled a lot of our success from those days, but we knew from a career path dairy farming was not going to be for us. I happen to be a health fiscal education teacher, although I only taught for two years.  My sister is the same—she went on to college coaching, I went on to play professional golf. So you're talking about completely different.  But the beauty of it is we did our thing, found success—look what happened, it brought us back home and now we tell people “never forget where you come from.” So we've come back here knowing there's no way we can do a dairy farm, because our paths were different.  My family made the decision “we need to sell.” They sold the farm in a responsible way, instead of bringing an industrial park, they preserved the property and its outbuilding, in that seven acres being on the national historical register. So we do have a nice development, nice neighbors, but the farm itself was protected. So when the opportunity came back in 2008 when the housing market crashed, the developer was like “I don't want anything to do with this, I need to just focus on my loss and my houses,” the opportunity came back to me and I bought the farm back. So that just brings the full circle that it was meant to be, okay, and I knew how much this farm meant to my family and what it's done for our family. So for me to have the opportunity to buy it back and, and preserving it but creating a different vision, a different function and still generating revenue as if you were farming, or maybe even better depending on how you want to see it. So it's been a blessing in that way, and so that's how that transformation came to us bringing in the alpacas. We can sell their fleece for clothing, that's why we have a gift shop. The other thing is if you notice the big barn outside is so close to the out, the outbuilding animals. Well let's face it animals, cows, pigs, horses, we love them all but they, they do smell, and you don't want to have a wedding event with that smell. Believe it or not, alpacas, of all the animals, really don't smell, and that's a very unique trait. So we took advantage of that, yeah, and they're cool animals, right? They're curious they make you laugh and they're happy, so it works. It's a happy environment. Allison Aldunate: You actually answered one of my questions why you chose alpacas instead of other farm animals. Um, what would you say is like the best part of your job, besides like being like at home? What's your favorite part? Selena Wilkes: I’m gonna tell you the best part is, I actually love what I do. I work hard and I play hard. Now, I work very hard—when you're an entrepreneur, you work beyond hours that you can comprehend. It's not a nine-to-five job—but it's flexible—but I’m working all the time, but I don't know that because I absolutely love what I do.  And I’m meeting different people—just like I’m meeting you today—that's great, and sharing your story! And being an innkeeper we have a 95% occupancy rate—we're very heavy here. So we get a lot of cyclers, bicyclers, coming down and seeing the canal from Pittsburgh to D.C., and so I meet people every day. Um, but I like that because having played professional golf I’ve traveled a lot so I’ve I’ve gotten out of my comfort zone and figured out different cultures throughout the country and meeting different people. So instead of traveling it allows me to come home, and I can do that and, people coming here. And I’m a, I consider myself a very happy person, I’m a very energetic person. Anytime there's a negative vibe—let's face it in life we all have negative things and there's challenges, but the key is how do we turn that around. It's always going to work itself out—you have to believe that—and I think when you take the very optimistic approach and seeing the best out of everything, things do work out and things will become easier for you. But you still work hard and, but you'll have the opportunity to play behind it. So at the end of…the answer your question is really meeting different people and seeing different opportunities. Allison Aldunate: So like I guess, um, last year we hit a pandemic. How did your business, like how has the business done in the pandemic? Selena Wilkes: You know the pandemic has been hard on everybody it's, it's been very challenging, but I have to say the pandemic has affected everybody in different ways. For us here at Elmwood farm, being in the hospitality and just saying it was very difficult from last March to May. . . , May into June because it was mandated by the Maryland governor shut down. So that meant we didn't have anybody traveling, the lack of confidence—but we never gave up on that. It gave us the opportunity to fix up some things on our property that we had wanted to do but didn't have the time to because we had a 95% occupancy rate so we took advantage of that time—but when I say that that's all about accepting what's in front of you that you have no control of and [being] willing to make the adjustment and taking the risk to make the change happen.  And I say that because I think that's the key to our success here and for those other businesses that survived the pandemic to this point. If you were just sitting and waiting and waiting, that was that what led you down the wrong path. You have to accept what was going on, keep adjusting working with it, and figuring out a plan—and we did that, and I’m so. . . . I tell everybody this day you know it was scary, but we knew it was gonna work out. Like you know, people are gonna come back. Right now let's just be very conservative—what I mean by that is we didn't spend any money we didn't have. We had a plan to . . . let's get the bathroom, we added on the bathrooms, we worked on the gift shop. So we got all that ready so by the time things lifted, we were ready to roll. And because of that we've actually doubled, so we've recovered. People were ready to go, people ready to celebrate again whether it's retirement party, birthday party, or a shower—and you can do them on a small scale and then once we got back to normal we got a bigger scale we went back to it but the gift shop added things. And having bathrooms in the barn is a feature where now more people want to come to use the venue. So at the end of the day I’ll go back to what I said earlier—you can turn every negative into a positive, it's all about how you want to do it. The pandemic was clearly a negative, and it still is but we've made it work out to our benefit and for the better—and I encourage everyone, listen, everything gets thrown at us you know, just take a deep breath and just think through a plan that, where you can where you can succeed. You have to believe in that, and um I think a lot of entrepreneurs will tell you that. Allison Aldunate: Yeah that's good, really nice that's a good thing. Going back to the alpacas, I’m guessing it’s your favorite, like your favorite animal, because you said it was like an advantage because of the smell—it doesn't smell, but like what, what products come from the alpacas? Selena Wilkes: Okay so alpacas the cool thing about alpacas um, one they're very curious animal, they're very unique.  Maintenance-wise still on the lower maintenance end now you always have to take care of an animal that's a responsibility, it's like a pet you know, but in this area our grass has very good protein levels in it.  Now unfortunately we're in a bit of a drought and I’m supplementing some alfalfa and oyster grass for them, but once we get some rain we'll be back on track. So for the most part they’re low maintenance. They do get one shot a month for [??] and that's just to help keep the parasites down. They do well around people. We can have a large group of people for events, we have a small group. Now I wouldn't I wouldn't stay they’re cuddly where they want you to come up—they're not like that, they just want you to be with them, but just “look at me” and do that. And they walk around they walk around the property, and they take part, and of course they're cute—I’m not going to deny that. And when it comes to shearing once a year they have very nice thick quality fleece. Now alpaca fleece is hyper allergenic. You know how you get a beautiful sweater and it itches? That’s wool coming from either a sheep or anything like that. And alpaca fleece it's real soft it has elasticity to it so it's able to stretch. A lot of your clothing that we wear, if you look at the tag it has a small percent of elasticity in it, and that's probably just about everything has a little bit of alpaca fleece in it. It's hypoallergenic, it stretches, and the other thing is it's very thin, so instead of wearing this bulky sweater—you feel like “I can't get a coat on top of my sweater.” Alpaca sweaters are gonna be on the thin side, so you feel like you have a t-shirt on but they're very warm. A lot of your boots that you wear have alpaca fleece lined in them in some way, your toboggans, your hats, uh beanies, the liners of them, your socks, scarves, cardigans, sweaters. You can even we even make alpaca dryer balls, and when you're washing your clothes you put them in a dryer. Some people are allergic to the dryer sheets, so they have alpaca fleece made into a ball and you can put essential oils or whatever in it, throw it in the dryer and it'll help do a natural type of detergent scent for your clothes and also help keep the wrinkles out. So believe, it or not, I was talking about how alpacas don't smell well they're dung is of one of the best fertilizers you can use—and it really doesn't smell, but it dries quickly and you can take a five gallon pail of alpaca dung and put it in your garden, put in your flower pots, or you can spread it out in your yard and it will help. It's a natural fertilizer to help the grass or your flowers grow. You know how people buy a miracle grow? Well alpaca down would be a natural miracle grow source and, uh, so and we actually have people who come there they say I want to buy a five gallon bucket of some of your dung.  Sure, you know, we'll shovel it up, and you know what, they come back for . . . repetitively because they know it works. So alpacas do a lot of great things, um, and again for me it is that balance. Um, when guests come stay at the farm, you can't have a farm without animals! It's just, yeah, so it's great that they can see a different type of animal and they're curious about them. Alpacas are in the camelid family, like the camels, so you got your llamas you got your alpacas, you got your camels, anything, vicuñas, anything they're all related. And they, um, originated in South America in Peru and Ecuador region up high elevated in Machu Picchu region so um it's an animal that goes way back to the Mayan times so they've been around a long time, yeah., Allison Aldunate: Wow, um so what do you, what do you see how do you see the future of this farm? What, I think, that you're expecting? Selena Wilkes: The future of this farm. As long as I’m alive and hopefully it'll be carried on, that there's always warm and welcoming. People making themselves at home. Very happy, energetic environment. Um, I want it to be a true destination for, for everybody, um, to come and enjoy.  Um, no this, this is the place where there's still kindness in the world—it's here and I, I welcome everybody here. So I hope that is something that continues throughout where everybody can feel welcomed here making it feel from home—to be a long life-long destination.  Now, um, Letty and I do give a lot back to the community, and we work we help our town in Williamsport. And, uh, we also have other businesses, too, that we help people too, but this farm um is home for us. Like I said there's no place better than home. Home sweet home! So yeah thank you so much.