I have a love for beautiful art and I think it comes from years of watching my parents collecting old prints and paintings. At some point in my teens, they fell in love with Architectural Digest and were so inspired by the homes they saw that they decided to paint our cabin’s walls white, which was a huge ordeal because our walls were all wood. In fact, much of the wood was hand-milled by my dad from trees on our property. And they did all of the painting with brushes, because a roller would never get into the slats. And when they were finished, they loved it because all of their artwork really stood out against the white. “That’s so AD”, they’d say (Architectural Digest) and would say that about most beautiful things after that. And I’d mentally roll my eyes.
One day, they brought home a huge beautiful old print of a mother, father and child and squeezed it onto the wall above the wood stove. “That’s for you, Serena”, they told me. “It reminds us of when you were born”. And I imagined it really did, since I was born in a tiny little cabin in the woods, delivered by my dad.
A few years ago, when my dad came to stay with us for a while, he brought my print and I was excited to hang it over my bed. It was such a sweet and peaceful addition to the room. But I kept thinking something wasn’t just quite right, and eventually painted the walls all white – with a roller, not a brush. And when one of the boys saw the white walls and my print standing out like never before, he said, “That is so FC. You know, Farm Chicky!”
IT'S ME, SERENA!
I bounced through the first years of my life in a hippie gypsy wagon, hand-built by my father, wandering the back roads of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. My family eventually settled into a tiny cabin in the woods on property that was once inhabited by Native American Indians.
I spent my childhood days searching for arrowheads, teaching myself to sew on a treadle sewing machine and to bake in a wood-burning stove, with no running water, refrigeration, or electricity in our home. My family lived frugally and early on, inspired by my parent’s thriftiness and style, I gained a knack for thrifty creativity and turning ordinary objects into something useful. And I dreamed of the home I would create for my own family someday.
Now I’m married to my husband, Colin, and our children are all grown. After 24 years of producing The Farm Chicks Vintage & Handmade Fair, I'm spending time visiting other markets around the world. You can watch episodes of Serena Goes to Market here.
I share more about my life story from time to time, here on my blog. You can also find me on Instagram, and Facebook.
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