By Debbie Gardner
dgardner@thereminder.com
Debra Boronski donned her beekeeping helmet, gloves and jacket to show off some of the hardworking members of her beehives.
“All this on my gloves is honey,” she shared as she pointed to some brownish stains on her thick gloves. “The spots on the jacket are where the bees tried to sting me.”
Boronski was giving Prime and our photographer Nate Blais a tour of her tidy homestead at Quarry Pond Farm – the henhouse, beehives and herb beds she tends at her home in East Longmeadow. It was early spring when we visited, and though the nettle and blackberry bushes were beginning to green up, the rows of herb beds were still mostly dormant.
And so were the bees.
“I can see some flying around. They are saying, ‘What the heck?’” to being disturbed, Boronski joked as she posed near one of the two hives for a quick photo.
Her hens were more receptive to visitors, coming up to the screen of their run to cluck and check us out. Boronski pointed to the colorful little aprons several were wearing over their rear feathers.
“Pecking order is a real thing,” she explained as one hen gave a warning peck to another bird.
Herbs. Honey. Eggs. Growing and tending are the focus of Boronski’s life now. But that wasn’t what always kept the longtime business executive busy.
“My friends say I’ve gone from business suits to garden boots,” she said with a smile.
From business to the backyard
Seated at her dining room table after the quick tour, Boronski admitted it’s been quite a transition.
“I ran chambers of commerce for more than 20 years,” Boronski said of the work she did to help small businesses in Springfield and Chicopee promote themselves and thrive. In her leadership role she said she put on programs and worked with the state and city governments to address issues that impacted the businesses that were chamber members. Seeking to make more of a difference for her chamber members, nine years ago during Charlie Baker’s first campaign for governor, Boronski switched gears and ran for a seat on the state Senate.
“I thought that would be a place to help small businesses by representing the voice of small business in the Legislature,” she explained. “I did not win, but that was OK.”
She said the newly minted Republican governor found a place for her in his administration and she spent the next seven years as the director of the Massachusetts Office of Business Development. She was on the road most days, working with small businesses across the state.
Then the coronavirus pandemic hit “and the job changed, it became more of a data-entry” position, Boronski shared. At the same time her mother became seriously ill.
“I left the job at 61 (in 2021), between COVID and my mom, I couldn’t be a good employee,” Boronski admitted.
The upside of her decision – it gave her more time to explore some of her passions.
“I always was someone who liked to be creative – I paint, I knit, I play guitar, I make sourdough bread…” Boronski said. “When I retired, the door opened to do more of [those things].”
She said she took the energy she had dedicated to helping small businesses and began “thinking about what I’d like to do to fill a need and serve a purpose in the next phase of life.”
The result was the small homestead she lovingly calls Quarry Pond Farm.
The first step – growing an old hobby
“I’ve always had my hand in herbs, growing them and using them,” Boronski said, adding that her interest in the plants “started more than 30 years ago when I took a class and grew my first medicinal garden.”
While overseeing the Chicopee Chamber of Commerce, Boronski said she bought a Queen Anne style Victorian in the city as her residence, and began a tea shop in the house as her own small business. “It was called The Tea Room,” she said. “I bought an old Victorian house, and herbs from Jonathan Evans at the Herbarium and I hosted tea parties.”
Gesturing to a china cabinet in her dining room displaying tea pots from that time in her business life, Boronski said her tea room specialized in things like mother-daughter teas “with tea sandwiches and white gloves and hats.” She also sold “packages of herbal tea with explanations of the herb qualities [in a] mailed box that included a tea pot, honey sticks and a tea ball” through a website.
Along with her interest in herbs, Boronski said she also began a yoga practice and became a certified yoga teacher four years ago. “Yoga is more than postures. It is state of mind, breath, self-care,” Boronski said. “That study led me to the California College of Ayurvedia (Ayurvedic medicine). I took a year-long course to become a certified health counselor.”
She now uses that training to prepare a selection of herbal treatments, most from plants in her garden. Among the herbal preparations she now makes are nettle tea, elderberry syrup – known for supporting immune health – and calendula oil and salve.
“I put it in grapeseed oil, which is lighter, it helps with healing,” Boronski said of the calendula preparation, which she shares with select friends. “I make it for myself, I just enjoy making it.”
Then came the rest
“Herbal medicines are made with many ingredients including honey and beeswax. So, my herbal garden, then bees and shortly after chickens because yeah, homesteading was becoming more real,” Boronski said. The beehives, and learning how to collect and prepare local honey, came next, she said.
“I never thought I’d raise chickens,” said Boronski, who now has a dozen hens and was expecting five more chicks to arrive shortly “that I will raise in my cellar” until they are old enough to join the coop.
And she doesn’t just raise any chickens. Her brood lays eggs that get people talking. “Why just have white eggs when you can have beautiful, interesting, colorful eggs?” she asked. She lets people know through Facebook when the hens have produced enough eggs to share, as some only lay two or three eggs a week, she said. It’s an informal transaction, she leaves the cartons in a cooler on her front stoop, and there’s a cash box alongside it.
“When people open the egg carton, I see their face … ‘they are so beautiful, I don’t want to eat them,’” is often the remark, she said.
The egg money, she added, goes toward feed for her hens. “If I was in business, I’d raise Rhode Island Reds,” she continued. “It makes me happy when someone takes a carton and opens it up and is so excited.
“It gives me joy,” Boronski said of sharing her hen’s eggs. “And isn’t that what we’re all supposed to be doing in our later years, creating joy, finding joy?”
Finding fulfillment in farming
Building beds, hauling dirt, tending beehives and chickens and herb beds. It’s a lot of work even on the small scale of her backyard homestead.
“I could hire someone, but then I’m not doing it myself,” she said. “I’ve learned to use saws and drills. My husband bought me a battery-operated cart, and it’s the best thing … who knew I would be wishing for a battery operated cart for my garden?”
And despite the egg and honey customers – “people who buy my eggs usually also want honey,” she said – her homestead is still essentially a hobby.
“I’m not interested in going big … I’m doing this for the joy of it … and I can choose [what I do],” she said.
She also looks at this “second act” as a legacy for her family.
“I have eight grandchildren, and each has an interest in a part of what I do,” she said “You think about your legacy … when I’m gone, I hope they remember when Didi made honey … I’m making memories for my family.”
