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Community Corner

Made With Love: From Sunflower Farm to Your Home

Shop features handmade items crafted right here in Orange

 

Most dads make promises to their young children, but few come through the way Ernie Santoro did. Some 30 years ago when his daughter was very young, he bet her he could grow a sunflower. What began as a small garden of sunflowers has grown into a farm business that sells handmade soaps, jams and jellies and even jewelry year-round and seasonal plants including thousands of sunflowers.

This time of year, the Derby Milford Road farm sells Christmas trees (over 600 each year!), handmade wreaths and cemetery arrangements. According to Sabrina Santoro, Ernie's wife and co-owner of the farm, fraziers and balsam pine trees are the hottest sellers.

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"Fraziers are nice and thick, they last a long time inside the house, but they don't have a strong smell like the balsams do," she says. The wreaths she makes from fresh greens, holly berries, pine cones and handmade bows. "We get as much as we can from local companies," she explains.

Each fall, the farm property is lined with thousands of mums - some 5,500 of which find their way to local homes. It is during the late winter months, however, that Santoro gets productive. When she's not working in the shop, Santoro is creating handmade, all natural soaps for her company, Connecticut Natural Soapworks, a business she started about 12 years ago after her sister passed away and Santoro found she needed to keep her mind busy. Once the busy holiday selling season quiets down, she settles into her shop and spends the winter months creating different scented soaps. Her favorite, Tuscan Olive Blossom, is one of dozens of scents that line the shelves at her Orange farm shop.

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"They're chemical free, so they're very moisturizing on the skin. They make a nice fluffy lather," she says. Santoro's soaps are also sold in Whole Foods stores and the new Elm City Market. Also lining the shelves at Sunflower Farm are jams, jellies, salsa, spices and teas.

"It's funny how things happen," she says.

"When our children were younger, I worked full-time for the Judicial Branch of the State of Connecticut and my husband stayed home with the kids," she says. "And while he was home, he grew stuff. He grew sunflowers, hay, perennial and annual plants and pumpkins."

Just last year, Sabrina Santoro retired from her full-time position with the state and now she works full-time at her family farm shop.

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