We were lucky to catch up with Kelly Welk recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Kelly, you’ve got such an interesting story, but before we jump into that, let’s first talk about a topic near and dear to us – generosity. We think success, happiness and wellbeing depends on authentic generosity and empathy and so we’d love to hear about how you become such a generous person – where do you think your generosity comes from?
12 years ago we left city life to move our family to Silverdale, WA. Our kids were 2, 4 and 6 and we made the crazy choice to try and purchase a home that was in short sale. We knew it was a gamble but felt it was worth it to buy a ramshackle 100 year old home sitting on an acre of potential. The thing that actually made us fall in love with the property was the established orchard. It was untended and overgrown but we could see all the possibilities. So we started the long process of waiting for the bank to release the house to us – it took 10 months. And over those months we stayed in my parents camper, lived with friends, house sat, and basically chose to be homeless and without all of our belongings. People told us we were insane, and we agreed, it felt crazy.
So what does this have to do with generosity? That season cemented in our hearts our deep love of sharing our home, of gardening, of opening our door to welcome people to our table. Even though we had made the choice to put all of our things in storage. We made the choice to be without a home in the waiting, it was an incredibly hard 10 months not knowing if the bank would actually let us purchase the home. Not knowing if this space we were dreaming over was going to be ours.
The day we signed the papers and got the keys we stood in the kitchen and I cried – this home was ours and we could not wait to share it. The waiting, the season of not being able to host and garden, not having a table to invite people to made it all the sweeter. So when we heard our friend sharing about the non-profit he had started we knew we wanted to do something to help and it made the most sense for us to do what we loved – invite people to our table. Over the past 11 years in the midst of remodeling and fixing we’ve opened our doors to our friends, family and community to join us at what we call the Freedom Dinners. Everyone is a volunteer, everything we serve is donated and every penny of the donations that come in go directly to Atlas Free to fight sex slavery and trafficking.
They’re the most beautiful and tangible display of not just our hearts but also the generosity of our community.
It’s been a wild ride watching our love of hosting our community at the Freedom Dinners turn into our business called Ciderpress Lane. In that long waiting period for the bank to allow us to buy our home, we named it Ciderpress Lane in the hope that one day we’d be pressing cider in the orchard.
In the first year of hosting the Freedom Dinners a guest joined us at the table who was engaged and was feeling overwhelmed planning her wedding. She asked if she could hire us to design, plan and run her wedding and our business began! We didn’t start the Freedom Dinners with any intentions of opening a business but as the requests kept coming for us to help others plan their events we decided why not! From the beginning we knew we wanted our business to reflect the same heart of the Freedom Dinners so we set it up so 10% of all profits would go directly to Atlas Free. Over the last 9 years as our business has grown from a small passion project to my husband and I’s full time work we’ve known this … we want our business to reflect our hearts. Our love of gathering, of creating beauty, of gardens, hosting and most of all community. It is through all of this that we’ve been able to design, plan and create the most beautiful intimate private events, create venues in backyards, design wedding florals, host workshops on wreath making and floral design, garden, cooking, harvesting and more. And through it all the Freedom Dinners continue on. They are the foundation and heartbeat of all we do.
We are thrilled this year to have the opportunity to work with 2 communities to help them launch their own Freedom Dinners. We’ve seen first hand the potential our community has to give and create beauty together and know that it is not unique to us or our little town – this potential is just waiting for an invitation to join you at the table. It’s why we filled our website with tips to help you host your own dinners and wrote our cookbook Dinner Changes Everything to give you menus and timelines, stories and inspiration to help you invite your community to join you.
We are hopeful that we will have funding again next year to work with more communities. Come join us @ciderpresslane to find out more about what it looks like for us to come work with you to help you launch your own Freedom Dinners!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
When you’re starting anything there is so much room for doubt – I’m so grateful that when the first crazy notion popped into my mind to host our first Freedom Dinner – I was surrounded by friends and my husband who said ‘Go for it!’ I was so nervous when I sent out the first invitation on Facebook. What if no-one said yes? What if they thought I was crazy to think people would want to come to my house for dinner and give a donation? All of the what ifs crop up whenever we do anything new. I’ve learned to hear them and then say ‘Go for it… give it a try and see’
It’s why I wrote Dream Catcher, because I knew there were so many people with hopes and dreams sitting on their hearts that had been silenced by the What Ifs and doubts. You can find my books in our shop @ciderpresslane – snag Dream Catcher, read through it, answer the journal questions and know that I’m cheering you on!
And then get ready for the everyday-life and making-dreams-happen. Living out the idea and dream looks really normal. The beautiful photos of what our events, dinners and workshops are today started out really normal with tables that didn’t match, borrowing dishes and goblets, figuring out how to create a website and mailing lists, learning new systems and being brave to ask for help. There’s a lot of everyday baby steps as you tend and grow a dream. And they’re all worth it because they help your shake legs get stronger.
As you grow in your confidence I challenge you to also grow your community. Not every endeavor is paid, not every dream should become a business so this is not about hiring people or growing big businesses – this is about growing the circle of people that surround you, support you, cheer you on and believe in you. When I look at all we do now with the Freedom Dinners it makes me get teary eyed because there is a deep well of gratitude for everyone who has seen what we’re doing and chosen to be apart. It blesses my heart, and even more so is making generational impacts on the women and children we’re all supporting through Atlas Free. Our little orchard, our normal kitchen, our garden is doing such beautiful work because of one small invitation that we sent out 9 years ago and the willingness to keep on keeping on, inviting, welcoming, scrubbing tables, planting flowers, washing dishes and inviting more and more people to join us.
There is no overnight, microwave way to grow a dream. It takes time, longevity and seasons of growth and rest, creativity and the mundane.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
Staying true to our hearts – it’s the biggest challenge I think we all have in business. Staying true to what you want your business to be, staying true to the work you want to create, staying true to the life you want to live. I am so thankful that my husband and I get to work together. I’m a dreamer and he’s so good at keeping me, our family and our business grounded and on course.
Over the years our business has shifted and changed, we’ve taken on different kinds of event work and workshops and always come back to our core mission – we want to create a beautiful community and we want our business to be a reflection of the life we want to live. Those 2 statements help us say yes to the work that is fully inline with our hearts and no to all of the beautiful opportunities that are not.
What this looks like in a tangible way :
– we take time in January to map out our year. We put our Freedom Dinners on the calendar first, then we block out our family vacation time, next we put the events we know we personally want to host and create onto the calendar like our Spring Garden Workshops, Dahlia Sales, Spring Tea & Market, Summer Floral Arranging in the Cutting Garden, and our Christmas Wreath Workshops. Then we take on requests for Weddings, Event Design and Private Intimate Dinner Experiences in our Orchard. It takes so much intention to make space for what your heart is calling you to and it is worth all of the work to block out the time and guard it.
– another very tangible way this plays out is social media. As our accounts have grown we’ve gotten more and more requests to partner with brands that are not inline with who we are. And we made a really simple choice, we are not a Marketing business here to sell other people’s things. We do what we do in our community and online because we love helping people tend their gardens, bake, cook, host and fill their lives with the most valuable of resources … time together.
And yet, the challenge remains as requests and opportunities come in, we continue to measure them all against our motto – if you do not have a guide to keep you on track your business, your work, your art will begin to reflect everything else you see instead of your own heart.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ciderpresslane.com
- Instagram: @kellywelk
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CiderPressLane/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKRVI0qxfgBuz7Eu234-kSw
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
