Most people look forward to retirement, kicking back and playing the grandkids. Here’s a story from the Herald-Dispatch about a man who came out of retirement to sell flowers:

Floyd Napier always dreamed he would someday own the parcel of land along US Route 60 near Barboursville to sell his produce and flowers. Last fall his dream became a reality when he finally purchased the property.

Some six months later, Floyd’s Fruits and Flowers is bursting with an array of colors from a wide variety of fruits, flowers, shrubs and plants. But rest assured, Napier is no newcomer to the home-grown fruit and vegetable business.

From 1978 until 1988 he operated his namesake produce stand at the farmer’s market in the West End of Huntington, where perhaps he was best known for his tree-ripened peaches. During that time he also opened a produce stand at the former East End Drive-In movie theater, now home to HIMG on Route 60. Now, after a five-year hiatus, during which time he helped care for his grandson and temporarily settled into retirement, Floyd Napier is glad to be back doing what he loves to do-sell produce and flowers.

“We’ve been open for a month now, and the business is doing really well. People realize I’m back and they know I have the best product, quality and prices around. It’s what I’ve built a reputation on,” said Napier. The business offers practically anything a customer could want, from such garden favorites as zinnas, geraniums, Juniper trees and yellow marigolds, to name a few. In the coming weeks, the focus of the business will shift away from flowers to fruits including blackberries, plums and those oh-so-sweet peaches that Floyd Napier has sold from the very beginning. In the early years of his produce business, Floyd Napier had a slogan painted onto his truck that read, “Floyd goes where it grows.” Fortunately, many items are trucked in from places like Oregon, North Carolina and Tennessee. There are also flowers which come from parts of Ohio and Michigan, as well as local growers.

But when it comes to the peaches, Napier says he has no need to look beyond the borders of West Virginia. “Back in 1974 I was on a summer vacation with my wife in Romney, West Virginia. That’s when I first saw the roadside produce markets. I bought some peaches and they were the best I ever had. I bought 30 bushels and brought them back to Huntington to sell at the farmer’s market, which opened at 6 o’clock in the morning. By 9 o’clock, I had sold out. There’s no doubt about it. The peaches grown in Martinsburg and Romney are simply the best,” Napier said.

Coming out of retirement suits Floyd Napier. He says the best part about having his new business is the customers themselves. “People will come up to me with a big smile or a firm handshake and say, ‘I’m glad you’re back!’ That makes me feel pretty good,” he admits.

Did you know you that there was a public baking company called Flowers Foods? Neither did we, but we like the name! From this Reuters story, it seems they’re doing pretty well.

Baking company Flowers Foods Inc. (FLO.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Thursday reported higher quarterly profit on stronger demand for its Nature’s Own breads and rolls.

The company, whose brands also include Mrs. Freshley’s, said net income from continuing operations rose to $22.3 million, or 36 cents a share, in the first quarter ended April 22, from $20 million, or 31 cents a share, a year earlier.

Net income after an accounting change was $22.9 million, or 37 cents per share.

Analysts, on average, expected 33 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

The maker of hamburger buns and snack cakes said again it expected to earn $1.10 to $1.19 per share for the year before items on sales of $1.87 billion to $1.90 billion.

Analysts surveyed by Reuters expected the company to report earnings of $1.18 per share on revenue of $1.88 billion.

The company also said the board will consider the dividend at its regularly scheduled meeting and announce any changes after the meeting.

Shares of Flowers closed at $27.56 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Flowers can be a labor of love for some merchants, as Michelle Bruch describes in the Downtown Journal:

At 3:45 a.m. on a Saturday morning, the Minneapolis Farmers’ Market at I-94 and 3rd Avenue North is lighted only by the concession stand and the orange lights of the Interstate.

A sole vendor has arrived and is unloading racks of plants in the dark.

At 4 a.m., Michelle Nelson drives a truck hauling two trailers up to stall No. 230. She woke at 2:30 a.m. this morning and departed from Hamel, Minn., for a 30-minute ride to the market, a trip she takes almost daily this time of year. She hops out of the truck and blasts the stereo, which is playing “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Bachman Turner Overdrive.

When the overhead lights blink on 20 minutes later, Michelle and her helpers, Lam and Nate, have already started unloading crates and boards for the display.

Michelle is one of 250 vendors that haul their products from as far as Bayfield, Wis., to the Lyndale Farmers’ Market each year, filling 172 stalls at the site. The market vendors are a hearty group of people with an extensive collective history — second-generation farms are still considered part of the “new frontier” of farmers at the market. The market begins at 6 a.m. sharp, and those who want to greet the first rush of customers must leave home in the middle of the night and set up their stands before sunrise.

As Michelle rolls 7-foot carts of flowers into the parking lot, she explains that her mother-in-law started the Gepp Gardens flower business in the late ’80s. The Nelson family plants and maintains an estimated 4,000 10-inch baskets, 4,000 flats and 700 12-inch specialty baskets in 20,000 square feet of greenhouse space at their home. The family spent two days preparing the load that will sell at today’s market. Her husband Pat’s passion is running the greenhouses, Michelle explains, and she enjoys running the business and operating the market.

Michelle and her workers move quickly while unloading the trailers, and the action helps fend off the cold. Although a 70-degree high is expected today, the temperature at 4:30 a.m. is a windy 44 degrees. The sun will not rise for another two hours.

As more vehicles drift into the parking lot at 5 a.m., Michelle’s truck is now playing the Rolling Stones, and her helpers have formed an efficient assembly line. They expect to have sore arms later today after hanging 15-pound baskets from the rafters.

“This is what we do full-time,” Michelle says. “It grows on you, but you have to

love it.”

A Farmers’ Market love story

Michelle first came to the Minneapolis Farmers’ Market 14 seasons ago when she was 19 years old and simply looking for a summer job. She sold sweet corn for Untiedt Vegetable Farm, a vegetable stand three vendors away from Gepp’s.

“I knew Pat’s mom,” Michelle said. “She said to Pat one day, ‘You need to see the girl working at Untiedt.’ He came to the stall and introduced himself, and I went home that day and told my parents ‘I think I just met your future son-in-law.’”

Pat asked Michelle on their first date in June 1995, and he soon proposed — on Christmas Eve that same year.

Michelle holds a mathematics degree from St. Ben’s, and she never expected that her summer job would become her career. But now she wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s the personal satisfaction of the process,” she said. The flowers she produces at home are the flowers she personally displays and sells to fully support her family, which includes her four children.

Mary Rabideaux, assistant manager of the Farmers’ Market, called the Nelson family part of a “new frontier of growers.”

“We have a solid group of family growers, but that number has decreased over time because farming is a tough business,” Rabideaux said. “Sometimes, the next generation says ‘this is not for me’ and it ends.”

The Nelsons are a second-generation farm, but they are still considered newcomers in comparison to longer-standing fifth- and sixth-generation vendors at the market.

“They’re strong and vibrant and happy to do what they do. They work hard to produce a product against some pretty amazing odds,” Rabideaux said. She cited difficult weather, urban sprawl and scant sleep as common reasons that vendors decide to leave the market.

Rabideaux said the Minneapolis market’s customer base has also changed dramatically over time. In the 1940s, she said, customers were accustomed to buying produce in bulk to can and preserve at home. As more women joined the workforce, the market transformed into a source of entertainment. Now the market is a fresh urban experience for young people who enjoy eliminating the middleman from their purchases, Rabideaux said.

In the peak of the summer season, when sweet corn is available, attendance on a typical Saturday reaches 5,000 customers.

A Family Business

When the sun finally creeps up at 5:56 a.m., the deserted parking lot has blossomed into a county fair. The flowers that Michelle seemed to have plopped in their places at random are designed in lines of daisy baskets surrounding packs of hydrangeas. Zinnias, petunias and impatiens are arranged in dense rows of complementary color schemes. The smell of warm cinnamon rolls rises from somewhere nearby, and the farmers finally grab a cup of coffee and start greeting each other. They have a short break now before the 8 a.m. customer rush.

Vendors stop in a steady stream at stall No. 230 to give Michelle a hug and talk shop. Some of them attended her wedding nine years ago, and Michelle’s first summer employers are still working here and saying hello to her this morning.

“You get pretty attached to everybody,” Michelle says. A vendor in the neighboring stall, also a flower seller, peeks over a cart and asks Michelle how much she is charging for a particular basket. Michelle gives her the price without hesitation.

“The reason this place works is because we’re all together here,” Michelle explains. “We all set our own prices.” This year, a handful of vendors have raised their prices and others have chosen to keep prices lower.

The vendors understand they need to be collectively successful to thrive, and the farmers also know that customer loyalty is a vital aspect of the business. Michelle says she doesn’t greet other vendors’ regular customers and doesn’t interfere in their sales.

“We try not to cross an imaginary line,” she says.

There are also unwritten rules for each day’s setup and teardown. In Michelle’s row of booths, she always arrives first and sets up her station at 4 a.m., then moves her trucks out of the way so that her neighbors can set up before 6 a.m. While greenhouse growers face lengthy setup times, other vendors arrive later to sell from the back of their trucks or vans.

“It’s an informal system, but it works like clockwork,” Michelle says.

Shoppers appear at the market at 6 a.m. on the dot, and product is moving fast an hour later. Michelle has already sold dozens of her largest specialty baskets and trays, and Lam and Nate are never without a customer seeking assistance.

Michelle says the most difficult aspect of Farmers’ Market work is the intensity of the short season.

“The majority of the business happens within six weeks,” she says. “I stay home with the kids eight months out of the year.”

Michelle says she adjusts to the pace quickly, however, “once I see the customers.”

Michelle will be one of the last vendors to leave today at about 2:30 p.m. — a 12-hour workday that isn’t over yet. But Michelle and 100 other vendors can’t wait to come back tomorrow.