If you drive out to the Seekonk/Attleboro border, you can find Michel and Judy Marcellot “following their bliss” at the nearly four-acre Seven Arrows Farm.
They started with a plot of land and an $800 tax refund. At the time, Judy was director of Project Persona, which taught English as a second language and was later folded into the International Institute of Rhode Island. Michel was a landscaper.
The couple decided to start a business that took into account their desired lifestyle.
“There were some major factors, like we wanted to work together and we wanted to work on the land … we wanted to be outside,” Michel Marcellot said.
Judy liked to garden, and Michel, who is French, had been exposed for years to the European culture, “where herbs were a part of life.” Locally, herbs were a little-exploited niche.
“We saw it as an opportunity, but we were also incorporating it in our lives, and it was something we enjoyed and was a passion we could share,” he said.
So they grew some herbs and took them to a flea market in Providence. “And we sold 20 plants the first day, and we said, ‘Oh, this is going to go. Let’s quit our jobs and do this.’ And that’s what we did,” said Michel Marcellot.
They sold herbs for a while. Then, over time, “we started getting into perennials and rare plants, and there are so many little rabbit holes you can go down in the plant world,” he said.
During slow periods, Michel’s landscape and installation business helped smooth things out. But when the teaching side of the business took off, he briefly stopped doing installations, but then he realized he loved doing them.
“It’s something that feeds my soul,” he said. “So we had to figure out how that fit back in.”
Since then, the Marcellots have turned over the herbal part of the business to Mary Blue, who specializes in herbal medicine, education and development.
“There’s a lot of regulation, and you can’t step on the [American Medical Association’s] toes, so she’s very aware of that kind of stuff. She is able to help people with their questions about using herbs for their own health care,” Michel Marcellot said.
But, he added, at Seven Arrows, “everybody does everything. … We make tea, we clean dishes, we sweep the floor. There’s not much of a hierarchy.”
The herb industry has changed and grown substantially since Seven Arrows started. At first, “there were maybe two or three places where you could buy stuff in bulk,” Michel said, but in the early 1990s, “lots of people started getting out and really fragmenting the market. You had two or three stores in Providence. Plus Bread & Circus.” There was even a point when CVS had a whole herbal section.
“Over the past, I think, four or five years we’ve seen the market come back for us because we concentrate on bulk,” Marcellot said. “Whole Foods doesn’t carry it anymore, the little places can’t carry the variety that we do, and because we have these other things going on – we’ve got the plant business and the installation business – we were able to weather the storm when lots of little places went out.”
The other thing that Marcellot said affected the business at the time was the advent of the big-box stores such as Home Depot and Lowe’s.
“We saw a huge difference … in the bedding plants, tomatoes. When it first started, it practically wiped us out … it’s the first flush. When you don’t have that, then you don’t have the cap to get started on your longer-terms things. … Again the installation business helped us weather that one.”
The latest addition to the Marcellots’ ever-evolving business is a book. They’ve written “Sacred Gardens,” a collection of garden stories, including their own.
Judy Marcellot’s passion is in the natural cosmetics end of the business and she wants to do more writing. She’s also the person people come to sit down and talk with over a cup of one of the many teas available at the farm.
“I’m phasing myself out,” she said. “I won’t be doing as much of the retail. … We’re contracted to write two more books … and we want to travel with the book.” The book hasn’t been released yet, but is in the publisher’s fall catalog.
As far as a direction or plan for the future of the Seven Arrows business, Michel Marcellot said: “We know that targets are good … and we really kind of just follow our passion.”
Company profile: Seven Arrows Farm
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Type of business: Specialty plant farm and bulk herb store
Owners: Judy and Michel Marcellot
Location: 346 Oakhill Ave., Attleboro
Employees: 8 to 10 seasonally, not including the owners
Year founded: 1980
Annual revenue: WND
