Meet Valerie Boman in Chandler

Today we’d like to introduce you to Valerie Boman.

Valerie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Dean and I are very passionate about many ventures. I own “White Picket Fence Quilts” (a pattern company that features my designs of applique, pieced and embroidery patterns for quilting), “Quilting by Valerie” (a machine quilting business), and I am also a nationally certified quilt judge. Together, we created Gen Gathering (an international genealogy website) and we have also built approximately 25 websites based on genealogy research, cemeteries, unidentified old photos, etc.

I (Valerie) was once a data analyst, then a homemaker; Dean was an electrical engineer in aerospace and is now retired. Together, we travel (usually in our RV) to places that are vast and wild, with the Arctic Ocean on our destination list for the summer. Along the way for all of our travels, we place rocks that I have painted (they might be painted kayaks, moose, canoes, flowers, inspirational quotes, hiking boots, etc.). The hope is to brighten the day of the people finding them. We have been doing this for about 7 years as we RV, kayak, hike or cruise on adventures! When not traveling, we garden on a large scale, and also have laying hens. During May and June, we harvest and can our bounty. We generally grow all root crops, corn, many various fruit trees, berries, onion and approximately 400 tomato plants. There is enough to eat fresh, process, sell and give away. We consider it a challenge to garden in the desert, and it mostly just takes tenacity and enthusiasm!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Because we generally do everything as a team, and we love spending time together, we usually do not hit many snags. We are both the type to plan and talk things through, and we try very hard to set things up for success via that planning. Probably our biggest obstacle in all of our ventures comes from gardening. We have learned just how much success and failure there can be because of weather and nature alone. Another obstacle is gardening in harsh climate like the desert. We were determined to make it work, and it’s very satisfying to have people be so astonished by the bounty we harvest.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the White Picket Fence Quilts; Gen Gathering; Rocking Our Way; A Farmer and His Wife; Chandler AZ Rocks story. Tell us more about the business.
Probably what we are most proud of is that we do this together. Always together – with no outside help. We did all of these things from the ground up, with our hard work and enthusiasm and passion. Nothing really sets us apart, other than we believe that our excitement for what we do is infectious and believable. When you honestly love what you do, the passion will show, and products sell themselves. With the machine quilting business and gardening, word of mouth has been our friend.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
As trite as it sounds, I (personally) have always said that we make our own luck. I feel there is very little true luck in our lives, but rather that people set themselves up for looking lucky by planning and thinking things through. I believe luck only plays into things when it’s out of your hands – like weather. Even then, if you plan on the possibilities of bad weather, you can sometimes circumvent some potentially negative outcomes. If “timing” is luck, then I’d have to say some of the success was partly due to timing, especially the time I chose to start my machine quilting business (with a friend).

Contact Info:

• Address: Valerie and Dean Boman
  5290 S. Ashley Drive Chandler AZ 85249
• Website: http://www.whitepicketfencequilts.com; http://www.gengathering.com; http://www.afarmerandhiswife.com;
• Phone: 6028030961
• Email: valerie.boman@cox.net
• Facebook: A Farmer and His Wife, Rocking Our Way, Chandler AZ Rocks and Gen Gathering

Image Credit:
Dean

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