On foggy spring mornings, there’s often a small fire burning in the blue woodstove inside Nicole Buttitta’s potting shed on the rural Sebastopol farm she shares with her husband, Fred Reid. The rustic, wood-framed shed, with a clear corrugated roof and big barn doors that slide open onto a small grove of redwoods, was a gift from Fred to Nicole, who met a decade ago in the parking lot of the place where they boarded their dogs. Fred invited Nicole to his family’s farm to exercise their dogs in the fields, and the two ended up walking and talking for three hours. A relationship, one built on a shared love of the land and the outdoors — and of course, on a love of dogs — was cemented that day.
Fred, an airline executive, grew up working in the summer on the 40-acre farm alongside his aunt, who bought the land in the 1960s to raise Black Angus cattle, horses, and llamas and sell Gravenstein apples to the Manzana processing facility in Graton. He inherited the farm from his aunt two decades ago, and over time, rebuilt the old farmhouse to suit the needs of a bachelor with three grown sons. He and Nicole, who also has three grown children, have since adapted the property for the next stage of their lives together, adding new flower fields and a large chicken coop in addition to the potting shed and other outbuildings.
“The shed was born out of my desire to just geek out as a gardener and a flower farmer, but also as a gathering place for family,” says Nicole. “We have these six children together, two daughters-in-law, a couple of grandkids now, and we have big family meals out here.”
When the couple married in 2017, the band for the reception set up inside the potting shed, and guests danced out on the lawn under the redwoods until late in the evening. The shed has a big table down the center, plenty of comfy places to sit, shelves for gardening books, and built-in storage for vases, watering cans, and other gardening equipment. An upholstered bench pulls out to make a bed for the grandkids, who think it’s an adventure to nap outdoors in summer…