The Origin of Strawberry Lane Market

 Hi there! I'm Ceili (pronounced Kay-lee), but my friends and loved ones call me Kale.

I know it might seem like Strawberry Lane Market appeared overnight, but this story really began when I was a child.

I grew up in a small town on the Chesapeake Bay called Havre de Grace, Maryland — a truly charming little gem, if you ever have the chance to visit.

Everyone needs a role model growing up, and even now, mine is still my mother, Brenda. She was intelligent, brave, resilient, and strong, with a heart full of love — an inspiration to everyone who knew her. What made her so remarkable was that she never hid behind the role of "parent." She let me see who she really was, and in turn, she gave me the space to grow into who I really was. She shared everything with me: her love of gardening, cooking, baking, and living a simple, sustainable life. In the mid-2000s, our home was featured multiple times on one of our town's garden tours, and that's when the idea struck her — what if we started a small shop selling homemade goods from our own garden? It would be a fun project, something she, my sister Holly, and I could build together.

Unfortunately it never got the chance to become what we imagined. My mom passed away in July 2010, after a long battle with cancer. Everything happened so quickly and my world shattered at just 16 years old. In the quiet that followed, I knew I would be the one to carry her legacy forward.

I bought my first home in 2020 and currently live on a beautiful acre of land in Washington Township, Ohio. That first year I built my medicinal gardens and they flourished and it was more than I could ever use myself. That's when it hit me: what better way to honor my mom than to finally build the market we'd once dreamed of together?

But it needed a name. I landed on Strawberry Lane Market because the house I grew up in sat on Market Street, and just behind it ran a small, quiet alley called Strawberry Lane. It felt like the perfect fit — a name that holds both the place I came from and every memory tucked inside it.

To this day, I still feel connected to my mom spiritually. Every time I'm in the garden or keeping my bees, I know she's right there with me.