After spending 20 years as a waitress, losing her job four times over the course of the pandemic and yearning for something more, Dana Dimitroff knew that it was time to take a leap and go after her dreams of owning her own business.
“When the pandemic hit, I had lost my job four times and like many people, I just had all this spare time I had never had before. I’ve always wanted to have my own business and Wilfrid Laurier’s Waterloo campus had a Women Entrepreneurship Centre that was running a Start-My-Business Boot Camp during the pandemic. It was an eight week course done through Zoom and it just condensed everything down for women on how to start a business,” said Dimitroff. “It touched on accounting, marketing, and everything else you needed to do to start a business. Every week it would give you a checklist of things that you had to accomplish, whether it was coming up with a business name, or signing up for your website domain, it covered everything you needed to get started.”
She said that while everything seemed so daunting at first, having the steps laid out for her made it helpful to grasp what needed to be accomplished.
With a love for flowers and plants, Dimitroff originally started her course wanting to open up her own brick and mortar plant shop, but she found herself unable to fully connect or feel inspired by the idea.
“I knew nothing about owning a business and that whole aspect of running a storefront, having employees, and with all the accounting… it just felt like I was way in over my head. I wasn’t really participating in the course as much, I hadn’t named my business or even purchased my domain,” she said. “I’m very big on aesthetics and building a brand, so one day when I was scrolling through Pinterest, I stumbled upon the idea of going mobile and I just continued down that rabbit hole and ended up finding the world of mobile flower trucks. That’s when everything started to really connect for me. All of a sudden I had a name for my business, I purchased my domain and I started participating in class and checking things off the list. Everything just started to snowball and that’s how Spill the Dirt Flower Truck was born.”
With her new side business started and the passion to drive her, Dimitroff began delivering her flowers to Hespler residents out of her personal car.
In December of 2020, Dimitroff’s husband found a 1959 GMC truck on Kijiji and the two purchased it right away and quickly named it “Andie.”
“It was a bit of a roller coaster. Andie was red before and I knew that I wanted to change it to pink, add custom shelving in the back and add in a zippered canvas to protect all the flowers,” she said. “It ended up taking a year to get it all done and so in the meantime I pivoted and started running around delivering everything from my car. I’m all about pivoting and problem solving when I needed to that’s exactly what I did.”
Knowing she wanted to eventually stop supplementing with wholesale flowers, Dimitroff and her husband set out to find their dream property to start their very own flower farm.
“My husband actually found this property and sent the link to me and I just knew it was my dream property. We came to Burford to see it but there was a bidding war and it got sold under conditions,” she said. “Eventually our realtor came back and told us the owners didn’t accept any of the offers and we ended up coming to see it again and in the end we got it. By the time we moved in and got everything figured out, it was early spring so I started with six flower beds and just did the basics. That year, I grew cosmos, zinnias, sunflowers, all the easy stuff I knew I could direct seed because I had never grown anything and didn’t want to overwhelm myself.”
That winter, Dimitroff continued learning and built herself an indoor growing setup to start her seeds. While she still supplements with wholesale flower during the off season, now that she has two seasons at her farm under her belt, Dimitroff has 43 beds and grows over 40 varieties of flowers.
The entrepreneur said that while she originally started with just doing pop-up events and partnering with local businesses and events, having the farm has allowed her to expand her services.
“I would go to different events for the day and pop up with the truck and now that’s expanded into bringing Andie to weddings, events, festivals and photoshoots,” she said. “As far as the flower farm goes, I have a flower stand at the end of my driveway which is open on Saturday and Sunday’s but when the dahlias start popping up, I’ll start opening the stand during the week as well. I also do workshops and ‘u-picks’ on select Sundays in the summer and I also have things like flower yoga and full moon ceremonies. It’s great because now I can partner with other small business female entrepreneurs and bring them in to teach their own things as well.”
With her side business finally taking off, Dimitroff recently decided to take a leap of faith and turn Spill the Dirt into her full time job.
“It kind of just got to the point where it was all a fine balance, you know? I was working and doing as much as I could outside of the restaurant, but it was time to flip everything around and give Spill the Dirt my undivided attention,” she said. “Because we doubled our growing area last fall, my husband and I ended up talking and we agreed that it was time so about a month ago now, I handed in my resignation at the restaurant. I bawled my eyes out because I was there for 14 years and they were like family. I don’t know any different than going in every day and seeing them so it was a huge moment for me.”
She said that when she looks back at where she started from and how far she’s come, she can’t help but be proud of herself.
“To look back at that first baby step where I said ‘okay, I’ve got this dream,’ and then even just solidifying the idea in my head and naming my business, it’s almost overwhelming to think of all those little things I did that led to this point,” she said. “It almost doesn’t feel real a lot of days and I can’t help but get emotional thinking about it. It’s definitely surreal but I’m so proud of myself for doing it. I can’t believe I have a job that’s just such a creative outlet for me.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
