New venture prompts owner to sell community landmark
Leslie Person Ryan, center, stands with her employees Jackie Mendez, left, and Evelyn Guzman inside the Letter Perfect Stationery. Ms. Person Ryan is selling the Montecito store and is pursuing a new venture with the new Santa Barbara Agriculture & Farm Education Foundation.
When Leslie Person Ryan decided to open a stationery store in Montecito, she did her homework — hours of research on the Internet and talking to people knowledgeable about the field, including a representative of the prestigious Crane stationery company.
“I even went to a two-day training session offered by Crane, where I learned the proper way to word everything for birth announcements, wedding invitations, engagements and anniversaries. Every kind of announcement has to have the correct etiquette,” she told the News-Press.
“I was raised on good stationery, but I knew nothing about starting a business.”
Ms. Person Ryan was also advised to consult with a local group of local businessmen, one of whom advised her in no uncertain terms: “Don’t do it. You’ll never make it.”
Fortunately, she ignored his advice and opened Letter Perfect on Coast Village Road in 1984. It was an immediate success, and for 38 years it has been a landmark in the community.
Now Ms. Person Ryan has decided to sell the business and take a new turn in her colorful life as the founder and CEO of the Santa Barbara Agriculture & Farm Education Foundation.
“My goal is to provide community health, education and food security through organic and regeneratively grown agriculture. I guess you could say I’m going back to my roots, pun intended,” said Ms. Person Ryan, who grew up on a 1,000-acre lemon ranch in Upland.
Her passion for farming was re-kindled when the Montecito debris flow in 2018 forced her to close Letter Perfect and relocate to Summerland temporarily.
“I realized that the small community lacked a grocery store or supermarket. Summerland was a food desert. Residents had to drive to other places to stock their pantries, or they relied on processed and mostly fried foods on a daily basis,” she said. “There was no fresh food available.”
The innovative entrepreneur took it upon herself to solve the problem by setting up the Sweet Wheel Farm & Flowers cart in front of the shop on Lillie Avenue and sold produce mostly grown in the garden at her home next door.
“I named it Sweet Wheel,” said Ms. Person Ryan, who created the eye-catching displays by hand every morning “ to make sure that each item was as fresh as it could get.”
She has named her new venture Sweet Wheel Summerland Farm, and its
headquarters is a 6.84-acre farm on a hilltop in the beachside community.
“We are different than any farm because we change the nutrition of Santa Barbara veterans and food-fragile families with our regeneratively farmed food,” said Ms. Person Ryan. “Our farming, active veteran and education projects are at the heart of our farm. We support Santa Barbara County veterans by providing healthy, organically grown fruits and vegetables for the free veterans’ weekly breakfast and 600 meals three times a year on Veterans’ Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“Our nonprofit program delivers healthy farm food anonymously to any Summerland citizen or family, promising that medically fragile residents and struggling low-income families are cared for and have access to organic and nutritious fruits and locally grown vegetables.”
Among her other lofty goals and programs are creating a community green belt fire break for Summerland and providing food in case of an emergency, farm education in Orcutt and Summerland, and saving heirloom and non-GMO seeds.
“Rather than pulling the crop before its full life cycle is over, we ensure that we are following the full cycle of nature,” Ms. Person Ryan said. “By allowing our crops to go to seed, this provides us with the reassurance that our farm will thrive the next season.
“We are especially proud of educating our next generation of farmers. We hope to have goats and chickens on the farm soom.”
Farmland is disappearing at an alarming rate, according to Ms. Person Ryan.
“We like Santa Barbara Permaculture’s analogy of healthy and food resilience, likening local farms as beads on a necklace ensuring food security,” she said. “We are on a mission to create a solution of close-looped agriculture systems for Santa Barbara County promoting technology on an environmentally sensitive farm.”
email: mmcmahon@newspress.com
FYI
For more information about the purchase of Letter Perfect or the Santa Barbara Agriculture & Farm Education Foundation, email personryan@aol.com.
