By: Gavin Schweiger, Follow South Jersey Assistant Editor
FRANKLINVILLE — With a new year on the horizon, Rachel Anne Hess (who prefers and uses Anne as a last name), 35, took 13 pieces of paper and wrote resolutions on each of them, though she would only focus on one in 2026.
Each day for twelve days, she burned one of the papers, letting go of that intention. She wrote down intentions around her relationships, her children and her flower farm.
The practice is said to originate from the German “Rauhnächte,” translating to either “smoke nights” or “rough nights,” alluding to the dark winter nights between December 25 and January 6, or Epiphany. Burning the intentions is learning to let go and embrace what one ends up with.
The one Anne would open on New Year’s Day to set her focus for the year was around speaking and sharing her thoughts candidly.
One of the ways Anne is making good on her promise is by a 30-day challenge, “Showing Up Authentically Me,” where she posts off-the-cuff videos on Facebook to talk about her farm, vent, and reflect.
To start off, however, her thoughts mostly surrounded a Franklinville zoning board meeting on January 6.
The board voted on a proposed auto auction storage yard and parking on land owned by Copart Auto Auction. The land, directly neighboring Anne’s home, is zoned for residential and agricultural use.
While the zoning board unanimously denied the proposal last week, Anne worried her peaceful home and now flower farm would be changed forever.
“I missed my roots”
Anne owns Bits & Blooms Flower Farm, where she grows flowers to sell as bouquets and for weddings among other services. She also runs a private flower club for local women and mothers.
She started growing flowers in 2023 and before that she worked in marketing and had a large egg business, but for her, everything stemmed from horses.
Anne has been around horses since she was three years old and has been an on and off entrepreneur since 20, starting with a business retraining ex-racehorses. She also says that her passion for entrepreneurship and self-starting came from horses and the women in her life, and how they give her confidence.
“Ever since I was a young girl, I’ve always had this fascination with riding and connecting to a horse. Where there’s this unspoken communication and energy exchange,” Anne said. “I’ve always been surrounded by women that, they made something of themselves, even if it wasn’t like they weren’t financially wealthy or whatever. They were happy and at peace with their life. And they just kept going. And the common factor was always horses, like horses were always the staple.”
She had the opportunity to grow and expand her business when the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association’s (PTHA) nonprofit Turning for Home approached her with a partnership to rehabilitate racehorses and help find them new homes.
Anne grew the business while caring for her first son, getting to the point where she managed two barns and twenty horses among other duties.
“That’s a lot to manage for a young girl in her twenties with a four-year-old son at that,” Anne said.
The breaking point came when Anne left for a trip, only to come back to over $6,000 in lost materials and supplies due to a tropical storm. She liquidated the business after that, selling most of the horses. She still has a few horses like Huey, who she has owned since before starting her business.
There were years of new opportunities and struggling to make them fit in her life, including working as a marketer and then growing an egg business after the COVID-19 pandemic.
She got into cycles of starting new ventures and growing her involvement too much for her liking, much of it coming from it being difficult to say “no.” Each time she hit a breaking point, especially when working in marketing, she realized what she was missing.
“It made me realize I missed my roots. I missed the horses, I missed the grounding, I missed the little bit slower pace. I didn’t want to trade that for money. I just didn’t,” Anne said.
Flowers were different for Anne. In growing her first seeds, she felt like it was something she could do to ease her mind.
“I just kind of found something I could have for me again and not raising baby’s wiping butts and taking care of all these chickens,” Anne said.
As with her other businesses, she grew the flower farm from a hobby to something that consumes her. She poured through different resources and YouTube videos to learn about flowers and how to grow them, then in 2025, started to sell them through her Bits & Blooms business.
For Anne, it was a way to reconnect with nature and herself.
“It’s like you’re planting literal and figurative seeds of hope”
In 2025, Anne found that Copart Auto Auction put in a use variance application with the Franklin Township zoning board to use land neighboring her home and farm. If the use variance were approved, it would allow Copart to build the auction yard in the residential and agricultural zone.
Anne quickly took to social media to put the word out, concerned that the auction yard would threaten the peace, environment and value of her area of town.
“One thing I love so much about living where we live, is we are next to nothing,” Anne said in her first “Showing Up Authentically As Me” Facebook post on New Year’s Day, where she took a walk by the property up for rezoning. “If you’ve been following my stories and my other videos, that’s on the chopping block because Copart Auto Auction purchased all of this land behind me at auction.”
She broke up her first walk into multiple videos and posted them for three days and posted three more videos about her concerns until January 6, when the meeting happened.
The three-hour zoning board meeting saw many people speaking on the proposed auction yard.
Representatives from Copart Auto Auction presented their case, saying that the auction yard would have a minimal impact on the environment and its neighbors, hidden away from the public with a “narrow access point,” according to Paul Glietz, a planner with the state of New Jersey.
“It kind of meets that intent, that if you’re driving down the main road, you’re not going to notice this behind there,” Glietz said.
The argument was that Copart location would be a useful addition to the neighborhood, given the demand for car auctions. The zoning board members asked questions to clarify the state of the current property and the site plan, and potential impacts to environment and traffic, given that there would be trucks consistently moving cars in the area.
During the public comment period, residents and other business owners voiced their concerns about keeping lithium batteries on the property, flooding, cutting down the trees and lowering property values for neighbors.
Chris Konawel Sr., who owns National Auto Sales next-door to a Copart auction yard in Glassboro, spoke at the meeting. He talked about a pending superior court case his company, Konawel Realty Holdings LLC, has against Copart, where they allegedly altered their property without approval, causing hazardous water runoffs and damaging Konawel’s property.
Konawel spoke passionately about his experience with Copart as a company, and the operations around the Glassboro location that aren’t so hidden.
“I urge any of you to park on Grove Street in Glassboro, look at the trucks lined up,” Konawel said. “They got to bring 5,000 cars in, 5,000 cars got to come back out.”
Anne also spoke as the next-door neighbor to the property, where she voiced her own concerns.
“I’m all for progress, but not at the cost of the safety and health of our residents,” Anne said.
The zoning board unanimously voted to deny Copart’s application since the area is zoned residential. The vote elicited clapping and cheering from the crowd.
“I’m not sure we have a place in this town for that,” said planning board member Jim Ketcham.
Anne felt relieved at the outcome of the meeting, though she was anxious to speak and to wait for the verdict. She was also glad to see other residents speaking their mind and arguing against the auction yard.
Some, according to Anne, told her that she was the reason they knew about the zoning meeting.
With her neighboring lot staying as it is, and the threat of potential development now gone, Anne is continuing to work on and grow her flower farm. She began winter planting, building a chicken coop, and cleaning the snow from the latest major storm.
“It’s just like a small, simple act where you know,” Anne said. “It’s like you’re planting literal and figurative seeds of hope. And that’s what started me down this path anyway. So it just feels fitting.”
Anne is continuing to post about her life and business, and speaking her mind when she feels it’s appropriate.
