Employee Name:  David Schreier

Numbers of years at Pahl’s:  Nine

Briefly describe your duties at Pahl’s:  I was hired to help customers in the selection, care and maintenance of the tree and shrub varieties we offer.  I also help customers select perennial plant varieties to accompany their tree and shrub purchases.  I prefer a natural approach to a planting design.  The sand lot at the children’s play area is often used to sketch a landscape design.  It is not unusual to have a customer’s whole family on their hands and knees drawing in the sand the ‘possible’ location of the trees and shrubs they are purchasing for their landscape.  I help customers select vegetable varieties, plants and seeds, throughout the growing season.  I also identify plant diseases and mysterious plant material. 

What is the most is the most rewarding part of your job?  Working with frustrated customers, taking the time to figure out what went wrong with their near dead tree or shrubs.  I ask a lot of questions.

Tell us about your family:  Presently at home, wife Rebecca and our three children, Scylla, Charybdis, and Schahriah.  Our children were litter-mates.

What is your favorite outdoor activity?  I have ‘enjoyed’ horticulture, particularly gardening, since childhood.  I have always perceived it as work – there is nothing pleasurable, relaxing or rewarding about it.  It is frustrating with a relentless battle with weeds, hungry bugs and rodents.  I have learned to plant later in the season, around July 1st, to have a bug-free crop.  Rodents, mice and squirrels, and larger varmints are trapped or shot.  I coax deer away from the garden with cracked corn.  We feed them year-round and it works.  The younger ones get in the garden, which is fenced, and stomp around.  I have accepted that the row-covers I put over the soil will have holes in it, from little sharp hooves, no matter what I do.  We have an orchard on the north side of our property and it is enjoyable to grow fruit – apples, pears, plums and cherries.  I am going to give peaches a try in 2013.  We planted a few University of Minnesota grape varieties three years ago.  When I was a kid, no one grew grapes.  They are the easiest things to grow.  The Japanese Beetles are a real pest on the vines and plum trees. 

What do you miss most about being a kid:  The taste of farm raised pork. 

If you could learn to do anything, what would it be?  Grafting.  It is an ancient art that I have not yet taken a stab at.

What was the first thing bought with own money?  Shot gun shells for a 12 gauge shot gun that was given to me when I was a pre-teen. 

Which celebrity do you get mistaken for?  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.