One of North Dakota's most recognizable small family businesses is closing after nearly two decades of creating handmade products that drew national attention and serving as a blueprint for farm-based companies.

Pipestem Creek, based on Ann and Ernie Hoffert's rural Carrington farm, has done business with lifestyles guru Martha Stewart and her various ventures since 1996. Ann Hoffert appeared with Stewart on television in 2002. The business also has been featured in national magazines.

The company sells gifts and decorations made from such things as sunflower heads, grains, grasses and various seeds and flowers.

"For 18 years, I was able to take products from the North Dakota earth and share them with the rest of the country, and get national attention for North Dakota as I did it," said Hoffert, 60, who is retiring.

She plans to spend more time with family and friends and other interests, including promoting birding in the region.

"I need a new chapter in my life," she said.

Hoffert sells wholesale and retail products through catalogs and online. In recent years she has focused on retail.

"We've made the decision not to take orders of 4,000 pieces of handmade things," she said. "That is just too much."

Pipestem Creek currently has two full-time and three part-time employees. At times, up to 25 people have worked at the business, which is based in four old granaries and a historic train depot. One of the granaries serves as a gift shop that Hoffert said has drawn visitors from around the country.

"We've been so fortunate to have kind of celebrity (status)," she said. "We've gotten a lot of publicity … we've had quite a bit of traffic."

Pipestem Creek was an early member of Pride of Dakota, a program started by the state Agriculture Department in 1985 to promote products made by North Dakota businesses.

"It's an outstanding company," said Chuck Flemming, marketing coordinator for the Agriculture Department. "They really contributed a lot to the state of North Dakota. It's certainly an example of how you can make an on-farm business work."

Flemming said Pipestem Creek also "had the great capability of getting the message out."

"They were always promoting the Pride of Dakota program," he said. It now has 420 member companies.

Hoffert said selling the business she and her husband own was not practical because it is based on their 4,000-acre grain farm, which they will continue to operate. It also houses a seed business and a birding business that they will continue to run.

And not just anyone would have been able to take over the business "because of the learning curve with sunflowers and all of the other natural materials," she said.

"The reason we had such success in the national marketplace - One is that I'm really determined and one is that we have a niche market," Hoffert said. "We make our products out of materials that no one else has, because we grow them. I don't believe right now that we have anyone who is a national competitor."

A company auction scheduled Oct. 25 will sell Pipestem Creek's inventory and two of the five historic buildings.

Hoffert said she has debated closing the business for three years, and finally decided it's time to move on.

"This is a hard decision for me because Pipestem Creek is so important to me," she said. "It afforded us a good lifestyle (and) I got to be a celebrity, which was kind of fun. I had a wonderful lifestyle. I got to work in nature on my own farm."