My Mail Carrier...

My mail carrier came to my house this morning, around 11am. I was still in my pajamas and she was hand delivering a certified letter from a bill collector. I signed as she pet Nali. A connection was made. She told me how just 48 hours before, she had her own dog put down by the vet. Last year, about this time, her 2 year old pup had been shot, point blank in the head, by pheasant hunters annoyed by her presence. Fortunately, the shot had gone through her upper snout and out the other side, missing her eyes and brain. She had lived through the ordeal and was seemingly healthy… until about a week ago. She became lethargic and her owner took her to the vet where she had remained for 5 days, getting gradually worse. A couple of days ago, her pupils and gums turned yellow, suggesting jaundice. Blood tests revealed an inoperable illness and the autopsy and x-rays suggest that there had been a metal fragment in her snout from last year’s shooting that made it into her blood stream and traveled to her liver, slicing it and causing irreparable damage. The loss of her loved one was still raw as she rubbed Denali’s head and snuggled in for a lick on her cheek, commenting on the beauty of Nali’s blue eyes. As she left, she warned me not to let Denali out at night because of the coyotes. 

This is my story...

I owned my own restaurant and bakery. It was one of those crazy dreams that I had. It seemed like a long shot, buying a successful 30 year old business. As it turns out, it was.

In late 2011, the stock market was going crazy, my 401k was sinking, and there were no teaching jobs available in my area so I was working as an Advertising Sales Rep for the local newspaper. I decided to cash in my teacher retirement and used it as the down payment to purchase the Fresh Sourdough Express Bakery & Café in Homer, Alaska. The only way it was possible was for it to be owner financed, creatively. Let me tell you, from experience, creative financing is never a good thing. I had to make a lot of concessions in order for the deal to go through. I should have walked away, but it seemed as though these successful business entrepreneurs were trying to help me. Again, note to self, successful business entrepreneurs are trying to help themselves, not you.

So, I agreed. I agreed to give them every penny in my bank account in October, 2011. I agreed to give them any money that I might happen to inherit or otherwise acquire for the foreseeable future. I agreed to work April through August, the summer of 2012, for a salary of $2,500/month while working every position in the restaurant for 100 hours/week. I agreed to take over the business 100% on September 1, 2012, with no money in the bank and over $7,000 in inventory to pay off. I agreed to pay $2,500/month September, 2012, through May, 2013, and then $10,500/month June through October. I agreed.

September 1, 2012, was a heady day for me. I was a business owner. 100%. The bank owned my car, I rented my house, and now I’d mortgaged my future on a wing and a prayer. All of that and I was now an Empty Nester, and had been for not quite two weeks. That was a lot. I took a deep breath and stepped forward into my future.

The Fresh Sourdough Express Bakery & Café had not been open during the winter months in over 15 years. The previous owners lived in Hawaii and just ran the restaurant/bakery as a summer business, taking advantage of the tourism dollars and spending them in Hawaii. It was because of that and some of their extremist environmental views, that they had alienated many of the locals. Not a week went by that I didn’t have locals telling me that it was the first time they had been in the restaurant in years, but they had come in when they heard it was under new ownership.

The restaurant is located on the far side of Beluga Lake, which is on the way to the Spit. That means that it is prime real estate in the summer months since the Spit is the hub of the tourism industry in Homer. However, the Spit shuts down in the winter and then no one has a reason to  cross Beluga Lake. My prime real estate was a ghost town by October 1^st. Business quickly dropped by 90%. I cut staff, began waiting tables myself, and struggled to make the $2,500/month payment, which was now over 30% of my monthly income.

Adult Baking Class

I advertised in the newspaper and on the radio. I sponsored school events and non-profit fundraisers. I started running daily Blue Plate Lunch Specials, Friday Night Pizza nights and Saturday night Southern Comfort Food specials.

During my “training period” that summer, I was never taught much-needed managerial skills such as plate costing, menu development, bulk food purchasing power, business bookkeeping, or needed certifications and licensing procedures. I taught myself these things using the old fashioned “trial & error” method which was costly, in more ways than one.

Teen Baking Class

I learned that I was not shrewd enough to be a business owner. I followed the rules too closely. For example, the previous owners did not have a single person on staff who was legally certified to serve alcohol, including the owners themselves. I followed the letter of the law, paying for my employees to get the necessary certifications. I never re-used leftover food from catering jobs because that goes against health regulations… after watching the previous owners repurpose salmon filets from a catered self-serve buffet into fish cakes served in the restaurant the following week. The list goes on and on. But, being honest costs money. Money I didn’t have.

I also learned that the owners had sold the business, via owner financing, at least twice before and then taken it back when the tenants couldn’t follow through on the terms. Coincidence? Probably not. I was determined not to be the third!

By the end of November, I was deep in debt and considering closing the doors. A local man who was a regular customer offered to buy into the business as a 50% partner. He had been a commercial fisherman who had suffered a severe head injury on the job, received a considerable settlement, and was looking for something to invest both his money and life in. I agreed. On January 1^st, one handshake and a personal check later, I was able to make payroll and keep the doors open. There was never a signed contract.

By March, I had a local attorney write up a contract for my business partner to sign, but he refused, saying he would have his own contract written up. He never did. Meanwhile, he told me that he was looking into obtaining financing to purchase the entire business and property outright from the owners so that we would not have to answer to anyone. The deal should be ready to move on before our first large payment of $10,500 was due June 15. As it turned out, whether due to the brain injury or some other reason, he was difficult to work with and eventually decided that he didn’t want to be a part of the business. He told me this on June 4^th, saying that he was going to start his own business. I was devastated. We had no money in the bank. The winter had been hard on us and we owed a lot of vendors a lot of money. Now, it was just me again and I had a 10.5k payment due in 11 days. The weight of it all nearly knocked me over.

Teen Baking Class

I hated the restaurant. It had served me nothing but heartache and long hours. I had spent over a year married to it and it was tearing me apart. I wanted to walk away. I just wanted to be a teacher. I had so enjoyed the cooking classes that I had taught to local teens and adults during the winter months. I didn’t want to be a business owner. I didn’t want to be my own boss. I didn’t want to be responsible for others’ paychecks. I just wanted my own life back.

My kitchen and front of house managers wouldn’t let me give up that easily. They believed in me and they believed in my business. We decided to have a three-day BBQ, Friday-Sunday, outside in our picnic area… a sort of fundraiser for the restaurant, serving Birch-smoked BBQ chicken and my fabulous Potato Salad. My employees saved me. We would be open another month. We made the payment, 5 days late, but we made it.

Being as deep in debt as I now was, almost 50k, I struggled to keep the vendors at bay for another month, knowing that they would be getting nervous as summer went on and they didn’t get paid up to date. I made July’s payment, barely, but continued to sink. I honestly don’t know why I couldn’t make it work. I think I just got so far behind during the winter months that I never could get caught up. I also think that the numbers I had been told about previous years’ income and expenses had been padded. That, and money hadn’t been used for appropriate fees and licenses, in addition to some other practices that I probably shouldn’t go into here. Anyway, it all added up to me being too honest and forthright to run a profitable business.

August was the end. My main food supplier cut me off. I got behind on employee taxes. I couldn’t pay my August 15^th payment and there was no money for payroll on the 19^th. I sought the advice of an attorney and was advised not to pay anyone anything, if I couldn’t pay everyone everything. I honestly didn’t see it coming until around August 12^th. I still thought I could pull it off. I could make it another month, another 2 weeks, even. I was so close to making it, to turning the corner.

My bestie, Vicki, was in town visiting me at the time. She and Lori, my other bestie, and I were all sitting in my living room Wednesday night, August 14^th, discussing my options. At least I had some. First, if I closed the restaurant, I would be unemployed. Second, I would owe a dozen vendors in the local area and my name would be trashed because of nonpayment, making it very difficult to find a job. Add to that the fact that I was not going to be able to pay my 20-some employees for the past two weeks of work. I’d just ruined my own life that I’d worked so hard to carve out in Homer, Alaska. I would have to leave town, quietly and quickly. It was not an easy decision to accept, and one that I own with a heaviness known only to me.

I called a meeting with my managers Friday morning at 10am, the same time that my attorney would be calling my landlords to let them know that I was unable to make payment and would be turning the business back over to them effective immediately. It was a tearful goodbye with my managers and I left my keys with them, trying to reassure them that the landlords would do the right thing and keep the business going.

I went home and packed or sold everything I owned until I was left with nine boxes to ship in addition to what would fit into my Jeep with my faithful pup. I was so fortunate to have Vicki there to help me, physically and emotionally, as I packed up my Alaskan dream. I put her on the plane to go home on Sunday night and I left Homer Monday morning, beginning an eight day road trip to Texas, to live with her until I could get on my feet.

If I ever have a tombstone, it could very appropriately say, “She never wondered, ‘What if?’”

The 320

The Kysar Farms property in North Dakota actually consists of five separate pieces of land, totalling 1,162 acres, within about a 4 mile radius and only accessible via well-worn, dusty (or muddy, depending on the weather) county roads. They are named according to their size, in acres. For example, the home and lodge are located on the 160.

I’ve been to the 320 twice before, once with my Uncle Bud and once with my cousin, Kurt. Both times, we were in a pick-up truck and just drove straight across the property on a brush-hog path. Both times, the conversation centered around the lack of wildlife on the property as compared to the others. We’re not sure why, but the 320 is noticeably bereft of birds, pheasants in particular. Even though there are some mature trees and viable habitat cover, especially in the area of the original homestead, and the property is bordered on two sides by cropland (providing plenty of food for birds), it’s still a wildlife wasteland.

The property definitely has a different aura from the others, if a property can have an aura. It’s mysteriously melancholic winds blow through the tall grass with whispers of a bygone era. Bordered on the south side by an abandoned school house and on the north side by a century-old cemetery, this unassuming plot of land surely has stories to tell.

The silos still stand, four of them in all, as if they are simply patiently waiting for this year’s harvest to fill them up. They will stand empty again this year.

Backed by a double row of mature trees, some twisted by hard winters and strong winds, the silos and pump house are all that remain of the original homestead. The rest of the property is rugged, with buttes that provide stunning vistas of a part of North Dakota steeped in a tradition of farming. The land itself is rocky and uneven, undeniably providing a daily struggle to maintain crops and a constant search for water. Very little of the 320 was ever actually farmed. Most has always been left wild to the winds of time.

Coyotes have left their evidence behind, in the form of a lost cow’s carcass from a couple of years back, and, more recently, flattened grass where they have bedded down for the night and traces of scat scattered around the entire 320 acres. But, Denali and I didn’t even see a coyote that afternoon as we blazed new trails across the property on Big Red. Not a bird, not a field mouse, not a deer, not an animal anywhere. It might have been unsettling in its lack of life, but we found peace in its solitude. Bordered on two sides by active cropland and the other two sides by farmland populated with cattle, this isolated section of land is reserved for hunting. There is a kind of quiet justice in that.

Upon exploring the abandoned school house to the south, we found a two-story, four-room school with blackboards on three sides of each room with the fourth side being floor to ceiling windows. There were electrical outlets giving away the secret that it couldn’t have been abandoned terribly long.

Upon further research, I found out that Cherry Butte Consolidated School was built in 1913, three years after the town of Regent was founded with a population greater than 200. Consolidated schools were a new concept at the time, replacing the lacking education offered in rural one-room school houses. Students had to travel many miles to attend school here, but classes were larger and teachers better trained. Transportation was provided for the students via horse and buggy.

The main intent of the Consolidated School concept was to provide an education for country kids that was equal to a city education. Unfortunately, shortly after Regent’s peak population hit 405 in 1950, farming methods became more mechanized, land was consolidated, and traditional homesteads were abandoned along with the Cherry Butte School.

The school yard is now overgrown but the metal playground equipment stands strong as a reminder of the strength and resolve engendered in rural America.

The cattle in the adjoining pasture are curious and eager reminders that progress has its victors as well as its victims.

On our way home, Denali and I stopped at the cemetery bordering the north side of the property. Knee to waist high grass has long since buried any grave markers. The only tell-tale signs that it’s even a cemetery are the rusty iron gate and the fact that this small plot of fenced-off land isn’t harvested. There is something innately sad about a cemetery that’s been forgotten. Perhaps the spirits of the residents there now spend their days roaming the 320, since it’s the only peaceful, unharvested property for several miles. Perhaps that is where the overwhelming sense of melancholy comes from.