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The Merc is Officially OPEN!

This one has all the shoutouts.

Penning down my thoughts after the whirlwind week and weekend. I’m still blown away by the support and encouragement we got from both locals and from afar. Thank you for birthing this idea into reality with me!

Last week was absolutely bonkers, last month someone from UMLF (our lender) stopped by and the space was basically empty, I was still waiting on my fridge and freezer and inventory hadn’t been ordered yet. I had my doubts that we could pull all of this off in such a short amount of time. Once we got our tables and shelves from our new friend Ben Larsen in Cedar City, things started flowing into motion. I started placing my wholesale orders, boxes and boxes were coming in almost daily.

Before and during photos to mark our progress

Then the fridge and freezer got picked up by Zach and our neighbor Joey on 10/30. Longest drive day ever for Zach as he did this “errand” on his way home from work, meaning after a full work day and early morning commute, driving to north SLC, then schlepping it all home and getting back well after 9pm. The following day, Halloween, we were making plans to get things unloaded after the trick or treaters were done, but my friend Bob recruited his dairy men to come right over after their shift and they manhandled the units into their rightful places in the store while the sun was still out. What a relief!

We got the units plugged in and the fridge started cooling right away, the freezer was not cooling, so a call into the repair folks was made. I have PTSD from my window replacement scenario earlier this year so any call to service people sends me into a spiral that the request will take forever to fulfill. Luckily I was proven wrong, made the call on a Thursday, and the came by Monday to complete the job. Way to be efficient Peterson Refrigeration and Appliance!

A morning’s work to get the freezer running
Half a beef loaded in
Inching closer

Once the freezer was up and running I got our beef delivery arranged and Megan from SunnySide Up Pastures came on Wednesday. All this week I’m also working in my drive up north to visit my dad and get last minute supplies, baking or making one or two something’s everyday, having labels printed and adding them to my products as they file in, making pricing tags, putting inventory into our POS system and thinking new things as I go. This for me is being in the entrepreneurial zone. Working for hours and hours without noticing how the time is warping by. I thrive here even though it sounds kind of manic. Don’t recommend for the long term, but if you have a deadline and know about how to work backward from it effectively it can be a powerful tool. Every night I went to bed utterly exhausted from the physical and mental demand, and I loved it.

Friday I did the last few pick ups, went to the bank, then we had a little chat back at home base with a pork guy who is just getting started and looking for a market like us. We’re not quite ready for pork yet but he’s our kind of farmer and has similar visions for the county and people’s overall health. Quick insider info, Sanpete county is the second poorest county in Utah, so access to all things including healthy food is pretty scant. Robert did leave us with a large cache of pork to sample and we are eating like royalty.

Saturday was our big grand opening day! I had only just found the previous week that out our county has a chamber of commerce, so some of the ladies came out and did a ribbon cutting ceremony. We got to network a little and I’m joining the chamber as it’s just getting started. Our neighbors and biggest fans were some of our first customers. We’re glad they shared in the special moment with us! The day flew by with a pretty steady stream flowing in, sharing stories and memories of this place, and enjoying some camaraderie with one another. It blew us away as far as any expectations. Everyone participated, Camden and Natalie did most of the register work, Zach entertained his coworkers who came down for the occasion, my VA a caregiver counselor came all the way from SLC just to see this vision come to fruition (he and I have been meeting for the past year + talking about all of this alongside all I do in my role as my dad’s caregiver). I am still very touched by his kindness.

Sunday and Monday were mostly rest days and now we’re gearing up for another weekend of food and neighbor time. Our business hours going forward are Fridays and Saturdays from 11am – 5pm (or by chance, someone has come in “by chance” everyday since except Sunday and we love and welcome that!). I got my food handler’s permit today and Zach and Natalie will be getting theirs so we can serve more prepared foods legally, the menu will be changing weekly and we hope to add some grab and go meals to the mix. We’re just getting started and are so excited about all the possibilities that lie ahead. THANK YOU to everyone who has helped and to those who came and will continue coming, for making this a success and believing in our vision. We know deep in our bones that we were placed in this place at this time to do something with The Merc. We hope you feel that energy when you step through our doors.

Ribbon cutting, sure do love these small town gestures
Before
During
After

South Star

It’s been 12 years since my mom breathed her last earthly breath. Today felt “off” in a lot of ways and when I finally recognized why I went a lot easier on myself and let my family know too. You can reset the day however many times you need and at any given moment. I’m also going to sleep before 10 on account of the time change so tomorrow me can be ready for the earlier sunrise.

It feels okay to write about what this south star concept means to me now that my dad is in the depths of his dementia and will never read or comprehend these words. This is in no disrespect to either of them I want to make that clear, but theirs was a marriage with a lot of turmoil. It was like two different marriages under one roof. My dad lived in a lot of darkness and depression for the decade after she died and before he got sick. She was the love of his life. Since he got dementia, he still thinks she’s alive, and it really works out better this way for all of us. My mom on the other hand wanted out. She voiced it regularly the last 5 years of her life. She felt stuck and tired and run down from holding up the marriage on her own due to the family disease of alcoholism. My dads raging alcoholism let him live in a fantasy world where everything was perfect, while she lived much of her life in misery – overworking to pay the always late bills, keeping the household afloat, martyring herself to the cause until it literally killed her.

I’ve forgiven them both in so many ways. And the biggest one is using their example as my south star. Whenever there is something out of harmony or reminiscent of my childhood growing up in an alcoholic home I don’t have to go resolve it using that same old beaten path. I can chart a new one and try something different. I can use any number tools that 12 step work has given me. I always have options and people to support me. I don’t have to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results (that’s the definition of insanity).

Don’t like a yelling house? Don’t yell and instead take your anger outside into nature. I screamed at the sky today and my throat still hurts. Don’t like passive aggressive behavior? Stand up to it and call it out for what it is in the moment. Ask for clarification and demand rigorous honesty. Be transparent with your kids about serious topics like money, sex, and addictions. Tell them where you’ve struggled and why. I didn’t get a North Star growing up but that doesn’t mean the next generation has to repeat the same traumas I experienced.

Gosh I miss my mom with such a huge part of my heart, but I wouldn’t have learned nearly all that I have in her absence. Her death pushed me to seek out healthy relationships with so many wonderful lifelong women friends and mentors that I know I wouldn’t have dared seeking out had she not died. I wouldn’t have the life I have today if she was still here, resentful and bitter. She loved a lot of things in her life earth-side, us kids above all else, being a grandma even if only for a short while, God, and even my dad despite his addiction. I don’t know how much she loved herself though, and that is another south star. Loving myself means I have love to offer others without reservation or judgement. She was a good example in modeling a Christ like love and for that I am grateful. Grief can me mixed and messy and this is what that powerful loss means to me 12 years later

A Hard Day

One of the hardest of recent memory. I moved my dad again today, not because I wanted to or even had a choice. His facility in Payson sent an eviction notice a couple weeks ago, apparently they and Medicaid can’t get their $hit together to facilitate payment smoothly. The house manager, Chris had called me repeatedly asking what I could do about it and my answer has consistently been a big ole nothing. I mean I’m doing our part, paying into Medicaid via my dad’s spend down and paying the facility agreed upon lower rent that Medicaid is then supposed to cover the difference. My dad was evicted because he is poor. Plain and simple.

We have a Medicaid case manager that I’ve been in touch with through all of this. She asked me a couple weeks ago coinciding with the eviction notice if I would be willing to move my dad out of Orchard View and into a facility that was easier to work with. I said yes and let her steer. She found the new place, booked a mover, discussed the new agreements and kept me well informed. She also told me that Chris had been verbally abusive to her so she was no longer communicating with him or Orchard View (OV). So I had some trepidation about retrieving my dad from there this morning.

When we got to OV this morning (we being the kids and I thanks to a random Monday off school) there was a palatable feeling of sadness amongst my dad’s care staff. Chris had excuses for his behavior, but I don’t buy it and maybe he’ll sue us but there’s literally nothing I can do to make up for what my dad couldn’t afford to pay while we waited and waited on Medicaid, don’t ever get old with no financial security it’s truly a nightmare and had my dad not had an advocate he’d likely be living on the streets.

Back to the main event though…There was lots of holding hands and comfort and some tears. He really does make an impact once people spend a good measure of time with him. He was also in a great mood, at one point of complete lucidity he said, “Let’s go back to Colorado”. This broke my heart wide open. This man rarely acknowledges that we’re even in a different state when we get him for outings despite all the Utah license plates, the landscape confusion and an interstate he’s unfamiliar with. I think maybe he was anticipating a drive today and maybe the long road trip we took when we first moved him to Utah just over a year ago. This is all conjecture, as his next sentence was, “I loved that song.” So who really knows.

So we get to his new facility with some of his things, still waiting to hear from the movers for his furniture. They’re surprised we’re there and aside from the vacant room are not aware that today was move in day…great. They let us unload and say to wait for Mikayla to come back from lunch. We unload while my dad sits and waits in unfamiliar surroundings, and waiting is just about the worst for him as it begins to get him agitated. I decide to run to the store with him for a few needed items and to break up the waiting. As the kids and I are grabbing our late lunch I get a call from the new facility’s owner asking all the questions and wondering when we planned on moving in. I said we were halfway moved in already and today would be great, in fact you’re our only option at this point. So we hurry back to the new place, meet Mikayla, sign a load of new paperwork, hand over a large check, all with my dad waiting once again, getting up to pace around a few times and having his mood sour further. When it came time for us to leave the movers still hadn’t been in touch, we were running late for a parent teacher conference back home, and dad was coming unraveled. He asked why we had to leave, could he come with me, why did he have to stay there, nobody was going to care for him. All of it and all of the guilt. I made our exit quick instead of lingering since any answer I was giving at this point was only making him more agitated.

The first thing I did when I got back in my car was call the movers, they were indeed still planning on today, their morning job was much longer than originally anticipated. Fortunately their dispatch called me several more times through the evening to let me know their progress. I think things finally got delivered by about 8pm. Good thing dad rarely goes to bed early. Megan, our Medicaid coordinator touched base while I was on my evening walk and I think is genuinely looking out for dad’s best interest. It’s going to be a rough few weeks adjusting to the new place if past experience has anything to teach us. I’m completely emotionally exhausted, am super grateful for my kid’s help with the physical parts, and at a loss for yet another example of a broken system failing us. It shouldn’t be this way. Yet here we are, the hard day is over and we get a new day tomorrow hopefully with far fewer obstacles.

Slowly inching toward a big goal 🐢

We’re opening a store! I know, I know, I said this months and months ago. Everything here in the middle of rural Utah just takes longer. A broken window took five months to replace because the only window repair in our county said, “Fayette?, we just don’t go out there that often.” They are half an hour away, I’m not way out on the edge of the earth though sometimes it does feel that way. Anyhoo, that much time lapse gives this overthinking mind too much to worry about. It was a big buildup preparing into the summer months then a slow march from there.

When we were in Colorado at the beginning of the summer, Zach and I were tasked with giving a presentation to Utah Microloan Fund, a nonprofit that helps start ups like us with no history of business financing. In the lead up to this task, I had to submit business plans, cost projections, all the legal documentation to prove that I was a serious business and this isn’t just a hobby or far fetched dream. The good news, we got approved shortly after giving our presentation!

So now with funding in place, I’m starting to order things like shelves, tables, a fridge and freezer, and soon even some inventory! Not setting an opening date until some of those things arrive and the space feels more ready, but I’m excited and eager to liftoff.

This gets to the heart of our fast paced, instant gratification consumer minds. I’ve long let go of Amazon-speed expectations, even they take a week to deliver here. Maybe it’s divine timing, and that means slower, not at my harried and frantic pace. I’m finally coming to accept my human limitations and just go with the flow a lot more these days. The chickens are coming into egg laying, so perhaps they were setting the pace all along. (Yes, there will be pasture eggs for sale as available!)

The garden was a big flop this year, but it’s our first time in a new climate and with the big blank slate we started with, just building soil is sufficient for now. The squash bugs didn’t kill everything so we’ll at least have some pumpkins and other gourds for the fall. I might get a handful of tomatoes if they ever decide to ripen. The chickens are enjoying the ground cover and they fertilize out there almost daily, so we’ll take the wins where we can.

Go baby watermelon, go!

We met some fellow Coloradans in Spring City who have a store similar to what we envision and I’m beginning to pepper them with some of my work flow and production questions. The key here for me is to not try to do everything. I need some recruits for baked goods and for produce (did you read about my paltry garden?)

Putting it all out here is vulnerable and somewhat intimidating. Getting the funding and talking more about it makes it real. I’m accountable to someone(s). It’s terrifying in the best way. I guess that’s how I know we’re on the right track. Thanks for encouraging me along the way, we really are better together.

Memory Inventory

I have this huge modern age aversion to organizing my photos. I’ll do it, but my back has to up against the wall, whether pictures are busting out of their development envelopes like in the good old days of film, or in this case, my iCloud is full and I need to backup or pay for larger storage. I loathe this task. The last time I did it was in 2018 if that is any indication of my aversion. I have 8000 photos from the last 5 years that need (and indeed have) a home to land in that is not cloud based.

This task brings up all kinds of existential questions for me. What if I put these pictures on my external hard drive and no one ever looks at them, again? I went through the majority of my parent’s photo albums when we were clearing out their house in 2021 and honestly, most of the albums ended up in the trash. My dad took a lot of photos on long work trips of the process of putting up electrical lines across the western U.S. After looking at so many, you get the idea of what was involved and don’t need to sift through the whole box to discover any more. It was a core memory for him though and when we drove across Colorado and moved him to Utah, he was actively reminiscing about that process and I had no doubt that even given his decreased mental state, he did play a part in electrifying that portion of I-70. Obviously it held meaning for him, but what of our future generations will a box full of the same photos of strangers and heavy equipment mean to anyone else? Maybe being a nomad for so long made me less sentimental about holding onto things. Clearing out their house did the same for me. But life captured on a phone is somehow different in my brain.

So now I’m cataloguing our photos of the long traveling journey and some of the time before that up until present day, I’m not going to make physical albums or hang photos everywhere like I have done in the past. They were memories made and reminders of fun times had, but I documented the journey right here in this blog and on social media, I got what I needed out of it, it’s time to free up the space on my phone to make space for new moments that call for documentation. For someone like me who needs those visual cues of what I was doing in September of 2020 for example, removing pictures from my phone feels like I’m erasing my memory. Same goes for emails and texts but those have to be archived or deleted as well. For someone whose family member has dementia this feels very sensitive and tender and if I put that memory somewhere else, will I ever go to access it again? What if I forget?

I was talking about this whole photo conundrum with a neighbor a few months ago, how when we were growing up our parents took photos 12 or 24 at a time over a span of several months or a year. They were documenting the really special moments or highlights of a trip. They’d come home and get the film developed and put the pictures in an album or a box, this didn’t even happen all the time. Sometimes the film never even made it to the developer. My family didn’t have videos or need to be archivists to document family life. Once a year portrait studios were more my mom’s jam. In my own little family Natalie was born on the end of the film era, so she has several albums I put together when I was more diligent and less over documenting of her early years. Camden came in 2010, well into the digital age, and he has maybe one or two physical albums to take into adulthood, the rest of his early years are on CDs that where can you even go to look at anymore, or on Facebook which will that even be relevant to look at in his future. It’s so strange how quickly everything changed once we all had cellphones and the ability to take millions of photos and videos of every little thing.

80’s me with mom and sis

I guess in summary I’m realizing I need to treat my unused photos a little more blasé and with a little more detachment. They are not the be-all-end-all part of an experience, like if I didn’t take the picture did it even happen? Yes, I get enjoyment out of the process of documenting, but if the archival process is going to be such and arduous chore, maybe I can edit a little more along the way and not go five more years ignoring, dancing around, and subverting this notice…