2020: The Season Finale

I was looking back in my newsletters to see what I had written about this time last year. As I scrolled past 8 pages of email entries with titles like "Postponed Intro to Sourdough Course" and "Cancelled Intro to Beekeeping Course", I found the email I had written this week last year talking about how excited I was for 2020. "Its going to be the year of courses," I wrote.

Spoiler alert: It wasn't.

Instead it was the year of flour, of pivoting, of working our backends off trying to keep ourselves afloat. It was a year of scaling our business and learning very hard lessons about how to and how not to do that. It's been a year of letting things slide and letting go of certainty (not something with which. I am historically known to be comfortable). It's been a year of wildly moving goalposts and so much sourdough and taking on staff. So many successes and a lot of lessons learned. There have been a lot of tears...of all sorts.

But it's also been a year of Loretta. And of my family here at home with me. And salsa self-sufficiency. It's been a year of seeing my dad learn (and sometimes fail to learn) new technology as he tries to keep in touch. And, mostly so much gratitude. That we are well. That we have been able to contribute to our community in a small way. That we are still standing.

Overwhelmingly, my gratitude is for you lovely lot of humans. Every comment, every like, every nice message, every purchase, every bit of understanding as we navigated 2020, I can not tell you how much it has meant. How many times when I really thought the newest catastrophe would be the one that brought us down, you all have been there. Thank you via an email doesn't really cover it. Just know that I'd hug each and every one of you if I could (Iowans are huggers), but...pandemic.

I am not going to even try to predict what 2021 is going to bring. This year taught us that well laid plans just aren't worth the paper they are written on and but so much can be done by just putting one foot in front of the other. So here's to that, for 2021.

Take care, stay warm and stay well,

Kat