Bought The Farm

*How* we bought the farm

OK, we should be really good at the buying property thing.  Since we bought our first 13-foot-wide townhouse in Baltimore in 1986, we've bought and sold four other residences (Connecticut being the most recent).  We understand binders, and inspection processes, and contract terms, and contingencies, and closings. Really.

So how did we buy the farm?  Like the newlyweds we imagine ourselves to be -- all starry-eyed and oblivious to detail -- with our imaginations instead of our powers of observation. To be specific:
*  It was the first property we saw that met our criteria
*  We visited a total of two times
*  We believed the realtor's story that it was "just being shown to us" on a special dispensation from the owner (whom she represented)
*  We made an offer with no inspection contingency
*  Our first offer was immediately accepted, with one condition - that we close within three weeks
*  We agreed to the quick closing
*  We used the attorney recommended by the realtor (yes, the one who was representing the seller)
*  We closed on time, without ever having seen the farmland in any other condition than under three feet of snow

Are we nuts???  Or rather, why do we think we might actually *not* be nuts?

Nancy, the realtor, she is salt of the earth.  We spent time on our first trip to the Northeast Kingdom with her visiting a number of different properties.  During the time we spent in the car together driving around, we told her our dream of growing apples.  Turns out she's a gardener.  She even used to have a small retail nursery operation.  She used to buy apple trees from a wholesaler and pot them and resell them for 100% markup. She's a little tired of real estate and would like to get back to something connected to the land.  She loved our dream.

After our first visit we wrote Nancy and told her that with our limited budget, we were much more interested in paying for the right piece of land than for a house.  We wanted 50 - 200 acres, with at least 20 of it open fields.  It needed to be on a quiet road and within 15 minutes of a lake large enough for Albert to row on.  If possible, some kind of view would be nice.

Nancy scoured the entire Northeast Kingdom.  There wasn't anything meeting those criteria that was anywhere near our price range.  We drooled over a million-dollar property near Craftsbury, nearly short-circuiting my laptop keyboard as we clicked through the picture on realtor.com.  Then we sighed and held hands.  The right place would come along.  We had just started looking.  We were prepared to be patient in order to find the place that would be our corner of heaven for the rest of our lives.

A week later, Nancy emailed to say she had a line on a place that might work for us - 150 acres on a private road 5 miles north of Willoughby Lake.  She had pursued a connection she knew to see if this particular property might be coaxed onto the market for our benefit.  Based on her persuasion, the owner let her show us the property.

The farm is indeed 150 acres, about 30 of it open, gradually sloping fields facing southeast.  It is on a dead-end dirt road that extends to four other homesteads before petering out in the woods.  It has a 1900 farmhouse and a big old, red, post and beam barn.   It has a great view of the hills around Willoughby Lake.  Idyllic, no?

Yes!  And we can afford it because neither of these buildings has a foundation beyond a few precariously positioned rocks.  Porcupines have lived in the house for the past 2 years.  There are rusted, busted farm implements hiding among various trees all over the property. The barn is falling apart in all directions.  We are not paying a penny for these buildings, which is a good thing because they are truly past saving.  In fact, we will have to pay to tear them down.  So no inspection necessary, we know we will be starting over.

So we closed.  We gave power of attorney to the lawyer, who seemed perfectly nice.  We wired the money.  We went on with our current lives (the ones we hope will be able to fund this whole venture).

We still hadn't seen the fields without snow on them...

What do we do now?

It's been a whole month since we bought the farm. 

It's hard to make room in our existing lives for a new venture.  Our daughter is graduating from high school in 3 weeks. There is a never-ending stream of activities that soak up our non-work time involving her theater, her younger brother's SAT tests and track meets, family visits before and during graduation, weeding the garden here at home, and so forth.

So we guiltily stole away one Sunday two weeks ago and drove up to the farm, to walk around it for the first time as owners.  And to see what, in fact, was under all that snow.

The answer: basically hay, with a few ledges popping out here and there.

We were mightily relieved that the spot is as peaceful and beautiful as we had remembered.  We walked all over the fields, looking for the soggy spots in which we should avoid planting apple trees.  We felt comfortable that there was plenty of room for enough trees to take us through our start-up period to profitability.  If we ever got that far, we would consider buying additional property in the area for expansion.

We also agreed the barn and the house are pretty unsalvageable.  This was quite a liberating decision, although I still entertain ideas of saving some siding, or stud and beam lumber, or maybe flooring.  Definitely the doors.

So what *do* we do now?

We drove home comfortable that we had bought a great place, with a half-formed idea that we would need to build a new house sometime soon - actually by winter if possible.  It's hard to see getting a business started there if you can't even live there.  Come to think of it, how would we live there while getting a house built?

And if we really want to get started on the business, what do we do first for that?   Ice cider is made in the winter, and apple trees are planted in the spring.  Seems like we should just buy some apples this fall and see if we can even make a product over the winter that even tastes any good.  Then in the spring we will plant a couple of acres of trees.  That's something that won't break the bank and we could enjoy ourselves even if we never went further with the business.

OK, so we want to get a house built by the end of the fall and produce a batch of ice cider over the winter.  Sounds like the beginning of a plan. We're in complete agreement. Life is good...

The trailer comes tomorrow

I am living the dream for real now.  Tomorrow I become trailer trash!  We've rented a 31 ft. trailer with all the amenities and it's arriving at the farm tomorrow afternoon.  We're going to live in it this summer while we construct building #1 of the farm.  My theme song is Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours' "Living in Aluminum."  I will wear work boots, jean shorts, a tube top and a straw hat.  I will heft 25 lb. bags of QuickCrete like they are pillows, and pound three-inch nails into 2 x 6 timbers in just three swings of my hammer.  My husband will be very turned on by this...

My kids, on the other hand, have been busy making plans to get away as far as possible - to other states and even other countries.  Living with us in a trailer on a farm 15 miles from the nearest video store would be the summer vacation from hell apparently.  A day spent doing honest work as unskilled construction labor? Physical torture. 

Or maybe the sight of their parents tossing their life savings down the not-yet-built septic system just has them in a panic.  The looks that fly between them whenever we forget ourselves and start talking about our plans at the dinner table seem to clearly articulate fears of encroaching parental impairment. What are they doing? Are they okay? Should we be calling in the social workers?

At least our plans have progressed.  Building #1 is the all-purpose, small-scale starter building.  With a 28ft. by 36ft. rectangular footprint, the full basement will be our initial production facility, the ground floor will be our office and reception area (with kitchen and half-bath), and on the second floor under the eaves of the roof will be two bedrooms, a full bath and blessed laundry machines.  It's a very simple design. The only complexity being the need for truck access to the basement.

So the trailer comes tomorrow, and the site engineer and excavator the day after that. We're hoping to be our own general contractors, and provide our own labor to the project, along with that of as many friend and family volunteers as possible.  Just send me an email if you'd like to join us for a weekend or more!

Aluminum living begins

We drove up early last Tuesday morning to be here in time for our trailer delivery which we expected around 1PM in the afternoon. Fortunately, Amanda at the trailer company had our cell phone number, because she could reach us and let us know more precisely when the trailer would get there. She did that...repeatedly as the day wore on. Fortunately the status calls allowed us to go do a few other things like get a post office box, and open a local bank account in the name of Eden Orchards (very exciting!)

Finally, at around 5PM, Amanda herself showed up with the trailer. She'd been the sales person I had spoken with to set up the rental. We were a little surprised she happened to be the delivery person too, especially because she turned out to be quite a babe - pink sweater, tight jeans, long dark hair. But she had no trouble backing the trailer into place next to the barn, or getting her hands dirty jacking it into place and hooking up electrical lines and various pipes. (More on pipes shortly).

Then she gave us the grand tour, which was a performance somewhere between that of a cruise director and a new car salesman.  Here was a Northeast Kingdom Goddess in the flesh - handsome *and* handy. We were impressed, to say the least. We were also thankful she refused to shake hands with us when she left, given where her hands had been.

There's something about installing a trailer that makes you really think through what it takes to support modern civilized existence.  Power! Water! Waste disposal!  My god, we forget what Maslow meant - you need this stuff before you can move on to needing a lot of other stuff.  We seem to spend so much of our lives trying to fulfill our higher needs for love, purpose, feedback, community, not to mention college acceptance for our kids.  But hey, in addition to food and shelter, you cannot live a semblance of a modern existence without power, water and waste disposal. Them's just the facts.

So we were really happy when Steve the excavator showed up with a very bright blue plastic waste storage tank and proceeded to bury it in the ground next to the trailer.  Then things got complicated.  Turns out the trailer has separate storage tanks for "grey water" and "black water", and that the drains for these merged into one exit pipe, causing a dilemma regarding the relative methods of their "evacuation."  At one point there were five grown men huddled around the critical point of exit debating alternative strategies.

"If you have both the grey and the black going into the blue tank, you'll be having the septic service guy up here every week and that will cost a fortune it will."

"But how would we bury the grey? And then we'd have to switch the exit pipe every time we disposed of black versus grey and what if we got them mixed up?!"

About that time the engineer and two surveyors showed up to start "perc" testing for where the permanent septic system will go.  My husband looked at me and said, "You know that electric meter that goes around and tracks our usage? We need to put a money meter right next to it...."

Le Beau Francophone

A couple of days after the trailer arrived, we were very pleased to welcome Francois in our tastefully floral dinette area.  He is a friend of my husband's sisters in Quebec, and for the past 10+ years he has been involved in producing ice cider.  This was our "inside scoop".  We've bought the farm and started investing in improvements, but it all hinges on actually being able to produce this apple-based dessert wine. 

Needless to say we don't have a clue how to do that, so meeting with Francois was a critical path activity for us.  I had probed one of my sisters-in-law about him a couple of weeks earlier - "Is he nice?  Would you trust him? With your future?"  "Oh yes he's great", she said, "and so good looking too.  We call him 'Le beau Francois'."  I was interested. My husband was non-plussed.

Francois arrived not only with good looks, but with lots of wonderful, detailed information about the business: Cost data, revenues and profits over time, agronomic expertise in apple-growing, and hands-on production experience.  He's interested in a partnership, not to simply be paid a fee for consulting.  He believes there is huge potential for the product in the US.  He asks us how big we want to grow.  He is the wine-maker he says, he doesn't know anything about marketing, nor is he interested.  Aha! I think to myself - this I can do. We are symbiotique, n'est-ce pas?

It becomes very clear to us that Francois has fantastic expertise, and that if we want to have a prayer of making this business work, we need him.  But we are also trying to figure out the extent to which our goals, interests and personalities are suited to each other.  This will take more time together.  We agree that we are all very excited to continue the discussions in another meeting very soon.  We've scheduled a date a few weeks out after my husband returns from giving a short-course for AP Chemistry teachers.  I wouldn't *think* of meeting with Francois by myself.

A major thing we learn from Francois's visit is a more stark understanding of some of the trade-offs we face in deciding how to make this product.  Our ideal has been hazily constructed in our minds around the same principles of the great wines of Burgundy - special varieties of apples carefully and organically cultivated in our own distinctive Northeast Kingdom "terroir" - pressing, freezing and fermenting taking place on site using the power of Vermont's exhiliratingly cold winters to express the H2O from the juice leaving just the right sugar level in the remaining concentrate - beautiful bottles with beautifuls labels, and corks of course.

Francois quickly and ruthlessly disabuses us of these romantic notions.  Apples are a pain to grow and because of Chinese imports the bottom has fallen out of the apple juice market.  It would be much quicker and cheaper just to purchase juice from existing growers - "sure you can get it only from Vermont growers if that's important for marketing".  Using natural cold to concentrate the juice is hard work.  It would be easier just to use a large freezer.  And corks are expensive and unreliable.  The movement toward acceptance of screw caps for wine is progressing.  People should be able to accept a screw top for ice cider.  This is all quite deflating, but not entirely unexpected.

Later Albert and I agree that it makes sense to talk to Francois about a joint venture just for the production of Ice Cider - Eden Ice Cider Company.  We will keep the farm in Eden Orchards.  The land and any buildings we need for the business will stay in our company.  Albert can plant and tend to apples to his heart's content, with advice from Francois and others.  If he ever produces juice that would be acceptable for the Ice Cider product, the winery would be required to buy it.  The winery will also need to pay rent for its use of our buildings.  We will still need to work through the issue of natural vs. artificial cold and the matter of corks, not to mention the whole structure of the joint venture. 

Now I need a lawyer.  I can hear the money meter ratcheting up a speed notch.

 

Our new community is curious

Folks on our road have been very friendly, stopping to introduce themselves and say hello.  The nice lady at the little Post Office helped us set up a box and politely inquired which property we bought (we're number 71, which gives you a sense of the size of the town).  Gradually as we have more and more encounters, it seems that everyone knows our property and where it is.  They know it by the name of the old farmer who lived there for years and died there a few years ago.  We bought it from a subsequent owner, but nobody knows that name or has much to say about it, so we don't even mention it, and revert to using "old Dick Holmes's place" to help people place us.

Increasingly, we start to learn interesting facts not only about our neighbors, but about ourselves.  News that comes back to us ranges from the curious to the ridiculous:

"So, you're planning to subdivide and develop home sites?"

"I heard from the Town Clerk you also own property over near Canaan too?"

and our favorite -

"Somebody said you was up here buryin' those bales of hay in the ground!" 

This was from the farmer who is going to mow our fields this summer, and to whom we had given about 70 round bales of hay leftover from last year on the condition that he remove them.  Albert giggled - why would anyone pay good money to an excavator to bury bales of hay in the ground?  I mean, I know we are flat-landers, but we're not *that* clueless! 

The excavator in question of course was the guy digging the holes for the perc testing.  And I guess the flagged stakes left around the property by the surveyors could have led someone to reasonably believe we we're staking out lot line for subdividing. But why it would cross someone's mind that we would bury hay bales I can't fathom.

It also becomes clear that everyone has their alliances and quarrels. I won't possibly be able to remember who agrees with whom, who is suspicious of whom.  My solution will be to smile non-commitally and make non-threatening noises.  I worry that if we don't keep our story absolutely straight, people will think we're crazy, or the rumors will just get wilder.  Albert suggests if we tell different versions, we'll be able to trace the paths of communications through the community, like spelling your name differently on catalogue purchases to see who sells your name to whom. 

I sigh. I think they'll just have to take us as we are, as we will them.

Trailer telephone travails

I received many requests to post a picture of the trailer. Here it is! Pretty posh, no? We're grateful to Amanda for giving us a brand-spanking-new one. Everything was spotless and worked correctly from the start, with one major exception, the telephone connection.

OK, there's more to this story than just the trailer connection. See, it turns out that when the electrician set up the power outlet for the trailer and disconnected the electricity from the old house, he also disconnected the telephone line from the house. Having written several checks that day, Albert and I were loathe to ask Verizon to make a house call to set us up. It couldn't be that difficult, right? Just connecting colored wires?

Now that we're on the farm, we feel like we should be able to do these things ourselves, build our self-reliance, and shed our city-slicker (sucker?) approach to the building trades. Hey, we can solve chemical reaction equations and build valuation spreadsheets, so this should be cake! Albert picked up his screw-driver and wire-cutter and headed over to the old house.

We cut the wires going into and out of the grey Verizon box on the outside of the house - the one that said "to be opened only by a Verizon technician" - and then ripped it off the worn siding. Half an hour later the grey box was hanging precariously from a batten board on the side of the barn near the trailer. The wire going into the box was connected to the wire coming from the telephone pole. That seemed fairly straight forward.

We had some - but not all - of the wires inside the box connected to some wires from a plastic jack we bough for $1.50 at the hardware store. The box was screwed closed, and the jack was also stuck to barn board, this time with copious amounts of duct-tape. The little tester we had said the telephone signal was working, but when we plugged it into the camper, and then connected the phone inside to the jack in the camper wall there was no dial tone. That was a discouraging moment. Then we got a long telephone wire and threaded it into the camper through one of the storage spaces outside. The storage space was underneath one of the banquette seats so we lifted up the seat, brought out the wire and put the telephone on the dinette table. Dial tone!

We were so proud of ourselves we toasted our new skills with Long Trail ale and set up our voicemail. However, in the days that followed we discovered the following unique characteristics of our configuration -
* People trying to call us get a message "Your call cannot be completed as dialed" about 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time it goes through. This appears to happen completely randomly, regardless of call origin or time of day.
* The Verizon service was supposed to come with built-in voicemail service. It never picks up.
* Most unusually, the phone beeps sharply twice in succession every 30 minutes at 8 and 38 minutes past the hour. This happens constantly 24/7. We have no idea why.

We figured some of this might be due to the wires that we left unconnected in that grey box. We just couldn't figure out what to do with them. But at least we could make calls out, and sometimes got calls in, and, most importantly, we could get dial-up internet on Earthlink just fine. The trade-off seemed worth it.

An update:
We had some severe thunderstorms a couple of weeks later. The next day the telephone service was horrible - we got a dial tone but couldn't call out, and when we received calls, there was frequent loud static that made conversation very difficult. I drove 15 miles to the parking lot of the Cow Palace restaurant in Derby VT where I could get cell phone reception and called Verizon. "Yes there's trouble on the line because of the storm. We'll have it fixed by tomorrow."

The next day all was clear. People don't even get the "can't be completed as dialed" message any more. So it seems nothing was due to our amateur technical work - good for us! I should mention that the phone *does* still beep regularly on the 8s and 38s. We've decided that's a relic of old party-line technology and we're gradually adapting to this as a routine aspect of our daily experience.

We already have apples!

A few days after we moved into the trailer we were out scouting the area behind the old house, trying to figure out where the best site would be for our first building. I was admiring the over-grown lilac bushes and wild rugosa roses that were growing at one end of the house. From there my eye spotted a bleeding heart under a tree about 20 feet away. If we couldn't save the house, at least we might be able save some of these wonderful robust old plants.

I suddenly looked at the tree that was shading the bleeding heart and realized it was covered with baby apples. Not only that, it went on forever. Looking underneath, it had two huge old trunks that spread apart from the ground. The entire tree is about 15 feet high, and about 25 feet in diameter. It must be about 100 years old and have about 5,000 apples on it! We have no idea what variety they are, when they will ripen, or whether they are even edible, let alone suitable for ice cider. But at least we know we can grow *some* kind of apple on the property.

Over the next week, we found 4 more apple trees. They all seem to be of different varieties. We suspect one might be a MacIntosh, but they are probably just strange crosses of old Vermont varieties. I feel very protective of them and go and visit them every day or so. Folks have told us we should juice them and test them when they are ripe. Even if we just use a little bit blended into our ice cider we can make these "heirloom" apples a part of our story.

We make a big decision

We've been struggling over the question of whether to form a partnership with Francois. He is so knowledgeable, and we have so little experience. But the legal and financial arrangements would be very complicated. Also, and perhaps even more troublesome to us, there is the worry of needing to accomodate the needs of a third person into our decision-making. He wants to build a commercial business fast and make money. We want to go at the pace that works for us - given our "real" jobs, our children, our marriage, and the romantic dreams we share of which this whole venture is just the tangible manifestation.

We spent a couple of trips to and from the farm talking it over. One evening we sat at our little dinette with the telephone wire coming up from the seat, looking at the quiet darkness of the hayfields stretching out under the stars. We needed to make a decision. It wouldn't be fair to Francois to continue discussions if we weren't ultimately going to go this direction.

If we were just looking at this as an investment, we would figure out how much capital was needed to get to profitability, structure the deal, and get Francois going, and he would do all the work of getting production up and running. I would do the marketing and Albert could plant and tend some apples. It makes sense on paper, but emotionally this arrangement was starting to feel all wrong to both of us. As we talked it through, we realized we both didn't want this.

We said a lot of things like -
"It's more about the journey and our values than whether or not we are successful."
"I want to make decisions that make *us* happy, and not feel like I have to make Francois happy, or have to live with him being unhappy."
"Sooner or later the partnership will have to end somehow, because we don't have a plan for an exit strategy, and he's going to want to realize the value he's created."

We said a few things like -
"We'll figure out how to make the product somehow...humans have been fermenting things for thousands of years"
"It might take us longer to make a decent product, but that's okay..."

Suddenly, sitting there, we just *knew*. Maybe it's twenty years of marriage, but we could both feel that this was the right decision for us. This is our dream, and we need to do it on our terms.

"Besides", Albert said, "I don't like the idea of you being up here alone in the winter making ice cider - and who knows what else - with Francois while I'm stuck in New Hampshire working." That kind of sealed it right there.

We wrote Francois a couple of emails, and offered to pay for the time and travel for his visit and the expertise he had already shared with us. We let him know that if we ever did get to the point where we wanted a serious partner, he would be the first person we would call.

Then we turned out the light and celebrated the decision in some other, more physical ways.

The "research" tour

Our plans for Building #1 have been percolating along. The critical path activity is the septic plan, which takes 2 - 3 weeks being developed by the engineer, and then 3 - 4 weeks being approved by the state. We're hoping to get approval by late July, which would enable us to start construction for real by August 1st. In the meantime, there wasn't that much to do, except try to learn more about apples and ice cider since we'd just let go our only source of expertise on those subjects.

So on July 8th we dropped our son at a camp for kids interested in careers in Medicine (his idea). Then we headed out on a road trip to get a crash course in Apple growing. We visited a major East Coast apple tree nursery, that is also a huge commercial apple orchard operation. From there we drove 6 hours the next day to visit a nursery and orchard in Ithaca New York that is run by Steve Cummins, the son of the guy who worked with Cornell on developing disease-resistant apple rootstocks. We then drove another 6 hours to Shelburne Farms in Vermont. In Shelburne we visited Nick Cowles at Shelburne Orchards - one of the larger Vermont orchards and one of the few to be organically certified. Then we went to Snow Farm winery in South Hero and tasted the apple dessert wine and grape icewines they make there. Snow Farm was the first of the 5 - count 'em - wineries in the state of Vermont, and was founded by a husband and wife team (like us!) in 1996. We didn't get to meet the Lebowitz's, but we got a chance to taste and buy their dessert wines. Yum.

The people we met with were incredibly generous with their time. They piled us in their trucks and gave us tours of their orchards. They gave us advice on everything from apple varieties, rootstocks and planting schemes to organic farming, deer fencing, mouse guards, cold storage, buying juice...everything we wanted to learn. From Tom Callahan we learned about the trade-offs of dwarf trees versus semi-dwarf, and the specifics of the vertical-axis training system for dwarf tree farming. Tom is National Sales Director for the major nursery we visited and he really knows what's important to big commercial orchards. His recommendations are focused on what you need to make a large-scale operation commercially successful, namely big equipment investments that save lots of labor time. Their tree varieties tend to be focused on the quality dessert fruit that commands the highest price in the wholesale market.

Steve Cummins, on the other hand, runs his orchard and nursery with one or two other people. He spent time to really show us the nursery operation, how they generate the rootstocks and then graft them and grow them to the point where they are ready for sale. He seems to supply a lot of the hard cider makers that are starting up and growing. He grows a lot of antique and cider-apple varieties. He's got an old orchard he's been cleaning up. He grows peach trees too, which is unusual for upstate New York, and also raspberries for pick-your-own. The raspberries were just ripe, and extremely delicious.

Steve advised us to start small - plant one acre and see how it goes before taking on too much. That seemed very wise to us.

Steve is also going to use a vertical axis system when he plants some trees for his own orchard next year. And he had the most innovative solution for deer deterrence we'd heard yet - husky pound-dogs. He put in invisible dog fence around the whole orchard and built them a dog house with heated water bowls. The dogs live outdoors all year round and chase away the deer. Steve says his deer losses went from over 50% to less than 1%. The deer figure out where the invisible fence line is, and don't cross it.

Finally, one of the most exciting things about our visit to Steve's nursery is that there is a young woman working with him who is making hard cider and ice cider! She wasn't there, but we got a tour of her little production operation, and Steve gave us a bottle of her ice cider product, "Essence". Apparently Autumn is the youngest woman ever to have received a NY state alcohol production license. She sells her stuff down at the Greenmarket in NYC. We were thrilled to find someone else who might be able to help us learn how to make the product. And we were also encouraged that she was doing it successfully at the same scale that we plan on starting with - namely *small*.

Nick Cowles at Shelburne Orchards is kind of a legend. And we were very lucky to find him at the orchard when we drove up. He listened to our jumbled story and was very encouraging. He showed us his orchard, talked about the issues he's faced with organic farming, and gave us some other names for tree sources. He clearly just loves growing apples, and said as much.

Nick helped us see that we should focus our apple farming on the unusual varieties that would add something "special" to our product. We can always buy Macs from any exisiting orchard at a reasonable price. We're hoping we can buy some from him this fall.

We got back to our little trailer tired from driving over 1000 miles, but very excited. We learned a lot and everyone we visited was extremely helpful. Thanks!! We have a revised, more concrete plan for planting and fencing (no dogs yet however.)

Now if we can just get in touch with Autumn in Ithaca to get her help with production, we will really be rolling!