129. Past Guest Status Check with Haley Moen

Haley.

Hi. Hi.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

So this is our second episode of past guest progress check is what we're calling these. And again, like when we first introduced you to the audience and you kind of introduced yourself to Oaks and what you were going to be doing, we knew that there was going to be a runway here, right?

Yeah.

Going to be a bit before your business is up and running. But I think there's— well, I don't even think I know. There are some massive things that you have been through since we last had you on the show. And I think if nothing else, if anybody listening to this, here's what I would hope for them, okay? Because I mean, I know what we're going to talk about, so I'm kind of— I'm prepping everybody here. It's honestly realizing that, like, you're one of the smartest people I know, by the way. And so you're really well-researched. You're the kind of person that like if there's a right way to figure it out or to do it, you're gonna research it. You're gonna work really hard at making sure that what you're doing is as right as it can be. You come by this very naturally, right? Business in general, starting a business, entrepreneurship, doing something, especially with the scale of the vineyard and the winery. This is a hell of a setup, but I'm, I just wanna like lay the groundwork for everybody. So a vineyard and a winery. Of course, we're all like in some way, shape, or form, maybe tangentially familiar, right? Like a lot of us have gone to one. A lot of us, you know, and if you like wine like me, right, you love that experience. Okay, well, we have zero understanding of how the sausage is made, so to speak. We don't think, people don't think about it, and there's a lot going on. So that's with most businesses. And so the reason we're bringing you back so quick for just a status check is because a couple of things that have happened to you and to your business since— again, we went back and listened and it was like, everything's great.

And it was so exciting.

And then just a couple short days later, shit really went south. And so we're going to talk about that. And the point is, again, it's absolutely to allow you to just kind of share the story so people that are interested in this winery, which so many people are, they get this taste of what's been going on. But this is for everybody out there that has a business. And if you try to convince yourself, well, there's a couple things, just kind of two people I wanna talk to with this episode. One is if you have an idea and you wanna start something and you're holding off because you don't feel like you have it perfectly figured out yet, or you haven't completely arrived at the right way. Okay? We're gonna talk about the fact that you're gonna continue to encounter things that you have no idea how to navigate. And so that's just a perfectionistic thing that we're holding ourselves back with when it comes to starting stuff. You're never gonna have it all figured out, right? So that's one camp of people that I want to speak to today. The second is really just any business owner. I swear, again, it's like to remind you that you might even get to a point where you think you have a lot of stuff figured out. And then out of nowhere is going to come crazy things that you didn't— you certainly didn't ask for, you weren't in control of, and you still have to navigate and figure out. This is really a status update about grit and about perseverance. And so with that giant, very Rebecca-esque setup, welcome back to the show.

Thank you. There's been quite a few things that have happened since.

So why don't we talk about— so we wrapped And we like high-fived, you know, on the episode because you had just planted your vineyard.

Yep.

So let's fast forward to the big event. What happened? Let's talk through that.

So, well, first thing I did before sitting down here today is I re-listened to that podcast again to kind of see where I was at at that moment. And I swear it was the most heartbreaking thing to go back and listen to that degree of hopefulness and happiness with my community and just general joy that I was taking the first steps. So that was approximately about 5 days after we planted. Right. Just kind of recapping, we planted 2,000 vine vineyard, and that roughly translates to about 16,000 to 17,000 bottles of wine. While it's only a couple acres, and to, to this area, like, a couple acres is peas and carrots compared to your standard production agriculture that's right, you know, 500 to 1,000 acres of corn or soybeans, right? So we had just gotten done planting. We're watching the first little sprouts come out from our grapes, and your mom was encouraging them vocally. Yep.

As we discussed, like, she was giving them spa treatments and stuff. I mean, it was a whole vibe.

Yep.

This last episode was a whole vibe, and everything was going along really well.

We got the first two plant waterings down, and when we went through and we did our third plant watering, we had started to panic a little bit. All the plants looked completely wilted. And during this time we were averaging about like 95 to 100 degrees worth of super dry weather. So my first instinct was, okay, they are wilting because they're hot and they need water. And because we had watered so much before, even my dad was sitting there telling me like, Haley, I don't I don't think this is water. And so we went through, it takes us about like 3, 4 hours to water the entire vineyard. And we were doing it by hand at this time because we hadn't had irrigation set up. And so I was able to go through every single one of the plants and take a look at them one after one. And by the time we got to the end, I was practically in tears, right? Because we had realized at that point that our entire vineyard had herbicide damage, that somewhere Somehow, somehow the entire vineyard had pretty much gotten blasted with a growth regulator herbicide, which is extremely, extremely damaging to grapevines.

Yeah. So for laymen listening to this, that's like the equivalent of what? So I don't want to say that it was a brand name product, but is there a brand name product that you could equate to this that the average person would be familiar with? Like Roundup?

Well, the average homeowner might use 2,4-D to control dandelions. And this is the case of what they were doing. So it's not Roundup because Roundup kills grass.

Kills grass. Yeah. Right.

Yep. So it was a different chemical to try and control dandelions or broadleaf type plants.

Yeah. So residential homeowners, if you've ever sprayed your lawn, this is the product we're talking about.

Yep. And right away is pretty much mild meltdown mode because as far as this type of chemical being sprayed in a vineyard, it's essentially a death sentence. At that point, you're just mitigating how much death and how bad it is. So we figured that out.

Oh, it makes me seriously want to cry. Like, I'll never forget the look on your face. I'll never forget it. Like, literally. So, Haley, if again, for people listening to this, like, you co-work in our space, so I get to see you a lot. I just remember being like, what? What now? You know? Oh my gosh. Well, and so again, for people listening, it was a drift situation. Nobody came out to your vineyard and actually directly applied 2,4-D to your vineyard. But so then you figure out that this is what it is. How did you determine where did it come from? What, I mean, what did you guys do to figure that out?

So we had chose the location of the vineyard just because it was really isolated. From other types of large farming operations. So we knew right away that it was essentially going to be two different people. We had one farmer and we had one business, right, that were located right along our margins there. And at that point, I knew that the, um, so just the neighboring golf course, right, they were working on a green. So I was able to walk up to the fence line that we shared properties for and just essentially call out to the workers over there to see if their groundskeeper was available.

Okay.

Yeah. And one of the board members had approached me and I just said, did you guys spray recently? And he said, oh yeah. Yes, we did. Yeah. You just toasted my vineyard. And I think the most heartbreaking thing from there is the knee-jerk reaction was, we don't care. Yeah. Right., and I was like, what?

Right.

And that was a big learning curve for that business also, just kind of navigating this and how when it comes to like two farming operations, if another farmer toasts another farmer's crops with some type of chemical, they know that they're liable. And a lot of the times insurances are involved right away and people are communicating. And with was something that isn't necessarily in farming. I don't think that was really known at the beginning.

Right. So, yep.

At that point.

And again, like, we thought a lot about how to talk about this. I'm just going to say that because it's definitely delicate. I think, again, it's people legitimately don't know what they don't know. They had sprayed that exact way hundreds of times before. Right. So there wasn't a thought at all. To doing it the way they'd always done it. And that was a real challenge, you know, not only, I mean, not only the enormous setback in your business, we'll talk about that in a second, but this again is why I'm so damn proud of you, frankly. It's because this is, this is real life. Like, this is navigating these things in particular in a smaller town and smaller community where everything we do, we have to be thoughtful and mindful and always keep in mind that we want to be good neighbors. And yet you had a real problem on your hands, right? You had to figure out how to talk to them and get them to understand where you were coming from and make it all okay. And so you did that.

So, yeah, and it was a— it was just a real learning process on both sides. And while the knee-jerk reactions were, it's not our fault, you know, we can do what we want, we're trying to control dandelions on our own property and make sure our business functions right. It just, at the end of the day, we all learned together as we walked through this. And the overall tone went from not us to, oh, okay, we understand now and let's get the proper— And we're sorry. Yeah.

Yeah.

And we're sorry. And let's get the proper entities involved to be able to make this right. Right. It's just the slightly delayed reaction of getting to there was really, really tough for me. Because I didn't realize if they were ever going to get there.

Right.

Right.

So in terms of the setback, so what's the, like, what's the implication for the vineyard and winery?

Once we figured out what was going on, we went and got state inspector out there to be able to take samples. We got a third-party agronomist out there to take samples. We got a university professor out there that works in grapes to take a look at it. And from there, we essentially started mitigating damages as best we can. There's no magical product to cure 2,4-D damage, but the best that you can do is make sure it doesn't have any other stressors. So we bumped up its nutrient program. We bumped up its water intake.

You basically were like forcing the plants to metabolize it faster, kind of, right?

Yeah. And just did not have it have any other stressors so that it really only had to focus on one thing.

You're fighting this. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. And so we kind of tailored how we were treating the vineyard at that point. We didn't do any pruning. We pretty much left it all alone and watched it work from there and took care of it the best we can. And at the end of the day, we had— it's pretty slow-acting chemical and it sticks in the plant for a long time. So the first week, you know, it looks pretty good and you say, okay, it's going to make it. It's making it. And then the next week you say, oh, Oh no. And the following week you start seeing some plants die in some varieties. And then other ones it's like, well, I'm probably going to have to rip out this entire variety. And as the summer went on and we reached fall, I was able to walk through the entire thing. And we are definitively pushed back a year. I think it was 93% of the vineyard did not make its target growth that it needed to.

And to open when you originally planned on. And by open, we mean actually harvesting your own grapes.

Yep. Right. So everything had effectively got pushed back an entire year.

Yeah. So let's just pause there for a second. I really want our listeners to take that in. We're just going to sit and think about that. And again, I'm not a huge feminist. Okay. I don't always bring up age. But I think it's relevant to this part of the conversation. You are a 25-year-old young woman in farming.

Yeah.

And again, it's not traditional farming, so that's another— it's like we were laying out a bunch of things that they're not strikes against you. That's not— I would never, ever, ever say it that way, but they're just factors that you have to work with. And there's just a lot of things in your environment that would have set anybody else up to fail. By fail, I mean just quit. Because at that point, Haley, you could have just quit because you would have been like, okay, gonna get an insurance claim. I'm just gonna cash it and be freaking done with this. I can't wait another year. But that is not what you did, my dear. Yeah, my dear friend. And I'm just so— I'm really just so proud of you. And I, again, I want people to understand that, like, And this isn't like, if Haley can do it, anybody can do it. And that's not what I'm saying. I am saying that like, these are things you never would have— you didn't anticipate, you couldn't build in your business plan, you couldn't forecast it. There's nothing you could have done to prepare yourself any different for this. You just had to deal with it as it came.

Yeah. And pretty much what we had said when that happened was we joked around that I had planned for this big catastrophic thing to happen at the 6-month mark, not at the 10-day mark.

Your catastrophes didn't follow the program.

Yeah, they weren't following my agenda here.

Yeah.

And then if something really— because at that point, like, I just assume something bad's going to happen eventually. And because this is something that's new to the area and I didn't really know what it was going to be, but I definitely thought, you know, I'm going to have to go through something pretty bad here eventually, but I did not expect it to be 10 days directly after planting. Yeah, which was just incredibly difficult at the end of the day.

But oh, so difficult, and we cried real tears, didn't we? It was— it's legit. It's legit. Okay, so you get your head basically around— your head and your heart, you get them around the fact that, okay, the vineyards push back a year. What were the other things though that you were still working towards? Because again, I think a lot of— again, for our Oaks friends, our local friends that are actually— and again, by the way, anybody listening to this, I don't care where you're at, you want to come and visit us when this thing's open, we welcome you, right? We welcome you to Oaks, North Dakota.

But I think people—

again, as economic development person, I— people ask me regularly— I don't want to say all the time, but it's pretty regular— what's going on with the vineyard? When's she going to open? You know, it's just like, people. So you— so your vineyard, you know now that it's pushed back a year, but what are you still, like, what's kind of the general timeline? What were the other things that you were working on? And then that'll lead us into our second major hurdle. So second, 65th, I don't know, whatever. It's been quite the journey for you.

But well, on the lighter side of things, a lot of what I've been doing lately is testing out different types of winemaking styles, different types of cider flavors. That was something we haven't talked about a whole bunch, but Hearthside will also be doing a line of ciders as well, and we're super excited about that to be able to hopefully get those in cans in the future.

Can I share my initial feedback?

Yes.

So just last night we had our mastermind session, and Haley, by the way, this is where we could publicly call out your husband. Can we do it?

Yep. Nick, you were wrong, Nick.

She needed to bring a second bottle.

He was like, one should be sufficient.

No, they— our little group just chug that bottle right down. Anyway, it was delicious. So last night we got to taste test one of your ciders and it was Hibiscus Lime, right? That was the flavor. Absolutely incredible. So I'll just say again, people, I love wine, right? I don't like overly sweet beverages just in general. A lot of ciders are just generally too syrupy for me and I just don't find them all that palatable. This was perfectly— like, it was the perfect level of sweet, where I was just like, this is super drinkable. Again, I don't really— I am not the one to judge this, but it was really delicious. And across the board, everybody that tried it was like, wow. And honestly, a few of them were like, I would buy cases of this right now. So it's super exciting. And it is on a lighter note. And we need to continue to look for those things because otherwise these big heavy things would just take you right down.

Yeah. So it's been really fun developing different flavors. And the biggest thing on the winemaking side of it is patience. I was able to purchase about 1,000 pounds of grapes from a local vineyard, just a hobby owner. So I was able to purchase that and craft that into wine. But the hardest part with that is simply waiting, right? It needs to age, it needs to develop further. And so during all that time in the middle, I've been doing a lot of side projects, stuff that I need to get off my plate in order to make sure that when we do open, that it's going to be seamlessly, right? So another thing that I have been working on, which maybe takes a little bit of groundwork to explain it, the parcel property that I own only has one public access route to it. And that public access route is over a creek that floods regularly. So for many, many, many years, not only my business, but the neighboring golf course also has really struggled with this particular road flooding. And we began looking at getting it improved. And it was a lot of research that went into it, but we kind of had to start, we decided to start with the county and the county commissioners to try and figure out who had this road authority over this place to be able to get this road fixed up. And I had joked about this multiple times with my dad, He had told me, Haley, this is going to be difficult. You just do not understand how hard it is going to be to get someone to pay for this road to be fixed, even though it's my only access to my property. And I would look at him and say, no, this isn't going to be a problem at all.

And that's where your age was showing.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm kidding. But at the end of all this, I sit down and look, I said, never have I been so naive.

To think you're not a naive person.

Yeah, yeah.

No, no, not at all.

And then this—

but you were— let's call it hope. You were hopeful.

Yeah.

And that's all right. Yeah.

And I was learning pretty quick that the easiest answer is no.

Oh, and okay, small town friends listening to this, does that not hit your soul? Like, because that's absolutely— that's the truth. The easy answer is no, especially if it's going to require any work. And again, like, this isn't just to the people we're talking about now. This is like any group that you need to collaborate with you, or you need their support, or you need their, their help. If they're really not— again, if they don't feel motivated, they don't feel personally driven to do it, man, saying no is easy. Yep. And that's why it's often the first answer. It's the easy one.

Yeah. So with that particular case too, we began— me and my dad began going to county commissioner meetings, and at the first meeting they just They listened and we had some champions in our corners kind of on board with us and were listening to the reasoning behind it and thinking that, and everyone across the board pretty much thought that it would be a positive aspect to get this road improved. But then it always went back to who has responsibility over it.

And what they mean by that too is like, who's stuck holding the bag. Yeah. That's really what they're looking for, right? I mean, if we're being honest about it. Yeah. You were saying, how do we get this thing done? And they were saying, who can we give this to? Nobody wanted it. Nobody wants this project. It's expensive. I mean, not brutally, I don't think in terms of infrastructure projects, but yeah, I mean, this is just the situation. Like, this is your road. It goes from our state highway that runs past and through Oaks, or, you know, brings people into town up to your property. That's the only way to get there. And right now you have an unpassable stream crossing or not a safe one.

Yeah. And that was really kind of what we pounded against was it's not a safe crossing and it floods for about 3 to 4 months out of the year, especially if it's a bad flood and it wipes out as far as like when a vineyard winery would be really popular, it wipes out that complete timeframe.

Right.

So we started making steps with the county to begin getting this figured out.

And well, and again, let's remind everybody that your vineyard and winery will be a year-round business as well. Yeah. So there's not a seasonality that you can even like roll with if that were a thing. It's just not a thing, right? You need an improved crossing.

Yep. And worked with them some more and everyone seemed to be on board. And then one meeting that we weren't at and off of their audio line. They had decided that it was not their responsibility to take care of. While we had been really positive before working towards the solution, we get hit with the, like, we want this to happen, but we're being told that it's not our responsibility. So our hands are tied and this is kind of where we're going to leave it. And at that point, I had a couple questions rolling around my brain because they were saying that, okay, By state law, we were told that this isn't our responsibility. And I'm like, okay, first thing I need to know is where in state law? And really couldn't get that answer out of them. We weren't getting replies really. And then the other question was just what this road looks like. Can we do this economically?

Yeah.

Can we do this on a budget without putting— That was the most expensive option.

And that was the thing that you were testing. So just to clarify this, because I, and again, if I get this wrong, Yeah, fix it. Okay. But the, the advisement in particular that the commissioner group here in our county was getting was from an attorney, right? And this is super common. So again, we're just like literally saying this is, this could be a common thing. And then they had an engineer, like the engineer that works with them, that advises them. He had, don't want to say limited experience, but not experience with roads like this. It was more state highway projects. So a bridge or a crossing to him had a different connotation than what you were pretty sure could be done. And so this question of economics actually wasn't driven by them, it was driven by you.

Yeah.

Is that fair?

Yeah, I would say that's completely fair because, because the first time we had kind of brought this up, we were told it was going to be roughly a million dollar crossing out there, which is Okay. Which for, for the average person, that's a lot. And for infrastructure, for a couple business owners, it's still a lot. It's hard to justify that. So immediately after that, I went looking for more economical options in a lot of other states. Either one of them, they repurposed train cars as bridges, which was super cool. Can't do it in the state here yet for public roads, but there were a lot of other options out there and I really appreciate some of the commissioners that were willing to sit down with me and pretty much handed them a binder of here are all the options cheaper, and still they come to the decision that it wasn't their responsibility. So on top of finding the cheapest economical but still the longest lasting options, right?

And let's just pause here. You did that.

I spent a lot of time looking into Like, as a vineyard winery owner, I spent a lot of time looking into bridge construction and culvert construction.

And along with that, then there was— there's water flow restrictions and codes and regulations. Like, that's the other piece of it.

Yeah.

Like, you, Hailey, you dug into stuff that— I mean, I would love to say you shouldn't have had to. We can maybe say that. But this is the reason we're talking about this is because I want people to be encouraged by this story that no is an easy answer and oftentimes it's not the complete answer. And sometimes we may have to be willing. Now I'm going to say far too many of us, I think in general, we want to challenge the authority that's telling us no, but we're not willing to do the work that you did. And I think those two things have to go together. Like, I think more of us need to maybe challenge the knee-jerk responses or, you know, answers we get, because they're not— again, it's easier to say no, so of course they're going to. But then the next piece is you also need to be willing to outwork them and out-research them. And I hate that that's the truth, but I think this is such an example of the fact it's absolutely true.

Yep. And something that I've kind of held here at the end is just that experts can be wrong and it's okay for an expert to be wrong, but people often get really skittish about trying to prove an expert in that field wrong. So after I learned that this was kind of the county's decision here, I dove into state law. And at that point, I figured out that if this is going to move forward, I'm going to have to do every single aspect of this myself. And then they will, at the end of the day, they will catch up and come with me.

Right.

Because at the same time, we were trying to reach a grant deadline. We'd found a really good funding opportunity for this, for whichever entity was going to pay for it would be able to pay for it for a fraction of a dollar.

Right. And so you also were, you were up against the debt. You were up against a really hard deadline. It was the last day of '23. It was the 31st of December. It was the deadline for this grant. It was a state-funded grant through the Department of Transportation, right?

Yep. Yep. So excellent grant, but from there I knew I needed to get everything ready. Mm-hmm. And they were not working on their side on that direction.

The applicant wasn't you.

Correct.

And that's, again, I'm telling you, I've done a lot of really ridiculous things, like work things, like where I'm just like, no, I know this is right. I know we can put it in. And you push and you push and you push and you push. You've had to do that several times already and you're not open, you're not able to make revenue. Like, it's crazy, it's crazy the work that you've had to do. And I'm just, again, like, I could not be more proud of you.

And I'm—

you're not the applicant, you did all the work.

And I'm super happy with the amount of knowledge that I learned during this time. I was able to talk to civil engineers and people who've worked for decades on bridges that— Yep. I've been able to talk to steel manufacturers that have given me solutions for that road that are far under the price of what our original engineer was quoting us. I've got to work with mostly like just bringing the commissioners along and being able to, at the end of the day, be knowledgeable in the state law and be knowledgeable in the engineering fix for it. And I always joke at the end of the day that when I came back to my hometown, I never would've thought that I would've needed to act as an attorney, an engineer, and a politician all at the same time to be able to get this to move through. But it was a huge learning experience for me, and I feel so much more equipped coming out at the end of this. And at the end of the day, not only did I do the— some of the engineering work, and obviously there's still a lot done that I'm not privy to be able to do. But the real thing that sealed the deal for this was I was able to go through about 100 years worth of commissioner meeting minutes. I was told that there was this access and that someone else could look it up if I had some keywords, but I was able to get into it myself because it's online information, and I was able to query an entire database full of meeting minutes. Which took a really, really, really long time to do because I essentially found that the county had influence on this particular crossing for over 50 years and continued and repeated work done on it by the county. Right. So at that point, we shut the door on as far as who is responsible for this. And we got to move forward with the project on time. And all of the grant material that I'd worked on and the engineers that I had talked to and making sure that this looked professional at the end, I was able to give it to the county engineer and they were able to edit it slightly and put their own financials towards it and submit it. And we did get it in on time, but at the end of the day, it shouldn't have been that hard.

No, absolutely. It absolutely shouldn't have been that hard. And I want you to share if you're willing I went to this meeting just to support you in case, you know, not like in case I was like gonna step in. I was just there to support you. And we walk out and it was like, wow, like they had agreed at that, in that meeting then that they were going to meet the match requirement for the grant and they were willing to submit this grant application and that then it was, you'd be working with the engineer and blah, blah, blah. But then we hopped in my car and we were just talking a bit in the parking lot and you got a message and you don't have to say exactly who it was from.

Yep.

But it was from one of their advisors.

Yep.

Right.

I just had gotten an email right away from one of their advisors that just said I had missed my calling as an attorney. And I'm sorry, that felt good.

Yeah, of course it did. I was like, come on, you have to feel so awesome right now. And again, like, you haven't missed your calling as an attorney. You want to make wine, you get to make wine. But like, this story— and again, like, I think I've said to you, I'm not a huge fan of fighting energy because it's just so exhausting. But it almost had to get there for this project, you know, just to say like, no, we need to do this, and I'm sorry, but yes, you are responsible. And, and oh, but hey, that's not the end of the story. I found this grant, you know. It's like, oh my goodness, you know, how much more does a person have to do? Because ultimately, Haley, you want to make wine.

Yep. I think at the end of the day, for anyone else having situations like this And I think a lot of people give up early. I think they could definitely reach the point that I did. But when people are told by professionals or that people that you have elected to a position, you trust them, right? And if anything, you almost feel backed into a corner where, well, they know what they're talking about. I don't even know how to breach that. Yeah, they're smarter than me. So I think a lot more people deal with stuff like this, except they just get cut off at the knees early.

Well, what— one of the things that you did that I think is really important to mention, not only are you willing to dig in and do the research, but you sought out additional support. You know, like you talked to other engineers, you mentioned that, right? But there were other engineers in neighboring counties that had actually worked on projects that were similar to what you thought could be done here, right? So you were, you were also were willing to pick up the phone, you were willing to make the connections and willing to do the work. And I just think, I know this would have taken a lot of people down. It would have. And either of these two stories, frankly.

Yeah. And as far as my personality goes, I am not a cold caller at all. I'm a nervous person when it comes to cold calling. So that was probably one of the most frightening things that I had to do to go reach out to other professionals when they knew nothing about me or my situation and be able to explain to them. But the most— eventually I just stopped caring along this process because it just needed to be done.

Right.

And I think—

and no one can advocate for you better than you.

Yep.

I mean, seriously, like you taking the reins, picking up the phone, making those phone calls yourself. No one's going to be more knowledgeable about it than you.

And I think one of the most positive things that came out of this was that every single extra professional that I talked to took time out of their day without getting paid to help me, that they took hours and hours of their time to go and help me. Even the steel manufacturer who just has a fraction of— maybe they'll buy my products— had directly said like, We do these quotes for free and we come out here, we take a look at it and you can go to another manufacturer if you want at the end of the day. And that's no doubt part of their sales. Sure. But sure.

Yeah.

But at the end of the day, it was just super appreciated that all of these extra people were willing to set time aside in their day. And I wasn't going into this entire issue with that thought process that people were actually going to set time aside to help me. So it was just really positive coming out at the end of this because at the end of the day, the county commissioners aren't even the enemy per se. They have a job to do and they need to do it correctly. And the amount of advisement that they lean on is critical for them.

Right. So yeah, there isn't a bad guy in this situation. Similar to the situation with the 240, there's not a bad guy. It's just a bad situation. And to be where you were at with your business, I mean, it would have been so easy to quit, would have been so easy to walk away. So what you had had, um, you had invested a lot of time and energy into thinking about it and planning for it. You have great business plan, you'd applied for some funding, blah blah. But like, you could have absolutely just been like, this is not meant to be. And that's what I think— I've actually talked about this— that I think it can be really tempting, especially if you hit obstacle after obstacle, where you just go, am I on the wrong path? Like, what is happening, right? And you see it as a sign that you shouldn't to proceed. And I think more often than not, it is seriously just— I mean, I'm not saying you're being tested, but it's a test of like, well, how bad do you want this? Because it's not going to be easy.

And I had always figured that these things would come up. And I say again, going back to a degree of naivety to this, or whatever it may be, but I did not expect it all to come this soon in the process. And that was just It all felt like one thing after another. And, but at, at the end of the day, this is what I've decided to do. And at the core of it, the idea of growing a product, making something out of it, and then being able to bring people together to share in that product and have the community come around something like this that could be a really, really cool event center for the area and bring a whole bunch of traffic in, that has remained solid. Throughout.

Yep. Yep. And that's what you have to hold on to. Truly, everybody does. When you have these moments, you gotta sometimes go, okay, why am I doing this? Like, no, really, why am I doing this? You have to get back into the— that's the mission, that's the purpose, that's the passion, that's the thing.

Yep. So just being, being clear with myself, and that's what I'm working towards. I won't always have to look at state law. I won't have— God willing, I won't have to dig through 100 years worth of meeting minutes to be able to justify what I want to do. Eventually, someday, I will just be able to make wine and bring people together.

Right.

And I am so thrilled to be able to reach that day someday. And right now, it's for this next spring, it's just getting back on track, being able to get out to the vineyard, rehab it, do all the mitigation that I need to prop up, essentially, what was a dying and stunted vineyard.

Right.

So I'm super excited here to finally get to the point that I can start working on the core things that I was meant to be working on to be able to get this to move forward.

So what are you— where are you at with the site itself, like the building and all the things that you're putting up out there? Let's just forecast a little bit and then Hopefully it's months before you come back for another status check because there's just nothing to talk about. It's winter. There can't—

easy stuff. Things can't go wrong, can they? Shouldn't even say that. I know.

Knock on wood, we can knock on it.

Yeah. We've been working really hard with the architect. It did get pushed back a little bit just because things have moved at a bit of a slower pace, but we're super happy with how the building looks and how it's all panning out. It's going to be absolutely beautiful at the end of the day.

Yeah.

And as far as the physical site goes here, this spring, we'll be creating roads within our own property. We're going to be finishing growing grass. We have really beautiful grass out there right now because this was a bare field beforehand, so we had to go and seed everything. So it's managing that and then getting the last finishing touches on some of the vineyard infrastructure done so that they can grow properly. Yep. And then from there, I was hoping by this time of the year I'd be able to show people what the building's going to look like, but we're just not quite—

but you're close. We're close. Like from a rendering, you mean? Yeah, like showing an artist—

being able to have a really nice rendering to kind of give people visuals, because I think a lot of people—

people are super visual.

Yeah, for real. And I think once people see what it's going to look like out there, you're going to get this extra burst of excitement because a lot of what people know for the area of what wineries may look like might just be a cold barn shed, right?

Well, a lot of them are seasonal.

We've talked about that, right?

Is there a single winery in the state of North Dakota that's open year-round?

Yep, there is a single one, and that's out in Dickinson, North Dakota. Fluffy Fields, all the way away, other side of the state from us, basically. Yeah, so we're really excited to be able— and we've been crafting the building to both accommodate, you know, cozy wintertime and be able to have beautiful outdoor— yeah, beautiful outdoor scenes as well. So a lot of craft work has gone into this.

And that's been fun work.

Yes. And it has been really fun. Creative. And yeah. And being able to envision some of those things. And because I have such a long runway, being able to look at the little details and may just be stuff I notice in the future. But to be able to plan out to the smallest detail to make sure that everything is catered is perfectly—

It serves the overall aesthetic. We talked a bit about this, that like bathrooms are Instagrammable now. We were having this conversation a couple of weeks ago, right? That like there are a couple of bathrooms that I know that I'm like, go see these bathrooms.

Yeah.

You're just like, we love that, right? That's part of the experience. And you're taking the time, actually thinking. It's almost like having a giant mood board in your brain, in your heart for what you want this thing to feel like when people are there. And yeah, that's a whole process that a lot of people don't maybe give a lot of thought to. And again, it's partly because no one's— at least not to our knowledge in our state in terms of wineries, has there maybe been quite that much intention. There's some really awesome little wineries, so I'm not— this isn't a disparaging comment at all. But again, the fact that there's only one that's open year round, you have a lot to consider. Like you said, what does it feel like to be in this space in the winter versus how do we let people experience the nature around us in the summer when it's beautiful out? It's just a whole thing.

Curated was the word that I want, that every piece in there that people would experience would be curated.

To a certain degree, right?

And that everything down from, like we talked about, like the bathrooms. Yeah, I know a lot of women that will go into a bathroom, so you got to go check that bathroom out. So, you know, I'm gonna make the coolest bathroom.

I can't wait, I can't wait. It's gonna be just so dang fun. So when do you anticipate actually breaking ground?

It would be if everything works out right.

We have a bridge plan, but that's gotta happen, like the crossing And again, it's a proper crossing has to be put into place.

In a very perfect world, it would be spring of '25.

Okay.

Is when we would break ground. And the really nice thing working with our architect is the type of build that we have gone with is called a SIP build, contrary to just your stick frame building. Yeah, those things go up super quick.

Okay.

So we're going to have an enclosed shell within a month. And just with the SIP builds also, a lot of things are a bit easier. It's a bit easier to do electrical work in it. And just kind of from there, things will go really quickly that we hope to have by that fall things wrapped up. And it's going to be an absolute—

Paula Jensen, that's less than 18 months away. It sounds like a crazy amount of time away. It's not. It's not. It will be for people that are impatiently waiting to drink your wine.

I mean, that's just—

that's the case, right?

But, and the sooner that we can get a shell going and get tanks in it, we can start producing and aging wine at that site.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think the hardest thing people realize is that while we might have a building and we might have grapes that we can finally harvest, in order to age the wine long enough, we're looking at another added year onto that.

Yeah.

So it's at some point we're all just going to be dragging our feet waiting for opening day. And we'll get there though.

Yeah, of course you will. We are just so thrilled to have you in this community and it's been really fun. I mean, anyone I talk to, it's been fun to do whatever I can to support you along the way in these things. And that's, you know, if it's talking to anybody at the state level, like you got legislators that came out and I mean, because this is a potentially game-changing community-changing business from a tourism perspective, from a making us feel like our town is as cool as we want it to be. Like, there's just— it's incredible. And so it's been really fun to share your story. This is such a fun platform for sharing a story because people get— I mean, most of the time I'll say people are like, I'm so jealous.

I'm like, you should be, you should be.

Like, it's amazing. We're so lucky. So it's really, really fun. And these are important things, I think, for anybody with a dream in a small community to hear, to know, to understand. Like, there actually isn't— for the most part, there's not a lot of things that are easy about that, like what you've experienced for sure. But it's just not easy, but it is worth it. And coming back to your, your big vision, your big dream, like what fired you up about this in the first place? Don't quit too early, you know?

The obstacles—

there's actually a book called The Obstacle Is the Way. I don't know if you knew that. Just really talking about the fact that how we become who we need to be to take these kinds of things on is through, through obstacles that we dig in and we overcome.

And the amount of growth that I've just seen in myself personally in this last year has been huge. And I look at the end of this and I tell myself I wouldn't have had it any other way. I'm so much more equipped. I'm so much more knowledgeable. And then also my personality is so much more tempered than it was before. Before, that I feel like if this were to happen again in some form or fashion, whatever it may be, that I have the skill set. I'm confident enough to be able to look at this and go, okay, I got this. Same thing, different day.

Yeah, exactly. I'm telling you, Haley, I— all of these things that you've gone through, I couldn't help but think about what this— it felt like when I was trying to start this thing and just how weird it was and how much feedback I got that was hard and just how hard it is. It makes your opening day sweeter. It makes every moment where you have— like, I've had moments in this space, and you'll have these too, for sure you will, where everything is happening just as you pictured it. You know, like, there'll be a group of women enjoying something, and maybe there'll be a family over here, and you'll be like, this is what I did this for. It is an amazing, amazing feeling. And having like overcome really hard stuff just makes all of those victories sweeter. So it's gonna be worth it. It already has been. And I think that's another huge piece of this. Growing Small Towns is about the growth of humans. And you, my dear, oh, I could cry. You have grown so much. It's been so, so fun. And yeah, and we're all cheering for you. And that's the truth.

And I can't wait to come back the next time. And maybe the next time we sit down and talk, it'll be a whole lot more positive than it is obstacles. Because eventually I feel like I'm going to get past that point.

You are. Promise.

I promise. It's like, while everything's mildly turning up, Hailey. Yeah.

You know, one day my dad and I, early on when I was talking about how suddenly things felt like they were coming together, like it had been challenge after challenge after challenge. The analogy that I used was I, all along the way, I was planting like a meadow, right? Like every single conversation I was having was a seed that went into the ground. And all of a sudden, some time goes by and all around you are popping up all these beautiful flowers. It's all this, and you're like, I did this, like I did this. And you don't do it alone. You know, obviously there's a lot of things, but it's, that's the slow progress. That sometimes we don't stop and really look around and really take stock of how many amazing things have come together. The connections you've made, like, those connections are going to be priceless for you going forward. It's incredible.

And I'm so glad to have them now. Yeah.

Well done.

Well done.

What a fun— yeah, you're like, kind of like, wah wah, but it's not, right? We're talking about overcoming it all. But thanks so much for coming on, for sharing this. I know that the people listening to this are going to be are going to be inspired by. It's pretty hard not to be, frankly. And like you said, yeah, we'll have you come back and it'll be all coming up Hailey.

Yeah, hopefully.

Oh, it's so good. Thanks so much. We'll have you back soon.

Thank you.