Maggie's Farm

I think that guy called me --or came by the dairy --one day in the late 90s. Working on a book on American farmstead cheesemakers --see if there's an index, look for "Larsen Farms Texas Chevre".

As they say, it's a small world, unless you have to paint it.

yep --he does ok alright -

--reminds me of a story --but it's indelicate, fooey.

I AM in the book --page 421-22. Yay! Maybe i'll start 'er back up again -- a coincidence like that is usually the gods up to something, or so it is written, poorly, by sophomores.

(ahem) that deeeeep page number, i should explain, for the benefit of my hairs, that the book is organized by states of the union, in alphabetical ardor. Further, the book is no encyclopedia --it just picks the cheeses he especially like. Indeed, he picked but two from Texas --mine, and Paula Lambert's up in Dallas, the Mozzarella Company.

I hadn't fully understood what a big deal this is. This book would've been the time to try to recapitalize and hire a #2, to get away from the 16 hr, 7 days a week chief-cook-and-bottle-washer-and-livestock-breeder and REGULATORY interface schedule that in the end wore me out. Two-thirds of my stock was pledged to financiers and i owed the bank for my third --at 9.5% the bank interest was costing exactly what i needed to add a deputy mgr.

So, raising four kids and putting 'em thru college was about all my cash-flow could manage. Result, i could not grow out of the bind --actual physical floor space in the cheesery needed expanding --additional paid-in capital (not capital with a prime+2 handle on it) is what i needed, and to raise capital, my friends, is precisely when one needs to not be worn-out, exhausted, frazzled and preoccupied by execution of relentless daily detailia.

--so I flunked --as soon as i had enough of the combined educations and farm real-estate paid off, I f**king quit and slept for the next year. Ended up with the real estate, plus some nice careers and families launched among the four farm-raised chilluns.

Regret is the 15 years building a bona-fide brand --and then not selling the label, the brand, but just letting it disappear from the stores. Chalk that up to 'burn-out' --a deadly creeping psychological malady that hides from the victim the value of the project.