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That process took close to a year and a half to get through the building permit, get through the
<br />construction, get the equipment, get it installed, get through the final; and it was challenging. It
<br />was very challenging. And we’ve invested, you know, in the kitchen alone, you know, close to
<br />$125,000 in getting this set up. And when we received the final sign-off on the building permit,
<br />we went back to the Health Department; and they came up and they inspected, and they said
<br />you’re good to go. So with that in mind, we opened up for three days.
<br />And we asked the local community to come in and tell us what do you want to see here, what
<br />exactly would you like to have at a local bakery that’s going to provide you with a cup of coffee
<br />on the way to work in the morning, a piece of coffee cake, you know, cupcakes, cookies, those
<br />kind of things, made fresh, made with local products. And it went very well. I mean we got a lot
<br />of good community input in those three days, you know, particularly bread. You know, we
<br />never thought about doing bread, but everybody was asking. I mean, you can’t get a loaf of good
<br />fresh homemade, you know, without preservatives, enrichments, or anything else. So we added
<br />that to what we were looking at doing.
<br />Then we had an inspector come up on the end of the third day from Planning, Zoning, asking us,
<br />well, what are you doing? And we opened up the plans and we walked into the building and,
<br />you know, we were pretty proud. I mean it was a year and a half’sworth of work. And we
<br />showed him, you know, here’s what we’re trying to accomplish here, is what we’re planning, is
<br />what we’re doing. And he says, you know, we’ve had a complaint; and the complaint was that,
<br />you know, another business within that area had to go through the process of special permit to do
<br />a similar type of business. And now you’re open and you have it. And I said, well, that’s
<br />correct; but I’ve, you know, I’ve got my plans and they’re all signed and Planning and everybody
<br />signed off. I thought, you know -. And he says, well, you really need to go that route, you need
<br />to go through the special permit process. That’s the right way of doing this. Even though you’re
<br />going to use items from your farm, your Ag, within what you’re doing, you are also going to
<br />provide products that are made on other farms or using, you know, products that are. So we
<br />stopped. That was our last day. We closed and we started this process, going through the special
<br />use.
<br />The general idea, I mean, when we started going through this, you know, we had three Ag
<br />employees, we were moving along pretty well. To keep a 50-acre farm viable in this district to
<br />be able to try and get a way to get your product to market and keep employees employed and
<br />things going, you know, we felt it was very important to have that retail component to it. We
<br />tried a lot of different methods, farmers markets. But when you’re farming and you’re doing Ag,
<br />and you’ve got to take a day out, stop what you’re doing and go sit at a market and try and retail
<br />your product there, and then the fees and the cost and things involved in that, we’ve seen enough
<br />local farmers, we’ve talked to enough local people when we opened up for those three days that
<br />we wanted to add a retail outlet for other produce, things that we didn’t produce but other local
<br />farmers did. And then we wanted to open up the commercial kitchen to other farmers to be able
<br />to have the opportunity to process their product and get more value in their local product, and
<br />then provide that to the local community. So over the last year or so as we pulled this
<br />application together we’ve tried to get a pretty good clear picture of what we want to do and be
<br />able to try and convey that. It’s to be a local community place that somebody on their way to or
<br />from work can get a cup of coffee, a piece of coffee cake that isn’t going to cost them, you know,
<br />an arm and leg, that local producers, you know, and we’ve had them. We’ve had them in there
<br />when we were opened, coffee producers, honey, we had orchids in there from a grower up off the
<br />road that we live on. We’re not trying to do a restaurant, I mean, by any stretch. We’re just a,
<br />you know, a small community center bakery that people can come to and get product and to
<br />make our farm, make the Ag part of it viable.
<br />Now we’ve had good support from our neighbors, some of which are here. There have been
<br />some letters that were in about noise and, you know, concerns about those aspects. We have
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