CRAFT by Under My Host® Issue No. 15 Classics | Page 165

incarnation of Garden Path Fermentation that,
at least on its surface, bears little likeness to
how we thought it would look.
Have we compromised our original vision?
We’ve certainly faced choices where no op-
tion was exactly what we would have liked for
it to have been and encountered crossroads
where no path obviously led to where we were
hoping to go. At these junctions, rather than
abandoning our journey entirely, we chose to
accept setbacks, detours, and diversions, and
to change course when we had to, so that we
could continue on. The question for me isn’t
whether we made compromises but wheth-
er the cost of the compromises we made was
greater or lesser than of those we did not, with
respect to the overall integrity of the project.
There may have been a way for us to open some
variation of the farm setup we’d originally envi-
sioned, but it would have come with significant
limitations, especially on the tasting room side,
that we were not willing to accept. Navigating
that path would have also taken far longer than
the 15 months we’ve already spent getting to
where we are and cost much more than we had
available to spend. We could have raised more
money, and perhaps used some to buy us more
time, but in order to do that, we would have had
either to take on additional debt or to sacrifice
some of our own equity in the project, which we
were also unwilling to do.
Instead, we chose a path that will allow us to
start making the products we want to make,
with the resources that we need to make them,
possibly even by the end of this year, and to
serve them to our guests in a pleasant, conve-
niently located setting, with abundant outdoor
space, surrounded by evergreens. We have
land where we can begin growing our own in-
gredients and what we cannot grow ourselves,
we’re able to source nearby.
After spending a year and a quarter in startup
mode, we’re thrilled to move on to Phase 1 of
our operation, while at the same time, we also
continue to think ahead to what Phase 2 will
look like, with our original, idealized image of
Garden Path Fermentation still brightly painted
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