Catching up after a whirlwind summer.

Since April of this year I have been wearing multiple hats at once with non-stop to-do lists. Project manager for my bakespace buildout. Baker for my still functioning cottage bakery. Mom to a busy two year old. Volunteer coordinator at Sola Gratia Farm. Main event planner and food preparer of my joyous wedding celebration that took place this past weekend.

I am whole body tired. I am full of gratitude and pride and excitement at the same time.

As of last week, my commercial kitchen is permitted by the local public health department and also on the state level, which allows for wholesale commerce. It has been given the necessary stamps of approval to be used to produce as many goods as my two hands can churn out. I have been paused on Pantry Bread Subscriptions for the last little bit as I powered through wedding month. Unfortunately, that is going to continue on into September. I am excited to talk about what the coffee shop crew and I are dreaming up for how our relationship as neighboring businesses is going to be.Things are brewing in big ways for this one-person bakery, anticipation and eagerness is felt from you all and I am already so grateful for the support that has been shown towards this big project.

image by Tay Jules Photography, @tayjules.photo

From the outside looking in, all signs point to go, go, go. Internally, I have many thoughts on this. The day after our wedding, I felt a lot of exhaustion set in. Relief from passing over many hurdles in a very short amount of time, yes. But the real consequences all of this work has had on my body became quite apparent to me. I am really, really exhausted. Not burnt out, that’s a different feeling, I have gone through that before. I am bursting with inspiration, so very eager to have my hands in bread dough, twirling throughout my amazing new kitchen space in the production mode I know myself to be capable of. I have some really remarkable work ahead of me in that bakery, I feel it. Instead, I am the kind of tired where I have this muscle strain in my back that constantly lingers, and recurring sinus headaches. My emotions are unstable, a series of overstimulation moments and sometimes dread and then just tears. Frustration that I haven’t started towards healthy habits like my once regular yoga practice or strength training so the regular 50 lb flour bag lifting becomes a non-issue. Time has felt a bit lean lately. And in a college town like this one, not only does the return of students bring about energy everywhere you go, it can also bring on this feeling of “I gotta do all the things!” for a small business. I am feeling this. I am so wanting to get in my bakery this week, right now even, and just start baking bread and rolling pie dough and churning out baked goods. I don’t think my body could keep up.

I think I need full stop rest. Like the kind where I just take a lot of walks in the woods and drink coffee in the cool fall mornings. Easy, slow going dinners with my family and maybe a quick getaway (heading to Seattle next week, actually.) I need rest. Plain and simple. So I am prioritizing that for a bit longer.

I am truly at a new beginning, both personally and professionally. With the new married title, Chase and I would both agree it feels “just pretty normal.” No whimsical waltzing around the house reminding each other we’re married now. We’ve been “married” a long time. But the real side of being legally married, especially in this pretty wretched country, is that I now have access to better healthcare that is going to allow me some regular bodywork to get my bones and muscles back in alignment after a few years of neglect. As a business, I really do have to remind myself daily, this new kitchen is a new business. Of course there are many tie-overs. The community that has supported the bakery from cottage to commercial is very much there. I hear and feel their support daily. I will still be baking many of the things I have built a foundation on, bread and pastries. There will be no falter in my quest to work with as many local/regional producers and growers for ingredient sourcing. But I now have the capacity in this space to produce so much more (with a similar amount of effort), and access to many different types of business models and relationships with other small businesses. I feel as if I am in a limitless territory right now, free to decide the future of my business all over again. And if I learned anything from starting out my cottage bakery as a newly postpartum mother, slow beginnings are what make the most sense for someone like me.

Here’s where I am headed.

September is just around the corner. Starts next Monday. In my head, I had no doubt that by now I would be ready to rock on all fronts for Tooth Butter Bakery. I am and I am not, you know. So what I have decided to do is focus on a few components of my business that I think are the most important right now. The things that are newest to me and need the most developing. One of them being my new home in Elm City Coffee and what my place will be there, the other (and more boring), laying down some business groundwork so I move forward in a sustainable fashion (read: gotta start paying myself regularly so I gotta start figuring out how to do that.) I guess our capitalistic society would probably say, “you have to start working to start paying yourself” lol. I think there is great value to a slow beginning. To getting ducks in a row and accepting that for a period of time you might not see the “big” return of a business investment. I am trying to be in this for the long haul I think. And if that ends up not being my truth, I am ultimately trying to keep this thing from getting too big for my britches. Sustainable business means many things to me. And to put it simply for you, I just want to keep baking bread and sweet treats for my community and I want to be healthy enough to do it.

In the next month, you will be able to have access to my baking in many forms. Some old, some new. Like I mentioned above, I won’t be doing Pantry Bread Subscriptions for the month of September. I really wanted to get back to this, but I had to get honest with myself and I just didn’t have enough spaciousness for it. I have a really awesome student/faculty CSA on campus I take part in every Fall called Get Fresh that starts next week and I will be baking every Wednesday for that so I fully intend to keep up with Pantry Bread One-Off’s, the single dose version of the subscriptions. I will post on my HotPlate every Friday to order for the following Wednesday, pick-up at Cloud Mountain Kombucha 3-7pm as usual. Expect breads and fermented oat granola, and maybe some sneaky treats so I can start going through my wicked freezer fruit stash. I also plan on starting to ease my way into production mode for the coffee shop. I believe we are going to build a really awesome working relationship with each other, and I can’t wait to settle into a regular rhythm of providing baked goods in the space. With a still developing timeline, I will just say to look to social media and announcements from Elm City and I as to when you can find baked goods in the shop for now. Hint: it might be as early as mid-September. I am also still very much taking on custom cake orders and would love to provide a joyously crafted cake for your special occasion. No pop-ups on the calendar for now, holiday baking on my brain but trying to keep it at a distance. Couple Beginner Sourdough Workshops at Allerton this fall, September 21st and October 19th. Few spots left in October class, September is sold out.

Thank you so much for continuing to be here, for keeping this a community supported bakery. I don’t want to tap too much into my personal life as a business, but this bakery is also a very large part of my personal life. It’s very integrated. Our wedding weekend felt like a culmination of the incredible community we have become surrounded by in the last two years of running Tooth Butter Cottage Bakery. I am floored by the love we were surrounded with from the Urbana community the entire week of our wedding. It deserves its own writing and I plan to get on that. That community support is also keeping me grounded in the slow beginnings of Tooth Butter Bakery. Gentle reminders from so many people that my health is most important and that the support will be here for the long haul. I have laid the groundwork for it to be this way. I will end on this perfectly timed writing I came across yesterday from my friend, and local artist, Meg McDonald.