What Brought Us to Kansas

It was Spring of 2017. I had just been offered a great job on the Las Vegas strip at one of the famous buffets, with a 300% pay raise. I contemplated my decision for merely a second before responding: “Ahh, No thank you.”

We had a 2nd kid on the way and sure the pay raise would be nice, but Vegas was no place to raise a family. I was NOT going back to working evenings and weekends. I wanted to be present in my daughters' lives. Nike World Headquarters was a dream job. Weekends and evenings off. Unlimited food budget. Top of the line equipment. And creative freedom. Declining the Vegas job was the easiest decision I made that day.

Little did I know, God was about to give me all the time with my daughters that I could ask for.

Two months after I declined the job offer in Sin City, and 3 months after announcing the arrival of our second daughter... I found myself laying in a hospital bed, struggling to breathe while a doctor explained the grim news.

It would take 1 year of Physical Therapy before I could walk without assistance. The extensive nerve damage in my back, hips, and legs was permanent. And I had severe osteoarthritis. Long term, there was little I could do about the pain.

I was devastated. At 31 years old my childhood dream of being a Chef exploded 10 seconds after takeoff and I could no longer provide for my wife and children. As the doctor outlined the recovery timeline, one thing he said rang like a gong in my ear... “Lift no more than 5 pounds for the first year, after 5 years, I should be able to lift 50 pounds.”

All I could think about was the fact my 7 year old daughter was already over 50 pounds... Which meant I could never hold her in my arms again.

“And then one day, you will pick up your child for the very last time, without ever realizing it will be the last. And you will realize all too late that you should have cherished that last moment a little longer.”

I could accept losing my dreams. But the thought of my girls losing their father in that way was unacceptable.

Together, Elsbeth and I made a drastic lifestyle change. Daily Yoga got me walking unassisted in just 2 months. I couldn't work as a Chef, but I could be a Dad-Chef. So I designed a dietary plan for my family. I cooked healthy, nutritional, affordable dinners and desserts. We cut almost all processed foods out of our diet and over the next year, we lost a combined 200 pounds.

In that 1st year I spent 550 hours doing Yoga and PT. Every hour of it hurt, and more than a few times I thought to give up on recovery altogether as the pain was too much to bear. Yet every time I lay there wanting to quit, I would remember the day I became a father, the day I got to hold my little girl for the first time, and the day I realized my life was no longer about me anymore. And I pushed on.

1 year after the injury, I held both my girls in my arms for the first time.

Though the last year had not been so kind to Elsbeth. She steered our family through the hurricane like a ship without a captain. At 2-months pregnant, she began picking up extra shifts. She attended Technical College during the day graduating with a 4.0 GPA. At night, she worked to support her family. Just 5 days after giving birth to Trinity, she was back at work to finish her externship and provide. “Through sickness” had arrived much earlier for us than she thought it would. But nevertheless, she persisted. And the struggles tempered our marriage like fire tempers steel.

3 years after losing my career, our lives were unrecognizable. Combined, we had lost 350+ pounds, more than halving our body weight. 80% of our diets were now sourced from local farms or our own garden. We learned to can, pickle and preserve jam, meat and eggs for winter. By now we were harvesting 2,000 pounds of food per year and our motto had become “How did they do it before electricity?”

I began to look for cheaper food sources. Free, preferably. Elsbeth loves Blueberries. Blueberries grew in Oregon. So I called the farm on the package in the grocery store. After a very awkward conversation with a very patient farmer, he realized I was asking to glean his Blueberry Field. Nobody had asked about Gleaning in decades, but we had permission to glean 8 acres of mature blueberry bushes. Free Food. That's the best price possible.

On Monday I went to investigate the farm's potential. Tuesday I returned with my entire family and together we harvested 300 pounds of the best Blueberries any of us had ever eaten. We quickly realized to get the quality of food we wanted, we had to go directly to the farmer or grow it ourselves.

The next spring, we started a garden. Gardens need fertilizer, so we started composting. Composting needs organic material, so we started raising meat ducks. And so it went.

We had been dreaming of building our own Homestead. Property was expensive in the Pacific Northwest and we no longer fit into the political culture of Oregon. So we began looking elsewhere and quickly settled on the Midwest. We began hunting for a small town in the middle of nowhere with no major highways running through. And as we told friends about our search, one replied “Check out Herington.”

We researched the town and it seemed a perfect fit. We wanted somewhere we could use our time and skills to contribute to the local community and plant generational roots. So I flew out to Kansas alone, and after just 3 days I made an offer on a house.

In the Fall of 2021, we loaded up our kids, cats, ducks, and houseplants, said goodbye to our family, and proceeded to drive 2,300 miles across the country to a home only I had seen.

Since arriving, people had suggested that, being a Chef, I should open a restaurant. While the idea was intriguing, we sorely lacked the financial capability. Plus, I had always sworn I would never open a restaurant. The hours are horrid, profit margins almost nonexistent, and Hospitality is a fickle industry.

Yet our plans continued to meet obstacle after obstacle, until finally we had but one option left: look into the restaurant at the airport, rumored to be fully furnished.

It wasn't quite fully furnished, but it had just enough. And with a lot of help from friends, family, and the town, we were able to open.