The house we bought at the edge of town sits on 3 acres that used to be a sheep yard. In addition to the small, red barn on the east side of the property, there is an even smaller white shed that used to contain the weighing scale.
The portion that once held the scale was filled in with gravel at some point, and the rest of the building now covers a cracked cement floor. Other than two old doors and a pile of broken, rotting wood pallets, the building has stood empty since we moved in, and presumably much longer than that.
It no longer has electricity and never had running water, but the tinned roof and walls are still mostly weather-tight, and the wood frame is in surprisingly good shape. It also happens to stand right alongside the road that runs behind our house, which is kitty-corner to our town’s tiny public library.
Our town has no community center, per se, so in addition to lending books, the library is where kids go after school. It’s also where older folks who don’t have computers go to get help navigating technology or attend meetings. The library stocks games, art supplies and audio books. When we decided to move into this house, “The Public” (as it’s called by the kids) was a huge bonus because the library is regularly the most fun place to be for miles around.
In my life before moving to the ranch, I toured and taught music full time, and before that — when I was writing songs I was too shy to play for anyone — I worked in commercial kitchens. I often tease my kids when they complain about what I’m making for dinner that I used to get paid to cook, and the meal they are about to eat would be very expensive if I still did.
Over time, that joke evolved into my daughter and I having conversations about how she was going to open a cafe when she was a grown-up, and she would hire me to run the kitchen. She loved to discuss the decor and menu, and I loved to talk about it, too. While I would not want to work in a restaurant full-time right now, I absolutely love cooking delicious, nourishing food for people and enjoy fantasizing about doing it again someday with her.
“Who knows,” I’d say. “It might really happen!”
In October, out of the blue, she suddenly turned to me and said, “I don’t want to have our cafe someday. I want to do it now.”
I started to launch into all the reasons why we couldn’t have a cafe, but I happened to be looking out the kitchen window at the old, empty shed, and I stopped myself. Instead, I said, “OK, let’s start dreaming and see where it takes us.”
Soon after, we began cleaning. We pulled out the rotting pallets and brought in new ones to lay over the dirt floor. We swept and dusted. We laid down plywood and covered it with old area rugs. We repaired the broken doors and hung some solar-powered twinkle lights. It’s still a shed but a pretty darn fancy one, in my humble opinion. Certainly fancy enough to serve snacks to kids (or adults) heading into or out of the public library.
The “grand opening” of the Sheep Shed Cafe will be on my daughter’s birthday, which also happens to be the last day of school before winter break. Our staff is my daughter’s second-grade classmates. Between the counter (my daughter’s old dresser) a few card tables and some folding chairs, there’s just enough room to set up my propane griddle — which is a good thing, because while I’d planned to make a few different baked goods for the opening, the staff voted and decided we will be serving sausage and pancakes with a hot chocolate bar instead.
So, if you happen to be in town, stop by. We’ll be serving until we run out of ingredients!
