Painting by Artist Roy Egg, done 5 am Monday Morning
Our very talented local artist, Roy Egg, known far and wide for his painting dropped by this photo of his painting of Mach's Store. It's fantastic. I was very touched by Roy's last minute inspiration to lend a hand to our cause of trying to help the general store.
As some of you may have been following our progress over the past months to help the general store in my village. Oh boy, we have had quite an education on running a small country store. Margins are slim on most everything except hardware, toys, gifts and prepared foods. We learned one generally should have a 30 year lease, hours the store is open is something to watch, who is your customer in a changing climate of "the local foods movement" and how do you keep everyone happy with your choices of foods, wines, etc. Oh, there's so much more as you can imagine. And everyone has a suggestion and we listened to them all.
End of March a small group was formed from a couple dozen emails sent to a core group of business folks in town. I tried hard to get a mix of flatlanders (me) and locals (not me). Not easy to do, but I tried like hell. We meet every week for weeks on end to try to keep this Iconic Country Store open. Our time to finish up is nearing the end after this weekend's Mach's Fest- A Celebration of our General Store and it's community.
Did we succeed? It's a deep question and of course I am writing from my own view point. Weeks ago my husband said to me, Judy, not everyone thinks what you are doing is a good thing.... I know honey, I said, but you gotta do what you think is right. They are my neighbors and it can't close.
So did we succeed? We tried like hell, we educated ourselves with help from The Vermont Preservation Trust and our own studies of other general stores. We raised our first goal of $10,000 to keep the doors open, we are still trying to reach our second goal of $25,000 to completely fill up the store. We haven't raised as much money as we had hoped but we did set quite a high goal- why not, right? We will do well with a Silent Auction set up right now inside the store and the vendors this weekend will donate 20% of their sales to the store from Mach's Fest.
We brought Vermont's own Rusty DeWees to the recently opened Town Hall Theater, which was quite a feat in itself. The town hall group raised thousands of dollars to make the theater usable again w/ handicap accessible elevator, reconstruction and fancy fire escape with just about every step of the way trying to persuade the select fellows to sign off on their many, many grants. Pulling teeth might be a good description for this. I was only on the edges of this process when they started running out of steam! They rocked it.
Sue LaPorte, one of the hard workers driving this town hall project. I'm so proud of you Sue! And Elizabeth and Karen, too. It was fun getting the room cleaned up after almost 10 years of not being used. Thanks to Bob, Barbara, Marion, Sue, Scott, Nancy and me. Also thanks to the grange for donating the little kitchen chairs; they keep it really country sweet.
This is a great view of our Pawlet Painted Curtain. There is a project in Vermont called the Painted Curtain Project, now known as Curtains without Borders, headed up by Chris Hadsel in Burlington. She found that many towns had these old stage curtains. Ours was found over in one of our old schools no longer in use! Chris and gang have restored many of the curtains found throughout the state. It is pretty cool backdrop for the stage and history preserved.
This Saturday, June 28th we have a full line up of family events in Pawlet Village. The morning kicks off with a Kid's Fishing Derby w/ sign up at 11am at the store and prizes from Orvis. Our silent auction in the store has been ongoing since The Rusty DeWees event and will conclude at 3pm Saturday.
There will be Paint Your Own Pottery with Janno of Flower Brook Pottery, I'm hosting Make a Night Light on my shop porch, Peter is organizing Live Music, The Barn is hosting a Beer/Wine Tent as well as a dessert table, Abby is bringing her produce and pickled goodies, Consider Bardwell Farm is making Goat Cheese Panini, Granny Blossom's is bringing there salsas and line of local made goods, The Wood Family Farm will bring their wares and Maple Cotton Candy, Pitchfork Preserves will be there if it works out:), hopefully, JJ of Mach's will be doing dogs on the grill, The Station Restaurant will be having specials all day, Barry will be bringing a few of his Alpacas down off the hill, there will be wine tasting with Baker Distributing inside the store, Dawn Smith will be doing it up with her hula hoops for all, we will have a t-shirt table of cool shirts made up for the day and also selling this poster (first photo).
Hope you make it out for the day. 11am-3pm, please park at the church or fire house.
gotta run, we have a wicked thunder storm...in closing, we helped the store the best we could and made a community realize how much they really do value the store.
Our Go Fund Me site will be up through July, please give what you can.
http://www.gofundme.com/8t5oc0
xo
judy
ps. I would like to publically thank my co partner, Marsha- you were amazing!! I am still learning the hard lessons from you! As well as Patti, Scott, Mark, Margaret, Jackie, Barbara, Bob and Martha, Bob and Nancy, Peter, and Peter, Sirijane, Anita, Marion and Bruce. And everyone else that propped us up and helped us keep on going.