Coffee has been a mainstay in my life since I was very young. I’ve been doodling with home roasting from time to time for a while but my interest in the process is much older than that. I just wanted to occasionally play with coffee for myself but still largely just wanted to support local roasters(always local). I eventually realized how many unrecyclable coffee bags I was going through and decided that I never wanted one of those bags ever again. After a period of roasting all my own coffee, and giving some coffee to friends, I realized that this is something I wanted to do after finding a source for fully compostable coffee bags.
The Hounds
Queen Ida came into my life soon after moving to Utah. She was found chasing bunnies on a reservation sometime in 2014. Best guess is that she got away on a hunt. When she was finally “apprehended”, she was full grown but 28lbs(she’s 56ish pounds now). Her foster parents did a great job with her and her 19.5cm right ear and 18.5cm left ear. Ida’s favorite thing in the world is barking at critters.
Murtagh also has reservation routes. His mother was a corgi that got frisky with a plott hound. Pregnant corgi mom was surrendered as they didn’t want a mixed litter of herder/hunting dog and he hopped to 3 different shelters before I saw him and his brother at Nuzzles and Co. I would have loved to adopt his brother too but I could only get one and Ida seemed to be more interested in Murtagh(I got his name from my favorite book series, Eragon). Murtagh’s favorite thing in the world is chewing on his sister’s ears.
They’re a great pair and love road trips
The Hound Dad
I’ve always been interested in creating and consuming yummy things, from coffee to food. My mom definitely instilled a huge love for creating and its been a daily passion ever since. Outside of that, sports drove me for most of my life, while tasty things were my focus between training and competing. I was a 320lb, All-America track athlete in high school and planned on being a track athlete throughout my adult life. But injuries drove me to switch to cycling. I lost 140lbs and raced bikes professionally for a while. After taking up inline speed skating as cross training for biking, I soon entered an inline marathon on a few months of skating and won the elite category, and beat some of the pros. Due to concussions I was accumulating with biking, along with team politics in the Philippines, I decided to throw everything I had a skating. Years went by with no concussions, but 2 in a month, then an untimely car accident before a flight to Salt Lake to try to hit world cup qualifying times did me in. I did nearly nothing for 6 months, then gradually tried coming back once my symptoms stabilized to a new normal. I moved to Salt Lake from Milwaukee in 2015 to have a change of scenery. I fell in love with Utah and knew this would be home for me. I tried skating for a year but the writing was on the wall. I just didn’t have the superb balance to be a good skater anymore. My fitness levels were where they needed to be, but skating just wasn’t in the cards. But I’m here and happier than I ever thought I’d be without competitive sports.
*My major injury in college got me to take a ceramics class at a local community college in May to rehab my hand after surgery. I totally loved it and left my biology program at LaSalle in Philadelphia. I finished my degree at Virginia Commonwealth University and have a BFA in ceramics/metalsmithing. I put my art on hold to pursue sports. But I look forward to getting my hands back in the clay soon. My ultimate goal is to open a coffee cocktail bar. Making some traditional coffee drinks, but largely making things nobody has had before, along with my pottery.