Pizza Hippo: Get Ready for Organic Pizza Townshend, Vermont

And I'm bringing you a love that's true
So get ready, so get ready
I'm gonna try to make you love me too
So get ready, so get ready, 'cause here I come (The Temptations)

Incredible to think about.  Pizza Hippo will in fact open our first organic pizza stand in Townshend, Vermont at the Kindle Farm School in May.  (Tentatively May 19 for you calendar watchers :)

As we hurtle towards May 19, time management is becoming my biggest challenge.  For example, I just lost 30 minutes trying to get my plumber OUT of the house after he finished the job.  Every second counts at this point as we attempt to cross every t and dot every j before inspection May 1 and then opening day.  

Will we have our portable sink built, the building construction under way, have all the little chemicals the state says we MUST use in our food operation.  We must use chemicals! Not to mention the insurance costs.  High!  Like you needed me to write that to know it.  When will I get our sign painted and hang it up with a coming soon notice?  What about completing the mobile unit?  Piece by piece by piece.  

We are also working on a bid for our first Pizza Hippo wedding catering.  Exciting bit of news.  Really wonderful young woman who has no idea how she heard about us.  Will keep y'all posted on this progression.  As someone who just got married, these things are always more involved than you think they're going to be...

Speaking of time sucks, I just took the Food List challenge on Facebook. I know.  In the middle of writing about time management.  Sorry!  My cousin Stacy Williams has tried two more foods than me!  This is not totally surprising, but it does bother me.  She also travels more than me and is probably better at non English languages.  

Our PR machine seems to be working.  People are starting to recognize the Hippo and have spontaneously shouted "It Hits the Spotamus" to me in the streets.  Well, I had a dream where this happened.  And someone did tell me they have seen the Pizza Hippo fliers around town.  So, yeah, it's working.  Look for a feature on Pizza Hippo and Kindle Farm in The Commons next week...

Speaking of PR machines, when I retweeted an article about Monsanto potentially suing the state of VT if the GMO labeling bill passes, someone from Monsanto replied directly to my twitter account with a link to a Monsanto response page disputing this claim.  Freaky!  

What do y'all think about this last bit?

Halfway to Hippo Heaven

So we completed our little pizza film and launched our crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.com three nights ago. As you may have gleaned from the title here, we've raised half of our minimum goal of $5K.

It's pretty inspiring to get emails AND financial backing from people all over the country saying, "Yeah! Go for it. And your pizza looks amazing. Please make it happen and take Pizza Hippo national so we can eat some, too!"

Hey, I'm totally down with that! I really do hope to make it happen.

The one thing I'm a little bummed about is that Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef on a mission to bring organic food to the masses himself; Emeril, Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain, and all the other food celebs I've contacted via Twitter haven't promoted our campaign, not even a retweet! WHAT THE HECK?! I know they don't really manage their own social media, but come on fellas. Yeah, you too Bobby Flay. How about helping out the Pizza Hippo? If any of my four to seven readers know someone who knows those guys, send them the link to our video. I think they might be down with the cause. At least a throw down. Something.

On another topic, I had to kill one of our two roosters a few days ago. He was at the bottom of the pecking order and getting pretty beat up, as well as overcompensating by violently mounting our hens as much as possible. Since we turned him into gumbo (excellent stock, kind of tough and stringy meat - someone suggested this can be mitigated in the butchering process - anyone know more about this?) egg production has gone up 33% per day. Yes, we track daily egg production. Plus with only six layers it's pretty easy math :) So I'm looking forward to Amber getting her flock of meat birds later in the spring, and hopefully a few ducks as well. No, this has nothing to do with Pizza Hippo, but it is part of my outlandish dream. The part that says I don't go to the grocery store ever again.

I know this is kind of an impossible dream, but with Pizza Hippo's new wholeseller accounts we really might be able to pull it off. Buy the things we can't grow in bulk at cut rate prices and, well, grow the rest. Definitely going to preserve A LOT more veggies this year. And apple juice for that matter. But that comes in the fall.

For now, Spring is in the air, and we have all season to watch things get big, grow fat, and soak up the earth's energy to sustain us later on.

Until then, I can't wait to get back to making organic pizza Vermont style and pushing my limits as a businessman, a farmer, and a person.

Out of my comfort zone is where I feel the happiest, after all.

PS I just wrote Jamie Oliver another letter. I hope he writes back.

Pizza Hippo, Organic Vermont Crowd Sourcing, and Long Distance Bike Riding for Hippopotamus

Hello, and welcome back to the Outlandish Dreams blog. I've got to say that un-outlandish dreams are okay, like dreaming for a dishwasher, but the bigger ones really get me going.

Today we booked our inspection with the health department. May 1 at 9AM. The inspector seems incredibly reasonable, and to boot, he LOVES the name Pizza Hippo. I even got him to say, "It Hits the Spotamus!" Yeah! Nothing is more entertaining to me than getting serious adults to say, "It Hits the Spotamus!" How anyone says it with a straight face is beyond my comprehension. Some people do, however.

This May 1 deadline means we have to buy a bunch of equipment and have everything set up in roughly five weeks. Luckily we finished our video and submitted our Kickstarter.com campaign for approval this morning. With any luck we'll start raising the capital we need early next week. Stay tuned for the link.

If you believe a national farm to table organic pizza chain should exist, you'll want to support us. Its so important for the country and the world for this to happen. This will be your chance to contribute to a feel good project that can truly change the world for the better.

On a different thread, I've been training to ride my bike from Vermont to Key West, Florida this November. Yeah, it's March 23 and I'm starting way early. Today I did 33 miles, a lot of it uphill, and it was pretty tough climbing the hills that ended my trek.

To get to Key West in a reasonable amount of time, say 30 days, I need to average 70 miles a day. Keep in mind it's going to be rough for the first several hundred miles in November with winter weather creeping in. So I need to be able to ride six to eight hours per day for an entire month by November 2. Does the superior athlete I think I can be really live inside of me? Only time will tell.

Biking, IMHO, is fantastic because, like many other sports, it is a metaphor for life. When you're climbing hills, you have to dig deep. The closer to the peaks you come, the harder you have to pedal. When you're approaching your goals in life, the time you have to focus most, strive the most, give the most, is the time when they're just out of reach. If you stop, biking or in life, you'll inveritably roll backwards. There are too many other setbacks (flat tires and Murphy's Law) to lose focus at the critical moments.

When obstacles arise, there are only four options. Go over, under, around or straight through them. Momentum must not stop! It's physics and psychology, plain and simple.

Once you reach the peaks, you're instantly rewarded with a period of coasting, shooting down the hill like a rocket, wind in your face, effortless flight, a condor floating on currents in the blue beyond, fish carving bubbles in the sea riding the riptide with reckless abandon. It's why I love riding in Vermont.

Soon, another hill rises up, smiling mockingly. Can you master your pain and keep going forward? Was the ecstasy of the last down slope enough to push you onward? Will you cower or throw your head back, mouth agape, tusks shining in the sun, Hippopotamus yawn of domination!

Just like life, the bicycling. So tell me, how fit can you get? How far can you push yourself? What kind of amazing can you accomplish today?