Welcome To the Quack Patch

Hello, little ducklings. Pull up a chair. Have you had your coffee yet? If not, grab a mug, fill it with your favorite brew, and settle in.

Would you like to hear a story? It’s a good one. By the end, you might even find yourself thinking, “You know what? My life isn’t so bad after all.”

Before you click out of this post and tumble back into your TikTok or Amazon black hole — hear me out. I’m not about to unload tragic childhood trauma or collect sympathy points. Nope. Everything that’s happened over the last four or five years has been entirely my own doing.

I am, by nature, a glutton for punishment. Or, as I prefer to phrase it: a slow learner, not a no learner.

To be clear, my journey from working in law enforcement to baking cookies and haunting every farmer’s market that will have me is… not linear. It’s winding. Slightly chaotic. Possibly duck-shaped.

So, buckle up, ducklings. Here we go.

I’ve worked in law enforcement, on and off, since 2012. I still work in the industry full-time. Yes, ducklings — I have a full-time job on top of everything else. Sleep is optional. Sanity is negotiable.

Early in my career, I started taking my writing seriously. I published my first book in 2016 and my second in 2020. I blogged. I held book signings. I felt momentum building — like I was finally stepping into the life I had always imagined.

And then something happened.

I won’t go into detail, but I will say this: it broke me. Not dramatically. Not publicly. Just quietly and completely. I lost my ability to write. The words were there somewhere, but I couldn’t reach them.

So I reached for other things instead.

I gardened. I fished. I worked out. I played tennis with my best friend. I took myself to a movie once a week like it was a standing appointment with survival. From the outside, I had it pretty good. Inside, I was carrying something heavy.

Then I met Travis.

He was the bright spot I didn’t know I needed — the permission slip to move forward. And I did move forward. We built a life. He proposed. I said yes (because I do love the man, and frankly, if he’s willing to sign up for this circus, who am I to argue?).

But there was still a small, persistent nudge in the back of my mind. A whisper that I wasn’t whole. I tried to ignore my past life like it had never happened — like if I stayed busy enough, I wouldn’t notice the missing pieces.

The Universe, apparently, had other plans.

I got COVID. Which turned into two blood clots in my heart that very nearly took me out for good. I spent almost a week in the ICU and a month on 24/7 oxygen. I went back to work after six weeks. It took six months to breathe on my own again.

Nothing like a near-death experience to make you reevaluate your life choices.

Travis, a classically trained chef, had always talked about opening his own food truck or restaurant. His patience with the corporate hospitality industry was wearing thin. He felt creatively stifled — and justifiably so.

Then one day, while doom-scrolling TikTok, a video popped up on my feed.

A woman walked viewers through a day on her homestead and inside her cottage food business. And just like that, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a very long time:

Purpose.

I truly believe everything happens for a reason. I was meant to see that video.

The idea was simple. We would start a cottage food business. We’d sell at farmers’ markets. We’d earn enough to buy Travis the food truck he’d always dreamed of. I ran the idea past my ever-patient husband, and he was on board.

How hard could it be?

In my younger years, I worked in a bakery. I knew a little. And what I didn’t know?

Well. I could sure as hell learn.