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Ellen Scherer Crafts - Storytelling, Strategy & Building a Creative Life · She’s Smart

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Hey, everybody. Welcome to She's Smart. I'm your host, Maria Robotham.
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Each week, we sit down with incredible women to talk about life,
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work, and everything in between.
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Today, I am joined by Ellen Scherer-Crafts, a woman whose career is a true masterclass
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in creativity, storytelling, and connection.
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Known for her calm under pressure and her gift for bringing people together.
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Ellen has spent decades producing everything from live boxing matches to large-scale global events.
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In 2012, she and her husband, fellow producer Trevor Crafts,
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founded Macrocosm Entertainment, the creative studio behind the Emmy award-winning
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documentary, Street Gang, How We Got to Sesame Street.
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A beautiful and nostalgic look at how a group of visionary artists created one
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of the most impactful shows in television history.
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Now she's based in Weston. Ellen brings that same heart and creativity to her
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homestead, Stonebrook, where she hosts her own podcast, Yard to Table,
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celebrating community, storytelling, and a delicious life one yard at a time.
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In our conversation, we talk about everything from her early days producing
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boxing matches in Atlantic City to the behind-the-scenes magic of Street Gang,
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to what it's really like building both a business and a marriage with her creative partner.
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It's a story about courage, collaboration, and carving out a life that's both
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deeply personal and beautifully shared.
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So get cozy as we connect, learn, and laugh together on She's Smart.
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See, it's good having a producer, guys, because she knows what she's doing when
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it comes to microphones.
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I'm not afraid to move things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She has so much history.
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So thank you for joining me. You're very welcome.
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Thanks for having me. So when I was reading about you and your bio,
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I was fascinated. Can't wait.
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You, like, planned, like, created, what did you do with boxing?
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Because I saw that and I immediately was like, wait a second,
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hold on. She produced boxing. She was in the event planning of it.
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Oh, huge. All of that background because it's fascinating. Oh,
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I have to tell you, I love boxing.
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And I know people don't get it and see the sport for the heavyweight fights
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and the things that get on HBO and Telemundo, both the channels that I worked
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with when I was working with Caesars Entertainment.
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Were you in Vegas at the time? I was actually doing it out of Atlantic City.
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Our VP, who is head of marketing, had a vision to bring boxing back to Atlantic City.
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This was a very personal passion project for him.
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He got involved with a couple of promoters to bring curated matches to Atlantic
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City that fans would really be into.
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Curated meaning people they knew and would want to watch, not an unknown.
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Yeah, because here's the thing about boxing. Like when you see a fight,
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you know, let's go back in time to like a Mike Tyson.
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People think about that. You know, a lot of it is we're going to watch that
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one main heavyweight fight. Yes. But an actual boxing match.
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Hours long. There's an undercard of all these up-and-coming fighters,
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and this is their shot to make a name for themselves, establish a record.
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And I got to tell you, it is such an amazing human experience, the venue.
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So we did things in our hotels. We also did them at the convention center in Atlantic City.
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Depending on the size and scale, we would put a boxing ring up in a ballroom
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to do smaller fights, or we would do the big fights that would be televised.
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They would be in a convention center with satellite trucks and all that kind of good stuff.
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Regardless of the size, it's a human event, multi-days long.
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We worked with the Duva family a lot. They were very famous promoters.
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They would put the cards together, maybe eight or 10 matches.
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And in the title fight, a lot of the fights were not heavyweight fights.
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They were middleweight or bantamweight. And these were the guys that were real scrappy fighters.
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They were just like, They're athletes.
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They were very, you know, conditioned. So you have about a week leading up to
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a fight, not just the main event, but everybody comes in.
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They set up training. We have a press conference. They had a weigh-in. They have weigh-ins.
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And the weigh-ins sometimes are televised. They're always attended by press.
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Oh, my gosh. They are so fun.
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So it's like everybody's coming in. And these guys, we didn't do female fights.
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That would have been amazing. I would have appreciated the parody in that.
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But, you know, they come with their family and their friends.
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And this huge amount of love and support to cheer them on.
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We get to know some of the families and fighters. And it was great.
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Then you get to the actual fight night. They're out there doing their thing.
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We're doing press events.
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We're doing meet and greets, depending on who's televising. That was also in
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our purview to say, this is the on-camera side.
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Oh, yeah. So who gets a ticket? Like, who's going to be on camera?
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And then people calling you to get the tickets. It was great.
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Strategically placing people. Making sure the seats are full.
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Right. And they are. But people are getting up. They're getting a beer.
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They're doing stuff. But particularly who's in those camera seats was a lot of fun, too.
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Stressful and fun but fun oh so much
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fun we had a great i had a blast i have never been
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to a fight my experience with boxing was we
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do main street weston every year last year it was
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a famous fight follow it as much anymore with a youtuber okay
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and he was gonna fight anyway all the guys to the friday night event were like
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we want to watch this i brought a tv in and they all watched the fight while
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all the wives were shopping well i got sick last year amazing i couldn't make
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it to main street Street Weston, but I got my tickets for this year. So I'm very excited.
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I hope there's a fight. Yeah, I'm going to watch.
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It was so popular. It's fascinating how that one sport, there are certain sports
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that people really rally around.
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And UFC, I guess, is another one that people are like, I don't know about that
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one. That one just seems so brutal.
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I never have never done any of those matches, but I'm sure it is very similar
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in the fact that these are hometown guys.
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So when you think about how sports is and how commercial sports are when you
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get to football and baseball, I mean, these are guys that are literally coming up.
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From a neighborhood with a very supportive community and theme in everything I do in my work.
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It's like, I'm so connected to the human part of that. I was always rooting for them.
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Like you hated to see anybody lose, right? But of course, if somebody has to
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lose, that's the way it could draw, but nobody really wants to see that like in scoring of it all.
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But I think that they're so connected to just being from where they're from and coming up.
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These are guys that are coming up and they're trying to make a name for themselves.
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And they're getting, and the violence part of it, It's not something I understand.
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But also, they're athletes. I mean, these guys train.
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They're training. They're learning how to do all this stuff. It takes a toll.
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It does. It takes a toll. It's being a part of that energy in that room.
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Yeah. And being like, I did some of this. Yeah.
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I made some of this happen. It was a blast. It was a team effort.
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We had a great time doing it. It was a lot of fun. Oh, so then you move into...
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HBO. That was for HBO. So HBO was one of the networks that we did work for.
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You moved into producing and production with your husband.
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Is that the next step or what did you do after that? No. So the next step was
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I actually got, so a lot of what I was doing with Caesars and Bally's and then Harris bought them.
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And it was like this, all the big casino brands I worked with for about 10,
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12 years, like in Atlantic City.
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The boxing and the events that I was doing was all a function of our special events marketing.
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It was about building customer loyalty, building brand and creating events and
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opportunities that players would want to go to and that brought loyalty back to the chain.
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We did everything from live boxing.
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We did hand rolled cigar events. We did custom suit fittings.
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We took guys golfing. That was always a riot because I would get these guys
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that would come in at the time like in acid wash jeans because they had never
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been on a golf course before.
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Right. And I would be driving the cart around to make sure everybody had their beers.
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Like, you know, like it was never real golfing. But some guys were having a
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good time. It ran the gamut.
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You had these high end events and then you also had events that were like bingo
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just to bring bodies in. It was a lot about brand building. It was customer service.
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It was loyalty building. It was also producing these experiences that were a
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lot of fun, but also had value to the corporation that was doing it. Right.
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So so I transitioned that into working with American Express.
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So I went to work, do meetings and events with American Express.
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So I started working with their customers and clients in that space,
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doing live and experiential events.
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And then I ended up going to work for a company called Carlson Marketing,
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which now has become AMIA, where I was doing this internationally for Fortune 500 companies.
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A lot of pharmaceutical, a lot of, I worked with a lot of food companies.
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So again, creating experiences that
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drove loyalty internally with their staff and with their, you know,
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their employees, with their customers.
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Right. And then also externally. So both internal and external loyalty.
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What did you enjoy about it?
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I'm a project person. Okay. So I have a creative person. I have a very big melding
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of creativity, but also I'm a process driven project person.
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I know you You can relate to that. So I love the process of designing something.
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I love the implementation.
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I love getting from point A to point B. I love building the team.
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I've always enjoyed that part too.
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I love the execution, right? Because there comes a point in planning where you
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get to that, I can't talk about this thing for another minute. It needs to happen.
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And then you get in it. And that's my favorite part because you're like, I got to think on my feet.
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It's got to happen. We're in it. There is no going back. You got to do it.
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I've been doing it for so long. And it's the same way whether you're producing
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a live event, doing a film or putting a book together for publishing.
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It is a similar arc in terms of you are building, you're creating,
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you're designing, you're planning and then you're releasing.
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And all of that is just, I don't know, it's lovely. Do you get a down point after?
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Yes. Right? Yes. So I'm not alone in this. I find that once an event is done,
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once a moment is finished, I've been doing it for so long and I've been so in
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it and it's been in my head and in my body.
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I've been living and breathing this thing. And then it's done.
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And I'm like, that was exceptional.
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Like, now what? It's almost like, it doesn't feel like depression, but drops.
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Almost to the point where I'm like, I've got to go back to that feeling.
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I bet you feel it after a podcast, too.
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100%. I have to come down from doing a podcast. It's like the first,
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oh, it's so funny you said that, because the first recording I did,
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it took hours for me to come down from it. We call it the performers. It is.
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Like, you are, and I think, you know, it's two different experiences, but very much the same.
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In a circumstance like this, you're on that adrenaline run because you're in
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a time frame, You're driving, you're talking, you're doing all this great stuff, right?
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But it's the same way when you're doing a project. It's a pressure cooker that
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builds to a culmination point. You've got an end point.
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As you're going down that line, for me, I can feel as it builds, right?
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Like you're like, okay, we're here. This is the happy, easy part.
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We're starting. It's good.
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We're just talking about ideas. And now I'm like, okay, opinions are done.
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We're now in execution plan mode, right? That's right. And then we're at the
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date of it happening. I think the release part also lends to that lull because
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you're like, OK, we're here.
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It's got to happen. Yeah. It's got to flow. High water. Yes.
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I'm doing it. And then when it's done, you're like, holy shit, that's done.
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It feels great. For me, I always debrief and I think like, what could I have
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done differently? But, you know, most of the time you're like, that was great.
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I feel really good. Somebody's happy. I'm happy. It all worked out.
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But yeah, you get a little bit of a little sadness.
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Especially if you don't love every project. Yeah. And that's OK.
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But when you really feel connected to something and you feel good about what
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you did, I think that even is a little harder, right?
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It is. You put so much into it, not only time, but brain space.
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It's incredible how much brain space these events or what you're doing takes up.
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Yes. Because it's not like you are, okay, we're going to throw an event and
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do this, this, and this. Great.
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And that's it. It's like, how are we doing this moment? Where's the start?
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What is the run of show? Where are we putting this?
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Run of show. And then you're...
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Like, oh, wait, we might have to do this differently. I'm sure you find this,
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too. People think it's easy because I've thrown a birthday party.
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I know there's no dig on anyone who's thrown a children's birthday party. It is difficult.
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We know that is hard. It's not easy. Or a family dinner. It's all tough stuff.
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But when you get into a larger scale event or production, you have to be very
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focused. You have to be very project minded. You have to be business minded.
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There's all of these elements. It's time management. And it's also not a normal
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nine to five. When you're running your own business, there is no off button.
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No, and we're running events now. You're there until whenever it's done and
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everything's picked up.
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Not to mention, with these events that people are paying for,
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you also want to make sure they're getting their value.
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That you spent money to be a part of something. I want to make sure that...
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Getting something out of it. Yeah. Like that's also in the back of our minds
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to the actual experience of it and the value in purchasing a ticket and where it's going.
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That's also relationship building. And that's a key part in anything, in being successful.
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You have to establish a good relationship with the client, with your vendors, with your suppliers.
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And that's where people start calling you back. They're saying,
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oh, Marie, I know you're doing this.
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So I feel comfortable. Yes, absolutely. I will sign up. I know this is a crazy
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new idea, But you're doing it, I'm in it.
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We've gotten people on board because they trust us, because we built a relationship.
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Okay, we're in. Half of the shit I do is only because people are like,
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all right, we'll do it for you.
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That's it? I'm in. That's gold. That is currency. I'm thinking of a million
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different things right now that people are like, all right, fine, I'm in.
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You're doing it, we'll do it. It's currency. You talked about building a team
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and how you enjoy that. Yeah.
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Because I think about all the teams I've built and how important it is to have
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those types of people. So tell me a little bit about how that process works
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for you. Yeah, I think it's a great question.
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It goes back to what we were just saying. When you build trust and relationships
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with people, then you have a pool of people that you trust.
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Ephemeral, this work that we do, because it is for a finite period of time.
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A lot of the people we work with are freelancers, whether in production or events.
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It's a gig economy, right?
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So you have a pool of people that we've built over the years that we know and
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trust and can do very specific things. For me, I take a look at what the job is.
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What do I need? Where are my gaps? And then I look at the people that I know and trust.
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But also I like to look at how I incorporate new people because then that's the hard one. Right.
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Because you want to make sure that what you're doing is not going to put anything
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at risk, you know, or jeopardy.
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But that's also where you tie into, I think, your relationships with other people
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that you trust to get recommendations. So I really look at it holistically.
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Like, where are the gaps? What am I filling?
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And a lot of Trevor, my husband, and I are working together.
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So it's what is he going to be doing?
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We have to be very specific about our role, especially since we're married and
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in production together because we don't want to overlap because it's not good for the dinner table.
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That's one of my questions. We have to be very particular about how we're doing
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it. And then we have to say, OK, where are our gaps?
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We're very fortunate in the fact that we've been doing this for a long time
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and we've been doing it both in entertainment and in corporate.
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Not everybody can both have a corporate mindset and also be an entertainment
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person. But you have some people who can.
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And then we fill in from there. But it's about maintaining those relationships, too.
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You have to make sure that if you're committing somebody to a job,
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that it's going to be worth their while financially.
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And, you know, and then that means they trust you and will come back the next time. Absolutely.
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Yeah. So you touched on this working with your husband. Yes.
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You and Trevor are working together. How do you separate what has happened all
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day long in work with sitting down and having dinner with your family and having
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dinner with your family?
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And not diving back into something that you were trying to leave in the quote-unquote office?
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Couples therapy. Okay. Oh, seriously? Seriously. No, we have done that,
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and I highly recommend. Things are great, but boundaries.
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So we weren't really great at that when we first started. When we established
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Macrocosm in 2012, I was still working full-time in the corporate sphere.
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Trevor always had his own company before that. But we wanted to do this thing
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together, and we kept saying, okay, what is this going to look like?
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You know, and again, it was funny.
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We had a creative executive at HBO that said, do you really need to change the
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name of your production company?
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And I was like, oh, OK, Lisa, what? Like anything you say.
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You're going to produce this film? Yeah, sure. No, but she was great.
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And she said, well, it really should be risk and reason. He's risk.
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100 percent. And I'm the reason. So you could see where that rubber meets the
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road sometimes, like when we're trying to do stuff.
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But I was like, that's a really great idea. So we joke about it all the time.
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But it really was. It's about establishing boundaries. So we had a rule at one
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point that said, like, after 8 o'clock, we can't talk about work.
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Again, because now, especially living here, we get calls from the West Coast.
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So we can't say, like, 6 o'clock.
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It could be 9. And then we're like, maybe it needs to be 9 because it's still
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6 o'clock on the West Coast. Maybe we'll do that. But we're like, OK, this is a cutoff.
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And then we're like, OK, well, once we get into bed, we can't talk about work. Yeah, yes.
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I don't know work pillow talk, but really it's about boundaries.
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I can't say that we found...
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The perfect balance. I think after this many years of doing it together,
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we've definitely gotten better.
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You add a kid into the mix, but we do our best. But it's hard. It's hard sometimes.
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The other thing that we learn to do is to take leadership on a project.
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We support each other on all things that each of us is doing.
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And sometimes we work equally, but a lot of times we'll say, this one's yours.
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Ownership helps the other person to not meddle as much. But I could understand that. Right?
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Yes. Yeah. So I will hearken this back to when we moved to Weston.
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Yeah. Ben was working in the city.
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My husband was working in the city full time. He was gone 6 a.m.
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To 9 p.m. And we moved into this house that I had to decorate and fill with things and paint.
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I would come up with this idea of what I wanted it to look like.
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Order stuff, put stuff together. And he would come into the house and be like,
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I don't know. I think I want this, all these opinions.
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At one point, I was like, you need to stay in your lane.
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Like, you do your job. Let me do mine. And he was like, OK. Isn't a husband
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that has design opinions amazing?
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I love it, too. He is exceptional when it comes to the outside.
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Outside is his. My husband's great at design, but sometimes I just don't want to hear it. I love it.
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Thank you. I just want my vision to come to life. I'm putting that there and that chair.
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Feels especially smart right now because we just finished a home renovation.
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We just finished our kitchen.
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So I'm like, yeah, we did. We got through it. We're married. We're still together.
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But home renovations, they can really cause some serious stress.
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More counseling. Right.
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Just the knobs. I can imagine the knobs. I can't even. I'm getting flashbacks.
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So if you go back to me and say, that was your Aline. Love you.
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Say that one. Just go back there. So you started Macrocosm. Yeah. With Trevor. And-
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This street gang, how we got to Sesame Street. Yes. Like massive success.
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Yes. It had. Critical success.
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Like awards everywhere. I can't even count how many of the emblems that were
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next to it of all the awards you got.
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And I started watching it and immediately brought me back to my childhood of
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watching Sesame Street.
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I mean, you all know the song. You know the street. You know all the characters.
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Then you had Jim Henson in there and it was like brought him back.
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Yeah. I haven't seen his face in so long. His voice.
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What was the catalyst for this? What brought you to this story in particular?
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Yeah, so it was a journey.
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This project was one of those, I would say, that it was Trevor's lane to begin
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with. He wanted to do a documentary on Jim Henson.
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And we worked with the Henson family for about a year on different concepts and processes.
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Our publisher at the time was Boom Studios. They're now part of Penguin.
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They did a lot of graphic novels. There was an executive there who had the relationship
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with the Henson family, And they had a series of graphic novels and books that
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they were doing through Archaea, which was an imprint of Boom Studios.
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Our friend Stephen had said to Trevor, you know, they're both huge Jim Henson
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fans. And they're like, we should really approach them about doing a documentary.
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And that's a hard one. There was one recently done and it was very good.
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It's a hard one when you're doing it for your family, right?
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We did it for about a year where we were in development and then it just wasn't
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coming together. There were a lot of source materials, and one of them was Street
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Gang, the first 40 years history.
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So it was done by this author, Michael Davis, and it was about the first 40 years of the show.
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And I had read the book, Trevor had read the book, and we started talking about
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it. And I'm like, you know, the beginning of this book...
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Is really interesting because it's like the gang coming together, right?
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So it's like this moment in time where these very disparate human beings came
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together to create something that was really about creating parody and education
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for all children in our country.
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And so when you think through a creative lens, which is pretty amazing, right?
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And so we ended up reaching out to Michael, got him on board.
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We bought the rights to the book. and we started with this idea that we were
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going to do a documentary around the book and really this story of the gang.
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And then we got a call from Sesame Street.
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Because, you know, at the time Jeff Dunn was the CEO, lovely man,
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and he said, I heard you talk to Michael and would you like to talk to us?
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And we're like, yes, we would.
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So Trevor ended on a conference call with their entire executive board.
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Did a great job, thank goodness.
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Got us into the next stage. But then we started working with them.
22:04
It's an independent project, but they opened the doors to us, which was great.
22:07
Through Michael's book, he had done extensive interviews with all the original cast.
22:11
So Carol Spinney, Sonia Manzano, all of the people that we grew up knowing and loving.
22:16
What I loved about it, and this is where this became like a co-project for the
22:20
two of us, Trevor came from this love of Jim Henson, absolute love of Muppets and the show.
22:27
We all grew up with it. What I loved was the social and human aspect with this
22:31
idea that these people came together to address something that was broken in
22:37
our society for our children.
22:39
Yeah. And to think about the possibilities that come out of that when people
22:44
are activated to make a positive change in the world, that just lit me up.
22:48
So it was great because, again, this is where we work really well together because we both –.
22:54
Bring things to the table, I think, that are coming from a different perspective.
22:57
But when you marry them together, like we're married, it makes it a whole, right?
23:02
So that was great. Then we started with putting this idea together of what this
23:05
film would be. And it was daunting, though, I have to say.
23:08
It was daunting. I can imagine you had your, I'm thinking of all the pieces
23:12
that had to come together to create something like this.
23:15
So not only are you interviewing the cast, you're interviewing people that were
23:19
involved with it, then you're also putting in videos of the people,
23:25
of the background of Sesame Street,
23:27
old videos, putting all that together.
23:30
When you do that, because I've never done anything on TV or any production or anything like that.
23:34
When you do that, are you literally writing a script in your head like,
23:40
all right, we're going to start with this. Then we're going to go to this person.
23:42
Then we're going to drop in this bit of the old cast hanging out together.
23:45
Your brain, literally step by step, looking at all those pieces coming together?
23:51
Not in the beginning, because this was the intimidation of this project.
23:54
Sesame Street is so big. It's been around so long. It's been in how many countries?
23:58
How do we approach this in a way that was going to have our main goal at the time was...
24:03
We wanted to have something that
24:04
people were going to find a universal connection to in the film, right?
24:08
So while I was motivated by the social consciousness and the help for children,
24:12
Trevor's motivated by the Muppets,
24:13
everybody who's watching a movie is motivated by something, right?
24:16
So how do you pull that together in a way that the audience is really going
24:19
to respond to? Because at the end of the day, we want the message.
24:21
We were like, what do we want the message of the film to be?
24:24
And the message of the film for us was really about we should be celebrating
24:28
something like this that happened and encourage other people to do things like
24:33
this again. Right. Sure.
24:35
And while this was a moment in time, it shouldn't just be a moment in time.
24:38
It should be something that we're thinking about always.
24:40
Right. About how we are addressing things that need to be addressed in our society.
24:44
But there was a lot of watching, lots of clips of Sesame Street.
24:48
We were very fortunate that Sesame gave us the blessing. We could still have
24:52
done this film without them.
24:53
But the fact that they allowed us access to their archives, the Henson family
24:57
gave us access to the Jim Henson archives.
25:00
So there was a lot of watching of clips of shows.
25:03
What's amazing is the original show reels have all of this extra stuff in it, too.
25:09
Right. They're filming a bit with a Muppet or with the cast.
25:14
And then there's also other stuff like bloopers. We probably lost months of just incredible.
25:22
So I guess if you think about you architected from what do you want the purpose
25:25
of the film to be? Here's something also that changes as you do documentaries.
25:28
The story unfolds the more you're doing the research. Right.
25:32
So and you don't want to go in as a filmmaker with this idea that I understand
25:36
it from the very beginning because then you're not open.
25:39
To what it might bring to you as you're going along. Because I wish I could
25:43
say that we had really crystallized on the origin story.
25:45
We probably would have saved two years on the origin story, you know, from the beginning.
25:50
But that really is what kept coming back is the thing that everybody loves the
25:54
story about how the band got together.
25:55
Right. You know, you want to know, like, how did this happen?
25:59
These people are so incredible. And we made it so then we got lucky because
26:02
there was a former art director who had wanted to do in the 80s,
26:06
a behind-the-scenes documentary done by the workshop. They were nonprofits funded by government funding.
26:13
That's not there anymore. And viewers like us were contributing.
26:16
So they never felt good about producing their own documentary about themselves.
26:21
They felt that was too not on brand or mission for them, right?
26:24
But we had this incredible role film that we got.
26:28
And we see it from the very beginning of our film, where you're seeing these
26:31
people behind the scenes. This is in the 80s.
26:33
They're setting up the shots. They're on the set. And that was gold to be able
26:37
to get that because that really anchors you into time and place.
26:41
Of when the show was being created and also what was happening.
26:44
And you get to see the characters in ways that you haven't seen them before.
26:46
And then we made a very conscious decision. There were a lot of people who could
26:50
talk about Sesame Street.
26:51
There were a lot of experts, but we made a decision that we only wanted to talk
26:54
to people who were either the original cast or family members of the original
26:59
cast that could talk about that moment in time.
27:02
Because that was anchoring us into, again, that origin story,
27:06
that getting the band back together. And I think that's what ultimately worked.
27:10
That was the voice of the film. And that's what I think brought it together.
27:14
Incredible. Yeah. I'm just thinking about how you did this. Not for the pain apart.
27:19
And the mindset to do that, it seems like an incredible production,
27:24
the amount of time and thought that goes into it.
27:26
I really love when you're doing documentaries, you can't know what it's going to be about.
27:31
Right. I find that to be true about many things, though.
27:34
Right. 100%. I think that's a rule for life. It's like no expectation.
27:38
You've got to be open to what's going to happen. You might have an idea,
27:41
but if something turns and changes, that's what it becomes.
27:45
Right. I feel like this is a very good learning experience or a growth experience.
27:49
It's probably why I continue to do it. I think it's good for me to know that
27:54
I don't have to have the answer and that the journey to the answer is sometimes better.
27:59
When did you wrap this? So best part was we were living in Los Angeles and we
28:06
had established a film office in New York.
28:08
We were in Hell's Kitchen. So we had our director, our line producer,
28:12
our editor, our assistant editors were all in this office in New York.
28:16
So we were coming back and forth.
28:17
And that's where everybody that we interviewed, except one person,
28:21
Lloyd Morissette, who was one of the original founders of the show, was in San Diego.
28:24
So everybody we filmed was in New York. We had that office for about a year.
28:28
We shut down the office in 2019.
28:32
You know where this is going. But we were great. We were like,
28:34
oh my gosh, we got everything in the can.
28:36
Going back to your question about how do you put this together,
28:37
there comes a point in the film where you have a rough cut. Our first rough cut was...
28:43
Horrible. It was three and a half hours long. There was a moment where we sat
28:47
down our core creative team with multicolor post-its and laid out the beats
28:53
of the film, the footage we wanted to keep, things that we needed.
28:57
Trevor kept saying, we need more kids in Muppets. He was right,
29:00
because we talk about a lot of things in the film, but it has to come back to
29:03
that magical interaction that we all remember. And the show was interesting.
29:08
And that was one of the tenets So the show, they did the show at first without
29:11
the Muppets on the street.
29:13
And people were like, I don't get it. Like, I don't like it.
29:16
You put the Muppets in, it was magic.
29:18
So we put that same formula into the film. So anyway, we shut the park.
29:21
So we were like, we're good. We got in the can.
29:23
We got the beats. We're going into post-production.
29:26
This is excellent. So now you're going into editing and finished.
29:30
Editing always happens, but you're doing it to visual. You're going into sound.
29:33
Any of your animations or anything you want to add into that. So we had sold the film.
29:37
So we're like, oh, we're great. This is going to be great. And then pandemic hits.
29:42
Right. So it's March and we had an office in Los Angeles. We're packing all
29:46
our stuff up and moving into home.
29:48
That was tough. And then we lost our distributor deal because that distributor
29:53
was like, everybody was, if you didn't have something in the can that was ready
29:58
to go out, they were closing deals.
30:01
At this point, you had streaming. But over the last few years,
30:04
streaming has just taken off.
30:06
Yes. And streaming was still a fact. but this was a theatrical
30:09
release and we had HBO was our streaming partner but
30:12
we were looking but we had gotten a theatrical distributor on board too and
30:16
then they backed out zero one was allowed in the theaters unless you rented
30:20
it for just your family I remember doing that exactly oh my gosh didn't we all
30:24
but also financially they weren't putting any money into new projects and they
30:27
were like we're not going to make this deal happen so we were like great,
30:31
so that was a really interesting time so we were like okay we're going to try
30:34
to finish this film because we have to finish it We were looking at all these
30:38
different ways, like financial structures, trying to finish this film.
30:41
But also it's the pandemic. So we had visions of going the sound correction and the visual studios.
30:47
They feed you croissants and you're looking on big screens and you're like,
30:50
no, I don't like this color. Do it great. Do it this way. It's all very lovely.
30:55
Meanwhile, I am teaching my TK child on Zoom.
30:59
Trevor and I both did it. But Trevor's getting put up. I'm putting him in full
31:03
PPE to go to this guy's garage with his bag lunch that he has got to eat in
31:08
his car to do all the final stuff. Right. So we kept plugging through.
31:12
We had a little bit of money. We got a grant from the Ford Foundation.
31:14
It was like one hundred thousand dollars that got us through for a little bit.
31:17
We put our own money in and then we got a call.
31:21
Our film agent said, listen, I gave you a rough cut to Sundance.
31:26
We're like, oh, God, I'm a little nervous.
31:31
That's not great. But they loved it and they want to do a call.
31:34
Now, my mom was living in Henderson, Nevada at the time. Trevor's parents were
31:37
outside of Dallas, Texas. We're in Los Angeles.
31:40
We had all decided we were going to come together as a family,
31:43
quarantine for a couple of weeks. And then we were all going to meet up in Santa
31:45
Fe, the house we had rented in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
31:49
Sundance wants to have a Zoom with Trevor and I.
31:52
We're like, absolutely. So we get on with the festival organizers and the creative
31:56
director and they're like, we love it. We'd like you to know this is in July.
32:00
And they're like, we'd love you to do Sundance in January. We're like, sure.
32:06
Oh, my God. Is this even going to get finished? So we accepted the Sundance
32:09
and then the race was on to get it. You had six months.
32:12
Finish it. With no money. Yeah. Sundance ended up being. But we did it.
32:15
We got it done and sold the film right before Sundance, which gave us the final
32:19
funding that we needed to finish the film.
32:21
Sundance was virtual. because it was January, what, 2021 at the time.
32:25
So it came out virtually at Sundance.
32:27
It had a limited theatrical run in April 2021, where still no one was going to the theater.
32:33
We moved to Weston in May of 2021, and it had its run on HBO in December.
32:41
So it was a journey. I think it was about six and a half years to do the film.
32:47
I used to track it by Riley's baby pictures.
32:50
That's amazing. I have a picture of her as an infant at Sesame Street at the
32:53
Sesame Workshop Studios across from Lincoln Center.
32:56
We took her when they were like, bring your kid. I'm like, is this amazing?
32:59
So we'd meet with we'd be meeting with the executives and stuff.
33:01
And she'd be like, they have all this amazing things for the kids to play with.
33:04
So she was toddling around.
33:05
And I have a picture of her like in big bird slippers when she's like four.
33:09
So I have all these pictures of her at Sesame Workshop.
33:12
I used to track her growth and development. That was my growth and development chart for my kid.
33:18
I mean, a lot to take on just from moving from one place to the next.
33:22
But then you're also getting a film out into the universe.
33:26
Funding it. Yes. Having meetings. Yes. Teaching a child. Yes.
33:30
L.A., you guys didn't go back to school. She was really young,
33:32
though, right? No, we never.
33:33
She was in TK. She was part of the public school program. She's an October baby.
33:36
So it was great because they kept the class ages great. So you had this ability
33:41
to do public school still.
33:43
She was age appropriate ready, but not, you know, not there yet.
33:47
Yeah, no, there's a great picture Trevor took of me, you know,
33:49
had her little desk with her little Zoom.
33:52
And I'm on the floor next to her on my laptop.
33:57
And she's doing the thing. You remember that was health. But,
34:00
you know, your boys were how much they were. Grayson was in first grade. Oh, nightmare.
34:04
First grade and Easton was in fourth. Nightmare. I think it was first and fourth. It was hell.
34:08
I feel like we were lucky that she was in TK because I think I when I hear these
34:12
stories, you know, from other parents when they were like, first grade,
34:15
fourth grade, that's like, that's really we were lucky. But L.A. didn't go back.
34:20
So we literally go back to my family's in California.
34:23
No, my sister was waiting forever to put her in school. We didn't get back.
34:26
They had decided they were going back in April and we were moving in May.
34:31
And I said, I can't put her into a classroom experience.
34:33
It's not going to be her school. That was already enough craziness.
34:37
Right. So I'm like, we're just going to wait. We're going to go to Hurlbut.
34:39
Yeah. Move from L.A. Yeah. So you move and you buy this property in Weston.
34:43
But you didn't just move.
34:45
You also moved in your parents. Yes.
34:48
And your mom and Trevor. parents yes we're insane
34:51
we're insane people all of you live together now
34:54
people listening this is a beautiful home it's not just
34:57
beautiful home but there's land that there are everyone has
35:00
their own house everyone has their own that's very key can you walk
35:03
us through a part of me this is a dream i would love
35:06
to have a hundred acres and everyone has
35:09
a house on it the kids run around and we joke about this me
35:12
and my wives we joke about us getting land and
35:15
putting houses on it and everyone has their own house but everyone's kids run
35:18
around together magic that's a dream the parents sit out in front of a bonfire
35:23
and drink bourbon and wine like we someday will create we need to be doing it
35:27
so yeah walk us through how that went because you also had renovations yeah well yes.
35:33
So films and renovations also very toll taking on a marriage and a family but
35:39
yeah so i will say that we got this idea.
35:42
About moving. I think it had always been in the back of our mind. We love California.
35:46
We have family there, lots of good friends, all that good stuff.
35:49
But I think it started with really like this whole idea of like Riley going
35:53
into school and where do we want her to grow up?
35:55
We've been trying to get both my mom, who's a widow, and Trevor's parents to
36:00
move closer to us. And everybody was getting older.
36:02
It was a conversation, but no one wanted to move to California.
36:05
It wasn't really a good thing for them.
36:06
And so we were like, how do we make this work? Should we think about going back to the East Coast.
36:11
For us, our work can be anywhere. We weren't tied to a studio.
36:14
That was very helpful. And so we started having this conversation about the East Coast.
36:19
And then we had this conversation with our family and they're like,
36:21
yeah, we can move back to the East Coast. So we were shocked by that.
36:24
So we were like, OK, what's happening? And, you know, again, we're producers.
36:28
We don't mess around. If there is an idea, let's make it happen.
36:31
So Trevor's like, we're doing it. And I'm like, OK, how are we doing it?
36:34
I need a time. I need the project management.
36:37
I got to figure it out. So that's what we did. It was funny.
36:38
He found, So we started looking and we had very good friends in L.A.
36:42
My family's from Philadelphia. I grew up in southern New Jersey.
36:45
I don't say the Jersey Shore. It was not like the show. I grew up in Ocean City,
36:49
down near Cape May Avalon.
36:51
Trevor's family's from New York and he grew up in Maryland as well.
36:54
We are East Coasters, but we were like, if we're going to move back,
36:56
we didn't want to live in New York. We didn't want to live in New Jersey.
36:59
We didn't want to live in Pennsylvania. So we said, what about Connecticut?
37:02
We wanted to be by an airport. We wanted to be somewhere we hadn't been before.
37:05
And then our good friends in L.A. had grown up in Greenwich.
37:08
And I had said, well, I'm thinking about Greenwich. She's like,
37:10
you don't want to go to Greenwich. Why don't you take a look at Westport?
37:13
So we looked at Westport and then Trevor found the listing for our house on
37:17
Redfin. Zillow for some, Redfin for us.
37:21
I saw the house and he's like, honey, look, we can all live together. I said, absolutely not.
37:26
Not going to happen. I don't feel like that's a good move. Remember that boundary
37:30
conversation I was having earlier?
37:33
Let's circle back to boundaries. I started to really warm up to the idea.
37:37
We kept talking about it. We showed the picture to the parents.
37:41
They were all on board. Now, the house, when we looked at it originally,
37:43
has a main house and two outbuildings.
37:45
One was a full house, cottage. The other was a barn that had a studio apartment
37:50
in it, which we thought we could naively, not knowing zoning or anything,
37:55
we're like, oh, we could turn that into a house for my mom.
37:57
Like, that's perfect. She only needs like this amount of space.
38:00
So we started talking about it. And then we flew out here in the pandemic because
38:04
I said, there's a level of crazy I will buy into.
38:07
I will not buy a house. I was under contract, but I had an out clause.
38:12
So we were like, all right. So we came out and just fell in love with it.
38:15
You know, and we were like, this
38:16
is great. I took video sending it to the parents. Like, you guys sure?
38:20
Like, this is what it looks like. Are you feeling that they didn't fly out?
38:23
We were worried about them and their health. But we did it. It was a big thing.
38:26
Let's talk about project planning. all our houses going on the market within
38:29
the same week we all sold our homes so now i were orchestrating three cross-country
38:37
moves gosh movers everybody's doing their own but we're all coordinating it
38:41
together my mom had to come and live with us because her house had to be built.
38:47
So we're also trying to pack up houses and, you know, in doing it during a pandemic,
38:52
you know, where it was like just trying to make sure everybody was safe and all that kind of stuff.
38:57
So my mom's house, we put her out. Actually, it was within a week,
38:59
but my mom's house went on the market first.
39:01
Our house went on the market and then his parents' house went on the market.
39:04
And again, it was just a crazy time and everything sold.
39:08
We had to put clauses in like we can sell it, but we can't move until this time
39:12
and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
39:13
So but it all worked out and we had a renovation to the main house.
39:17
We had some things to do, but we knew it didn't have to happen right away.
39:20
You couldn't live in it for a little while. We could live in it.
39:22
But my mom had a whole house that had to be built. Wow.
39:25
And so that was like, you know, that was, again, our naive, you know, the naivete.
39:30
Like, we were like, oh, we'll just be able to do this. You're like,
39:32
well, you got to go to planning and zoning.
39:34
And I don't know, like, you're saying you're going to keep the existing.
39:37
Is it really a livable house? I'm like, oh, my gosh. But they were great. We had a process.
39:41
We followed the process. We got there. But 14 months later, we had a house for my mom.
39:48
And again, my marriage is intact. Thank God. Thank God. Yeah.
39:52
But it was great. And I think the key to this is that everybody has their own
39:55
space. And it's so great because, you know, my mom was on her own.
39:59
His parents were on their own. For our child to be able to see her grandparents is huge.
40:04
But also just little things. For us, it's like having a babysitter,
40:07
but also having a family dinner and being able to be together and sharing this
40:12
beautiful space. My mother-in-law loves to garden, so she loves being out. She loves to cook.
40:16
And my mother loves people to cook for her. So it was great.
40:19
But it was a process, for sure, in bringing it all together.
40:22
Ultimately, I think it goes, you know, boundaries and timing and everything.
40:26
It's like we have big talks about how is this going to work. Yeah.
40:30
That's smart. Yeah. If you don't, imagine the shit show. Oh, girl. And the fighting.
40:35
Girl. Like, work it out in the beginning.
40:37
Line it on. My father-in-law and my mother-in-law run the music series at the Weston Library. Yeah.
40:42
They're doing that through Friends of the Library. They love that stuff.
40:45
We found out about the history of the house and that she really created this
40:47
space and rented out properties to artists. This is Alice Del Mar I'm talking about.
40:52
So they could create in the country. She had about, and I always get this wrong,
40:57
it's either 100 or 1,000. It was a lot of acres this woman had.
41:00
And these houses all around our house that she owned and then she would rent
41:04
at very low rates to her friends who included George Balanchine, Salvador Dali. No way.
41:11
Salvador Dali was in Weston? I have a picture of him on our back porch.
41:15
Oh, my gosh. So for those who don't know, Weston is like and was an artist colony.
41:21
Huge. And like the best part about it was it was open to everyone because there
41:26
were a lot of rules in Connecticut around you couldn't be black, you couldn't be Jewish.
41:30
This was a community that was open to all artists to come and do their work
41:34
in a place that was safe and nurtured their creativity.
41:37
How amazing is that? How amazing is that? That should just be our bumper sticker.
41:40
I love it so much. And here's the interesting part about Alice. So Alice was a lesbian.
41:45
So she created this safe space where all of her artists could,
41:50
I mean, it was everyone that came.
41:53
She didn't like to have a lot of publicity.
41:55
She was very wealthy, but made
41:57
huge donations to the arts, both here in Connecticut and in New York City.
42:01
She funded Balanchine, the New York Theater, all of these incredible institutions
42:06
that we're so lucky to have.
42:08
Like, she was a huge component in that and knew the makers and the creators.
42:12
So I think that honestly, if you ask me what sold me, when I saw these photos,
42:15
there was a box of photos when we came and looked at the house and I saw these
42:20
people that were here and what she had done.
42:22
I felt this connection to really being a steward of this place.
42:27
And I said, we get to keep these, right? Because, I mean, not for us,
42:30
but we literally have turned them into an album that stays with the house so
42:34
that it's always going to be here.
42:35
So people understand sort of the and there's so much more research.
42:39
I pitched this as a documentary. Like, there's so much more research to be done.
42:44
What's so interesting is these old houses.
42:47
I know California, you get old houses, but they're not like this. Yeah.
42:50
This house that we're in right now was built 250 years ago.
42:53
The story behind it is that during
42:56
the Revolutionary War, they had a draft for all of the men in Weston.
43:01
And there was a group of men who decided they just didn't want to go to the draft.
43:06
So they were in the basement of this house, drunk as skunks. Oh, my God. Amazing.
43:12
When they were found and told they need to get out there. I like to go fight.
43:17
Have you seen the Outlivers?
43:19
No. I got to send this to you. There's this amazing. I know we're talking about
43:22
yard table. Get back to that. But there's this amazing.
43:24
I'm going to send it to you. It's on YouTube. So it's Christopher Plummer.
43:28
OK. Because you still live here. Yep. Yep. And he is doing, so this was like
43:31
the, I don't know, it was some centennial, maybe 200 year history of Weston
43:34
or something. It was in the 80s.
43:36
The original people who lived in Weston were called the outlivers because they
43:40
didn't live in Westport.
43:41
They came out here and they were hoeing rocks out of the ground and they didn't
43:45
want lights and sidewalks.
43:46
Cracks me up for anybody who's in the modern Weston channels.
43:50
But it's so funny. So it's great because it takes you through who these early
43:54
settlers were and the history of the town. I'll send it to you.
43:56
It's incredible. homes.
43:58
I love the history of it. Like you can feel it. Yes.
44:02
Like this energy. I enjoy drinking my bourbon in that house.
44:05
So it makes it a lot. No, I enjoy even more.
44:06
These guys didn't want to fight yet. I should have a couple more drinks. I love it.
44:10
So the yard to table. So we had this garden and we were like,
44:12
what the hell do we do with it? We grew things in pots in our house in California.
44:15
We love the farmer's market in California.
44:17
That was a big part of every Sunday we had this incredible farmer's market in Studio City.
44:21
California is the breadbasket of the country. There's so many things there,
44:25
incredible produce and all this good stuff.
44:27
But I was like, I really want to make this garden come alive again.
44:31
And I don't know how to do that beyond my skill set.
44:36
So we actually got involved with I had heard about this incredible Weston mom, Christina Coulter.
44:42
She had a flower stand at her house and she was just starting to branch out
44:47
into helping people put their, you know, put a landscaping or gardens.
44:51
I said to her, I want a vegetable garden and I want flowers.
44:54
Is that something you'd be interested in trying to help us? She's like, let's sure.
44:58
Let's do it. And how lucky we were to connect with her and to learn from her
45:04
because, my gosh, I mean, she's just such an incredible spirit and so creative.
45:08
We got her on board and she has helped us incredibly to know what we're doing.
45:12
And then there's so many things we didn't know.
45:13
Soil testing and bringing the soil back. And it all sounds very intimidating, just like anything.
45:17
But what we've learned is, like I said to you today when I gave you some seeds,
45:21
it's like, throw something in the ground, see what happens. Right? It's incredible.
45:27
Like, next thing you know, you got tomatoes. And I think our lack of fearlessness
45:32
around this was when our daughter was very young. She was in love with garbage trucks. Okay.
45:38
In Los Angeles, you have about three of them that come by your house on a normal trash day.
45:43
Garbage truck! That was what Riley would do. She would run out and see this
45:47
garbage truck. And she was like, oh, my gosh. And three times,
45:49
I'm like, oh, here it comes again. Yay!
45:51
So much energy. Because it was like, we have to go. It was a Wednesday morning.
45:54
But what was interesting about it was she loved it and it was great.
45:58
Los Angeles also had these sanitation fairs.
46:00
The things you don't think you're going to do until you're a parent.
46:03
I'm going to a Los Angeles sanitation fair because we can sit in a garbage truck
46:08
and you can see the facility.
46:09
But here's the other thing they did. They handed out free plants and compost.
46:15
It was this whole incredible, phenomenal. You got to ride in the garbage truck
46:19
and learn about recycling. It was like a sustainability fair.
46:22
They did it in every single one of their facilities, the city facilities.
46:26
We came home from our first fair with tomato plant seedling.
46:30
We planted in a pot in the backyard and the tomatoes started growing and she
46:34
started picking the tomatoes off. We had lemon trees in our backyard, rosemary.
46:38
So we were always picking those things in our lemon rosemary chicken.
46:41
We always talk about that because it was there and it was great.
46:43
And it was there's something so incredible about picking from your yard and
46:47
putting it on your table, sharing it. Oh, my gosh, that's like my Zen.
46:51
We started with strawberry plants and we're growing herbs.
46:54
And it was just so I was like, you know what, if I could do this on a larger
46:58
scale, I'd be living a dream.
47:00
And that's what we started to do. I love cut flowers. Cut flower garden. That's my dream.
47:04
We're going to make it happen. But I will tell you, that was really where it began.
47:08
And then we met some people like Christina. We started going to the Westport
47:11
Farmers Market and met Lori Cochran-Dougal, the incredible executive director.
47:16
We're learning what she was putting into creating a farmers market that was
47:20
truly local, truly sustainable.
47:24
She's really taken to the next level. She's unbelievable.
47:27
We were back in February as a family and walked through our farmer's market
47:31
in Studio City. And it's huge and great.
47:33
I remember the first time I went to Westport, I'm like, gosh,
47:35
this is really tiny. When I went back in February, Westport doesn't have single-use plastics.
47:41
Lori goes to every single maker's farm, to the farmer's farm or to the maker,
47:47
to ensure that they are using Connecticut ingredients, that they are organic,
47:53
to the standards at the market.
47:55
I mean, that is a level of supervision that you don't see at other places.
48:00
That is a model, I think, really, if we're looking at where this goes in the future.
48:04
But it was her passion for supporting the local farmers really resonated with us.
48:10
But our community among the artists, there's also these incredible growers and
48:15
makers. Oh, absolutely.
48:17
So our good friend who's like growing pumpkins and mushrooms from logs,
48:21
right? I'm like, show me this. This is incredible.
48:24
So we were very lucky because Phoebe Colesmith was living down on the dirt road from us. Dirt road farm.
48:28
We went to one of her dinners. Yes. And we got in one of the last evenings in the garden.
48:32
She was so kind. And her husband came over. Trevor's like, I think I'd like
48:36
to tap a maple tree. And Mike's like, come over.
48:39
He just showed up one day walking around our property telling Trevor how like
48:42
just giving him all that this is how you set everything So it was this food is community.
48:47
Growing is community, people that were really inspired by this idea that we
48:53
share knowledge, that knowledge is connection, food is connection,
48:57
and our vision of what our future looks like.
49:01
Needs to be about knowing where food comes from. And the pandemic taught us that, right?
49:06
If we didn't really understand food and farmers markets for us in California
49:10
saved us, like we could go every Sunday.
49:14
We could get in line. We could get vegetables.
49:16
We could get meat when the supply chain was broken. But that's because it was
49:20
coming locally. And I'm sure it was similar here to people who.
49:22
I would sign up every week for my time slot.
49:25
I would order all of my stuff from all of the vendors at the Westport Farmers Market.
49:29
I'd get dressed. And I put my little farmer's market outfit on,
49:32
even though I was the only one walking through that in that moment at 1030.
49:36
Doesn't matter. I didn't care.
49:38
I was like, I'm going to the farmer's market. You go to each station and pick
49:42
up everything you'd ordered.
49:43
You were also helping families and small businesses stay alive.
49:48
Like you weren't a huge company.
49:51
You weren't, you know, the giant grocery store chain that had enough that they
49:55
could stay alive. This was a family putting food on their own table.
49:58
That's right. I loved being able to do that. If I'm able to do this,
50:01
I will go there and support them.
50:03
Oh, that's huge. You're 100% right. And I think that's the lesson that came
50:07
out of it for me and also in here.
50:09
And that's sort of the inspiration. So again, when so many of the things that
50:12
we do, there's a long lead time to do things, right?
50:16
Trevor and I are always looking for something where we can spark our creativity
50:20
and have fun, but maybe do it in a more immediate way.
50:23
And that's kind of where the podcast came out. It was like, let's do something.
50:27
Let's have good boundaries. You know what our roles are on this podcast.
50:30
We do a very good job. But let's celebrate these incredible local people,
50:35
farmers, makers, cooks, and show people that we need to support them,
50:40
a local perspective, but also that it's not intimidating.
50:42
You can go to the farmer's market and just get what you want there.
50:46
Learn how to eat seasonally.
50:48
Understand that we shouldn't always have strawberries, and that's okay.
50:52
I didn't even know what an asparagus looked like growing out of the ground.
50:55
And we had an established asparagus patch in our garden. So that first year,
51:00
I totally missed it because I was like, that's a weed.
51:02
I don't know what that is. Because all the stuff that grows,
51:04
there were weeds in there too. So that didn't help.
51:06
But then the next year when I was like, no, you know, that's asparagus.
51:10
Okay, cool. And we weeded out the patch and they just come out of the ground exactly like they are.
51:15
Eating a fresh asparagus that you have snapped out of the ground,
51:19
you cannot purchase it and eat it.
51:23
Different. So that was our inspiration. And we love the idea of,
51:27
we talk about our journey with it all.
51:29
For me, there's a lot of women doing a lot of incredibly important work about
51:35
creating food, feeding people, creating community.
51:39
That's what we do. And we need to celebrate that and realize how incredibly
51:43
important and vital it is that we're doing it. Food is also art.
51:47
When I look at the vegetables and you lay it out, this is why they painted still
51:51
lifes in the Renaissance.
51:52
Because it's freaking gorgeous. So when you look at it from that palette of
51:57
it's vital, it's important, it's beautiful.
51:59
It's such a fun thing to be doing and we enjoy it so much.
52:03
Makes me want to have a garden. We're going to make it happen.
52:05
It's going to happen. I like people I can refer you to. I don't call Christina.
52:08
I just go to Christina's stand and I buy all her flowers. Her stuff is so good.
52:12
She's created my tulip addiction. I'm planning a thousand this year.
52:15
The old house, we would get hundreds and put them in the front.
52:19
And then my husband would spray them with Bobax because it's like poop or poop
52:22
or whatever it is. And it kept the deer away because those are candy to those deer.
52:26
Oh, yeah. We use, oh, my gosh, liquid deer fence. Yes. Yes.
52:29
So the Bobax, it literally smells like poop. It does. Or pee. But it's fine. Yeah.
52:32
And you tell the boys they can pee on it. That doesn't actually keep them away.
52:36
By the way, human pee does not stop them.
52:38
But it would be amazing. A thousand. Oh, I can't even. Do you do daffodils? So we have daffodils.
52:43
But I'm doing what she does now. Like I get this specific ones to cut. Oh, I know.
52:48
So you pull them and they're done. Don't ever bring. I never.
52:50
They're done. I will tell you in my renovation, I have a flower fridge now. No. Yes.
52:56
Because I have. I am. This is my joy. I'm in. I need a kitchen tour.
53:00
Yes, you do. You have to come over. I've created a scullery where I can process
53:04
my veg because we can and preserve.
53:07
I got to bring you some peach jam. Our peach trees were amazing this year.
53:11
It's like, it's just, and again, you want to talk about stress reduction,
53:13
health, the flower fridge.
53:16
Oh, I bet. It's amazing. This is great. It's so much fun. I want you on it.
53:20
Oh, totally. Because now I want to do a whole history.
53:22
I want to sit down and just do, we should sit down and find out all the really
53:26
cool Weston history. I love that.
53:29
And then just have a whole episode. I told you, I have a whole pitch document.
53:33
We could do a Ross episode with Yard to Table and She's Smart.
53:37
I love it. Unlike Weston history.
53:39
I love it. It's just so many incredible people have lived here and done really cool things.
53:45
It's amazing. There's a richest community, and we are incredibly grateful that
53:48
we found it and that we're here. I drank the Kool-Aid. I love it. I know, me too.
53:51
Weston, I'm here for you. And thank you for doing your podcast and celebrating
53:55
these incredible women that are in this community because it's an incredible
53:58
group, and we are so incredibly lucky.
54:01
I love it. I just love that people will sit with me and hang out in my little
54:04
shed. Well, I want to be back. I know, right? Okay, thank you.
54:07
Thank you. It was amazing.
54:10
Thank you so much for joining me today on She's Smart. New episodes drop every Thursday.
54:15
Don't forget to subscribe and share. Stay cozy.