It's Official!

Davis, Roo, and I have taken the leap, and are now living in Camden, Maine.

It's been a crazy couple of weeks getting ready to leave New York, where all of our friends, jobs, and lives have been for the past five or six years. In that time, we somehow managed to clean out and hand off our apartment, quit our full-time jobs in the city, host a killer goodbye party (if I do say so myself), and pack up our lives for the drive north. And to top it all off, the very last thing we did before leaving the city was buy our brand new (slightly used) pickup truck!

And now I'm writing this from Zoot Coffee in downtown Camden, trying to make sense of this 360° change. It's strange to have said goodbye, and even stranger to be saying hello to an entirely new life here - and honestly, I couldn't be more thrilled.

As one probably should when starting a business, we have a bit of a plan laid out for the coming months in terms of getting ScrapDogs started up. We've been energetically reaching out to local organizations, farms, businesses, and friends and family to try to get an idea for what folks in the area are needing for their food and waste systems. It's been incredibly exciting and humbling to hear that, despite being a couple of young, over-zealous kids from New York (one of which came from Maine, granted), people are excited to have us here, and supportive of what we're hoping to accomplish.

In the midst of unpacking boxes, setting up wifi, and trying to catch up on sleep, we're getting to work connecting with people in person, hunting down spaces that might be available for compost operations, and starting to really implement ideas we've bee having for months, or even years. We're excited that there's some momentum in the midcoast around these issues and ideas that we're be able to plug into and run with. People like the members of the Midcoast Waste Watch have been a big help in orienting ourselves and hitting the ground running, and providing wisdom and resources for making ScrapDogs work for Maine.

I'm already overwhelmed by the enthusiasm, personality, and love embodied by this community, and I'm honored to be welcomed into it. Here's to the adventure of a lifetime, and to diving headfirst into it - though we may unpack another box or two first.

- Tessa