In the second quarter of 2009, the nation’s GDP hit its lowest point of the Great Recession, unemployment marched toward its 10 percent peak, banks

Lifecycle of a Leaf ❧ Current Affairs

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2023-04-01 22:00:06

In the second quarter of 2009, the nation’s GDP hit its lowest point of the Great Recession, unemployment marched toward its 10 percent peak, banks seized nearly a million homes…and I graduated from college. I was lucky to have a degree, though I couldn’t use it, so I took the best job I could find: working at an outdoor sports store with an attached ice cream and fudge shop. (Word to the wise—selling pajamas and fudge under the same roof is a recession-proof business model.) By the end of peak tourist season, my wrists were shot to hell from scooping hundreds of ice cream cones every day. During the summer, even at the height of a recession, the town of Bar Harbor, Maine, gets leisurely trampled by a few million people, and they all want ice cream. Ours was the first one off the pier where many of the world’s largest cruise ships dock.

My wrist-wracking toil was terminated with the dwindling trickle of seasonal visitors and so, with few other options—the recession hitting peak unemployment the month prior—and a small pile of hoarded tip cash, I joined a friend in starting up a new company. He was the real business and engineering mind behind the venture, with me offering some real-world agricultural know-how and the top-quality sidekickery that only a guy named Sam (inside or outside of a fantasy novel) can provide. We decided to jump into an industry that neither of us had much real experience in, but, well, neither did anyone else. We were trying to design a new way of growing food. 

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