Wyospace.com

Wyoming wine experts working in Huntley

By Tom Lacock

Wyoming Business Council

The line between work life and social life blurs a bit when you get an assignment to visit the Zimmerer family winery near Huntley - at least it did for me the last time my dad came to Wyoming for a visit.

Of all my job duties, the most fun tends to be taking reporters to visit some of the companies which call Wyoming home. A week prior to dad’s visit, I took Al Lewis of the Denver Post and Alison Wellner-Stein of Inc. Magazine to businesses in Chugwater, Cheyenne, Laramie and Table Mountain Vineyards.  While the tour was a success (two columns appeared in the Post promoting Wyoming as well as forthcoming stories in Inc.) it was the meeting with Bruce and Patrick which had me schedule a wine tasting for dad in Huntley.

Table Mountain got its start in 2004, thanks to some work by Patrick Zimmerer (Pictured left) and his sister, Amie, who entered the winning business plan in the University of Wyoming College of Businesses’ 10k program. The idea of the contest is the winning business plan wins $10,000 towards start-up costs of the new business. In year one, the family made 300 gallons of wine, a number that has exploded into 500 gallons last year. That works out to roughly 15,000 bottles of wine off the family vineyard, which now extends to 10 acres. The family also makes wine out of apples, raspberries and honey. The works is done by hand from picking the grapes to pressing and bottling the wine.

As someone who rarely drinks wine outside communion, thought the movie “Sideways” was overrated as Bradlee Van Pelt and owns a house featuring a fridge full of Pabst Blue Ribbon, it is pretty obvious I am not necessarily a high-end wine guy, so the thought of going to a winery was intimidating. I know nothing about wine and worried it was a matter of time before the conversation was over my head.

Bruce is a cattle rancher who seems invigorated by the concept of growing grapes and making wine. Patrick is the most unpretentious lawyer you have ever met and if the winery’s tasting area reminds you of home, it is probably because it was someone’s home. Currently, the tasting house – formerly features a kitchen table and chair set circa 1974, which may or may not have been stolen from my parents’ house. Strange as it may sound, it is comforting. Egos, talk of politics, religion and empty wine glasses are not long for this wine tasting facility.

Don’t get the wrong idea, the Zimmerers aren’t bound for any 12-step meetings – just terrific hosts with a product they are proud to share – the father/son duo being part of the product. As Patrick explains wine and the art of tasting to an unrefined son of an Iowa hog farmer (thusly the attachment to PBR), Bruce holds court discussing the process of making wine and even the decision-making process on how to plow up hay ground and make a vineyard. Patrick rolls his eyes as Bruce provides on the decision-making process, “it takes a lot of beer to make wine,” father points out.

Whatever you are doing, keep it up, Bruce.

Getting Back Above Ground

By Tom Lacock

Some folks ask each other about the weather as an ice-breaker, other times people ask because they are no less than 20 feet below anything a high-pressure center could throw at them.
I admit it was a strange feeling to have Anja Bendel ask me what the weather was outside Friday and an even stranger realization that there really is no way she should have known by then. No windows to open, sounds of Mother Nature blowing into the side of her home in Chugwater. Anja and her husband, Tim, live in a decommissioned Atlas Missile Silo, which resides 20 feet underground.
Since the last blog entry on the Bendels and their business – Frontier Astronautics – the biggest question we have gotten back has been how people can live 20 feet underground and maintain any sanity. Simply put – they are doing just fine. Tim is one of three partners who works on rocket engines for the private space tourism industry in what seems to be a pretty lucrative, although admittedly unusual field. He points out there are roughly three companies who can make “strap-on” style rocket engines for anyone trying to get into space and they deal in bulk to the point if you are not a Lockheed-Martin-sized firm, you won’t get a phone call answered.
That is where Frontier comes in. They are developing rocket engines and attitude control systems (systems that can detect which direction a rocket is actually going) for the entrepreneurs out there who are trying to get into space but don’t have the need or the cash for something as large as NASA would want.  Business is good right now and housed in a former missile silo, which has all the amenities he needs for the company including test space, workshop space and a really cool 400-ton overhead garage door.
But everyone wants to know how they live in a silo and how on earth did he get his wife to move underground?
To start, let me assure you they are both intelligent, very normal people. Before this trip I had met Tim once, had some laughs but came away with an overall thought that this guy could smoke me in the ACT’s. While I am wondering where Alfonso Soriano will hit in the Cubs’ line-up (I know he is a lead-off man, but I wouldn’t mind him in the three-hole), Tim is trying to figure out how to get people into space. He is so excited about the work he does that living underground is no big deal – fewer people to bug him and more shop space to play with.
Anja has her bachelors and Masters degrees in German and is very outgoing with hardly a hint of being anything less than a supportive wife. She admits to having been skeptical at Tim’s choice of living quarters, which was more than she says her parents were.
“They knew Tim, so I don’t think they were too surprised,” she said with a laugh. Tim acknowledges the statement by blushing.
The concept of a missile silo may be a little misleading when it comes to this particular site. Since the Atlas was stored vertically, then brought to a horizontal position, then fired after it was fueled, it is not a 25-foot trip straight down into the ground. You enter the site through a prison-style door which opens by remote control and leads to a hallway which surrounds you in metal and sort of like something on the Death Star and takes you down to the living and shop space. After that, things get pretty normal – or more normal anyway.
The Bendels deserve huge applause for what they have done with the living space – basically that it looks like living space. The kitchen is functional and well-decorated, they have laminate flooring which is made to look like hardwood, the walls area a very contemporary yellow and the living room has a fresh coat of green paint and new carpet, along with a lava lamp in the shape of a rocket. The shop space looks like shop space – with the exception of a pit they use to test-fire rockets and the 400-ton door.
In the end, it looks like any other couple’s first apartment, only it is a little tougher to get into and a little bigger garage. Ironically enough the car of choice for the rocket scientist and his wife?
Saturns.
What else would you expect?
To see some shots of the shop and outside of the silo, check out:  http://frontierastronautics.com/facilities.htm

Making Straw Into Gold

By Tom Lacock

On the surface, it would seem Jeff Foxworthy could fill an hour of Comedy Central programming with the concept of folks using old milk jugs and straw as a privacy fence. But the more you see and meet the folks at Heartland BioComposites in Torrington, the less funny a fence made from old gallons of skim sounds.

Heartland’s president and founder Heath Van Eaton has developed a process which turns recycled plastic and locally grown straw into a wood substitute, which is then turned into a picket fence. The brand name is Prairie Pickett and just months after the grand opening, business is booming. The company has hooked up with two nationwide distributors and is busy trying to keep up with the orders. A big part of the sales response has come from the northwest part of the country along with the green community as a whole.

Milk lovers are encouraged to drink all the cow juice possible in the name of the environment. Right now, Heartland orders about 40,000 pounds of plastic a week (12 jugs per picket) from milk jugs as far away as Pennsylvania and is looking for other sources. The wheat straw comes from Wyoming, Kansas and Nebraska and is combined in a building partially paid for by The Wyoming Business Council’s Business Ready Community program.

In addition to the call to help the environment with fencing, the hook for most people is the fact Prairie Pickett looks like wood, but has a 30-year life expectancy and a 20-year replacement warranty, according to Ashley Harpstreith, who serves as company slash.

The typical headaches have plagued Heartland in their opening, including a couple they never anticipated. The case of “Slash” Harpstreith is an example. The title comes from the fact Ashley has so many different jobs, her current business card is a fold-out, featuring several slashes between what could be listed as traditional job titles. Currently, she serves as media relations/material orderer/personel/logistics/ and, if you talk to her on the phone, you get the impression she serves as company mom answering all those questions no one really knows who else to go to.

So let’s play a game of “Name Ashley’s title.” Winner gets a Wyoming Business Council ice scraper

Out of This World Business in Chugwater

By Tom Lacock

I can’t imagine realtors having much interest in listing a decommissioned Atlas missile silo in the local paper, although the “for sale by owner” ad writes itself:

“2-BR, 2-BA, handyman special complete with large living room, shop space, 25-car garage, 15,000 square feet of living space in quiet neighborhood. Out of this world amenities.”

The lack of a missile silo on the multi-agency listing didn’t hurt Timothy Bendel and his three partners in their effort to find the perfect facility for their business. Instead they used www.missilebases.com to find a home for Frontier Astronautics. The facility itself features living quarters (we’ll come back to that), a huge shop area, a place to testfire rockets indoors and even a 400-ton overhead garage door.

Frontier builds and develops rocket engines for the private space tourism industry. Burt Rutan built SpaceShipOne flying it into space to win the X-Prize Cup in 2004. Sir Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Galactic, has partnered with Rutan and plans on flying the general public into space for $200,000 per person as soon as SpaceShipTwo is ready for mass production. Bendel points out Branson already has 200 people signed up for the maiden voyage.

Think “Airplane 2, The Sequel” without a computer hijacking the spaceplane and you have a view into what Branson is trying to pull off. Bendel and Frontier are trying to work on the technology which will give the rockets enough force to safely get into space, and do it cheap enough that anyone can afford it.

Getting back to the living quarters, Bendel managed to talk his wife into moving into the old command center, which is roughly 25 feet underground. He really likes the layout and says with the lack of sunlight, you can really set your own hours to work. He said the fact it is underground also helps with temperature control. It is naturally in the high-50's and low 60's, and the rest of the house is heated with a pellet stove.

Tim’s wife has actually done a terrific job making the place feel like home with some earth tones on the walls and laminate flooring throughout. While there is still work to do, they have done well to make it look like an actual house. So good in fact that we have contacted HGTV about visiting the Bendels next spring – no kidding – for a feature.

The WBC got involved with Bendel and company when he asked us for help in reading over his business plan. Reading plans is the duty of Ben Avery, who spent time at banks in Lander and Colorado among others.